I can’t believe it is actually over. With my last final completed less than 24 hours ago, I am officially done with the “study” part of study abroad. The New Zealand academic system put up a hell of a struggle before it went down, so this past month has been hectic. I’ve had little to no time for any extended adventures (there will be plenty this month), but I’ve managed to collect a fair number of snapshots of life in Wellington that I’d like to share. These range from observations about New Zealand culture to personal anecdotes to a few of my own philosophical musings. So I present to you these pieces once adrift and without form in my mind united under one banner: my lost chapters.
1. Wellington has its own superhero, and it’s not me. Sure I have taken to the streets to dispense swift justice to criminals and morons, but this town has been under a different hero’s protection for much longer. That hero is Blanketman. Blanketman is a voluntarily homeless man with long white dreadlocks and a wrinkled face. He looks like an elderly Bob Marley. He is called Blanketman because of the blanket that he clothes himself with. That’s right, other than a loincloth and a pair of ratty rope sandals; Blanketman wears only his blanket to protect him from the elements. He braves both the biting winds of winter and the oppressive heat of summer with the same frayed blanket. His attire or lack thereof is entirely of his own volition. He claims to go bare as a form of religious protest. What he is protesting against, I don’t know (and neither does most of the city), but I don’t think his target audience is getting the message. Despite his rather pathetic one-man war waged against clothing, he has become something of a cultural, and in my case geographical, landmark. I say that he is a geographical landmark, because he tends to frequent the same street corners. I can say with pride that I’ve been able to send out a text message reading, “I’m outside of the Courtenay Place movie theater next to the scantily clad homeless dude.” So to Blanketman, I offer my thanks. Whatever fight he is fighting, I wish him all the best.
2. I have a love-hate relationship with New Zealand television. Let me state what I don’t like about it first before I move on to its more endearing aspects. I have only five channels. I know that is a lot compared to television in the 1960’s, but let me continue. One of those channels is the Maori channel, a station that features shows exclusively in Maori or exhibiting folk dancing. Because of that, I’m down to four channels. Most New Zealand programs (I try to avoid American programs, because even while watching TV I want it to be a cultural experience) are terrible. The most frequently advertised program, Shortland Street, is openly mocked by every Kiwi I have ever met. The storylines of General Hospital seem reasonable and logical in comparison. Neighbours and Home and Away are only slightly better. Other than kiwi news programs, I tend to avoid television because of these shows. But when I do watch kiwi TV, there are two things that I look for: Outrageous Fortune and the public service announcements.
While Shortland Street may be the most heavily advertised show on the air, Outrageous Fortune is a close second and a distant first in quality. The show centers around the escapades of the West family, a kiwi family of criminals that, upon the matriarch’s insistence, decides to try and live straight. Hilarity ensues. The show is all at once over-the-top dramatic and laugh out loud funny. With an incredibly talented cast, engaging plotlines, and one of the catchiest theme songs I’ve ever heard (every Kiwi knows it by heart), the show is immensely popular. In fact, American television executives have developed an American version of the show called “Scoundrels”. I have no idea how the show is faring stateside, but I imagine that some of its most endearing qualities are lacking that little New Zealand charm that makes it so watchable.
While I would love nothing more than to be able to fast forward through public service announcements back in the good ol’ US of A, I would never even dream of doing so here in New Zealand. Why? Because you just can’t look away. I believe all the PSAs here were designed with shock and awe tactics in mind. Allow me to illustrate my point:
A 35-ish blonde woman stands behind a kitchen counter grinning broadly. She has several cooking implements in front of her, and it appears as if she will be showing us how to make a tasty casserole. For us viewers at home, we think this is a Wattie’s (a giant food products corporation that makes everything from frozen vegetable to soups to chicken) commercial. Our cooking sensei turns on the stove and empties a can of some unidentifiable gunk into the pan while never once breaking her smile. The woman’s daughter, a cherubic little eight year-old girl, attempts to grab her mother’s attention and show her the drawing she has just completed. The mother gives her daughter an angelic smile and turns to examine her child’s latest masterpiece. Then the unthinkable happens. In the five seconds it takes for the mother to turn around and admire a finger painting, the contents of the pan ignite. It appears that the woman was cooking napalm and motor oil judging by the size of the blaze. The daughter lets out a piercing shriek of terror as the rest of the stovetop is engulfed in fire. The woman whips her head around to see the destruction. Things go from bad to worse when the woman’s other daughter, a girl of around five, walks in through the backdoor and is confronted by the blaze. The women and her eldest daughter reach out their hands toward the girl and scream, separated by a wall of flame and helpless to save the child. The inferno roars at them, mocking their devastation, before the camera cuts to one last shot of the youngest girl wide-eyed in the face of her doom. Cut to black. A single sentence appears on the screen: “Don’t leave your cooking unattended.”
The first time I saw this, my jaw dropped. How could they? How could they kill a little girl and tear apart a family when I expected to learn how to make a damn casserole? “No!” I screamed at the television, “No! You- you- you can’t do that!” The other Americans who have seen this ad were equally shocked. This ad isn’t the exception though, it’s the norm. In an anti-drunk driving campaign advertisement, the ad ends with a man trapped in a totaled (and upside down) car while the corpse of his best friend stares at him with dead, wide-open eyes. The cooking commercial PSA even has a follow-up that consists of the no longer smiling woman and her eldest daughter walking through the ashes of their former kitchen, picking up a charred doll, and holding each other while weeping copiously. I’ll say one thing about New Zealand advertisers: they do NOT pull their punches.
3. While some may argue that my account of my trip to the South Island may have been long-winded, I actually cut several details to make it a reasonable length. One of the biggest things I left out of my description was my daytrip to Milford Sound. What is a sound you ask? According to the most trusted of sources, Wikipedia, a sound is “a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord, or it may identify a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land”. The thing to take from that definition is that we (my tour group and I) needed a boat to travel it. But in order to get to the sound, he had to travel… a lot. Milford Sound is hell and gone from anywhere else in New Zealand (almost 300 km from Queenstown), so a good 75% of our day was spent just getting there and back. When we finally arrived at the port, I was more than ready to stretch out my sea legs or even just my regular legs for that matter. We were directed to a small ferryboat, the Milford Majesty (I think). She was not as grand as the ship I took to cross from the North Island to the South Island, but she was still impressive in her own right.
As soon as we climbed aboard, one thing became apparent immediately. We were the only white people on the boat. Out of the 150-ish people on the boat, we stood out like sore thumbs. From the sushi and sashimi platters laid out on every table but ours to the TV camera crew wearing jackets emblazoned with kanji characters, our boat had gone Japanese-a. I briefly wondered if I had switched places with my roommate studying in Osaka. While we were fine with their presence (aside from a few Asian tourist stereotypes, I rather enjoyed their company), they were noticeably uncomfortable in ours. Maybe it was the fact that the Australians had started drinking before noon (In an attempt to be civil, I started a little after noon), or maybe it had something to do with me sharing my knowledge of the Japanese language with my friend Eric and letting slip one of the four Japanese phrases I know: “Thank you”, “Hello”, “Good luck”, and “F**k you!” I’ll give you a hint as to which one it was: my roommate taught me it. I didn’t mean to be overheard, but my subconscious tendency to speak at an increased volume in inappropriate situations got the best of me. With that little bit of cultural exchange out of the way, I decided that I had best retire to the observation deck.
When I reached the deck, I was immediately hit by water. Milford Sound is the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand and one of the wettest in the world (thanks again, Wikipedia), so I shouldn’t have been surprised. In addition to the rain, the water on which we were cruising was flanked on both sides by towering cliffs several stories tall. The rain would hit the top of these cliffs, travel down the rock in little waterfalls, and end up spraying us with mist. At the top of the cliffs are lush rainforests, so between them and the intimidating cliffs, I felt like I was in King Kong. I wouldn’t have been surprised if scantily clad natives with bone piercings appeared on the cliff edges and started chanting, “Kong! Kong! Kong!”
The water was one thing, but the wind added a whole new spin on the experience. Wellington is called “Windy Welly”, but the city has nothing on the wind in Milford Sound. Despite being surrounded by cliffs, we somehow managed to catch the full force of an ocean breeze. I had to keep one hand on my head to keep my hat from blowing away, and the other hand on the railing to keep the rest of me from going overboard. With all the intense weather conditions, it was almost as if I had stumbled into The Deadliest Catch. But because of all the Japanese people around, instead of crab fishing, we would have been fishing for… um… more mammalian water dwellers. I held my tongue and decided not to share my witticism with my colleagues lest I be overheard again.
Instead, I decided to wander over to the bow of the ship and try and reenact the famous scene from Titanic. Probably because of the countless Americans before me who had attempted to do the same, the very tip of the bow was roped off. Actually, it was more than roped off, because ropes wouldn’t have stopped me. The bow tip platform was placed a good ten feet above the deck, so I was defeated by my height. Nonetheless, I made the most of the situation when I spotted the ship’s bell nestled under the bow tip platform. I was going to ring it, but a small Japanese boy came out of nowhere and beat me to it. He gave the bell rope a good jerk, and then sped off. Naturally, I received the glares and scolding looks. I would have been mad at the kid, but I probably would have done the same thing at his age. Hell, I almost did it then at age 20. The judgmental looks from my fellow passengers were cut short when we passed next to Stirling Falls. The misty flack from the waterfall forced most of the people off the deck, but my friend Eric, myself, and one very old Japanese man had the bright idea of seeking shelter under the bow platform. We probably looked ridiculous all huddled together, but I was still proud of my ingenuity.
The boat didn’t sink. No one went overboard. There wasn’t a (successful) mutiny. I guess the trip was a success. I didn’t lose my wallet and go through a natural disaster, so it met my criteria for incident free. The scenery was certainly pretty, but I wish I could have been more involved in the trip. I wanted to swim in the water or climb the cliff face, so just watching was hard for me. I did get to see some seals, though. That certainly helped things.
4. Halloween. With copious amounts of candy, ridiculous and often inappropriate costumes, and the fact that pranks are encouraged make it one of the best times of the year. Unfortunately, Kiwis haven’t caught on to the concept. I don’t think it is their fault, though. Part of Halloween’s charm is in its season. The colors of autumn and the chilly, but not quite winter weather are conducive to that spooky atmosphere of Halloween. But over here, Halloween falls in late spring. Late spring just isn’t creepy. You can imagine how disheartened I was on being informed that Halloween “just isn’t a big deal over here”. Well, I was going to make into one.
My first step in pulling a Jack Skellington and pulling off a memorable Halloween was obtaining pumpkins. As I previously stated, it is spring over here. Pumpkins are an autumnal crop, so I was hard pressed to find one. I decided that my best bet for finding the iconic orange gourd would be in the Asian supermarket down the street. If I couldn’t find a pumpkin, I was sure that I could find some sort of weird gourd that I could make a pseudo jack-o-lantern out of.
I had been warned about the sanitation standards of the store beforehand, but was still a little surprised when I entered the shop. Birds roosted in the ceiling and flew freely among the shelves. I probably stepped on an endangered insect when I walked in. And that was just the tame stuff. Avian bird flu originated here, I’m sure of it. After only a few seconds of searching, I was glad when I found a large stack of pumpkins at the front of the produce section. The pumpkins were a sickly pale orange, squat and wide, but they were still pumpkins. I picked out one for myself, and then remembering that my kiwi flatmate, Hanah, had said that she had never carved a pumpkin before, I picked up one for her too. Everyone should carve a pumpkin at least once in their lifetime.
The next step for preparing for Halloween was getting my costume. I had agreed to a part of a group of people dressing up as the characters from the board game Clue, and I was assigned Professor Plum. I own one striped purple shirt, but that it is it. As it turns out, finding purple formalwear is difficult. I visited at least six thrift stores on Cuba Street before I happened upon a tiny secondhand suit store. They did have a purple suit jacket, but not only was it out of my price range, it would have fit only a yeti and even then it would have been a loose fit. I did, however, manage to find a purple tie and a rather obnoxious purple vest. The vest, which I am keeping because it is so obnoxious, is purple, green, and gold, and wouldn’t be out of place in a flamboyant Mardi Gras festival. My friends promised to lend to me a pair of glasses (thick, Buddy Holly style) and a pocket watch to complete the look. And with that, Professor Plum was dressed to kill.
Halloween night fell on a Sunday, so the big celebration took place on Saturday. I spent most of the day carving pumpkins using kitchen knives and a scalpel with Hanah. I carved Iron Man (of course) and she did a design of one of the baby dragons from the film “How to Tame Your Dragon”. For being a first time pumpkin carver, she was surprisingly good. With only a little instruction from me, she was able to make a gourd masterpiece. By the time we finished carving and putting candles in our pumpkins, it was time for the party. Guests in attendance included the Clue crew (as we were affectionately known), the Cat in the Hat accompanied by Things 1 & 2, 80’s prom queens, Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World, and many, many more. It was mainly Americans that dressed up, but I have to hand it to the kiwis, they made a pretty good showing.
The night ended with various groups, mine included, hitting the town and going to the bars. I was wearing my nice shoes, so no getting kicked out of bars for me. Eventually the night turned into a game of Clue with my friends dropping out of clubs one by one. Colonel Mustard in The Big Kumara. Mrs. Peacock in Boogie Wonderland. Mr. Green in Maya. I found myself alone and the last one out wandering the streets at 4:00 in the morning, so I guess that made me the winner. Hooray?
I was at a crosswalk prepared to go to one last bar when a group of about seven guys my age approached and one of them shoved me into a lightpost and called me “four-eyes” along with a few obscenities. He was blackout drunk and stumbling, so knocking his ass to the pavement would not have been a problem. I don’t consider myself particularly tough, but in the state my aggressor was in, it would have been like Bruce Lee facing a toddler. The problem was the guy’s six friends. At least half of them were as drunk as he was, but the others I wasn’t so sure about. I could take down the one who pushed me easily and maybe one other guy before getting beaten to a pulp by the rest of the group. I balled a fist and got ready to swing if they decided to hit me again. Just as I had made up my mind about what punch and kick sequence I would throw (right cross, roundhouse kick, side thrust kick), the crosswalk light turned green and the seven guys forgot all about me. I didn’t want to press my luck further, so I hailed a cab and called it a night. Happy Halloween, New Zealand!
5. This is more of an announcement than anything, but my articles are now appearing in Rice’s online magazine, The Rice Standard. So far I have done two renditions of pieces about bungee jumping and about my experience during the Canterbury Quake. You can expect a few more by the end of the year, so keep your eyes peeled. While you’re on the site, you should also check out the articles by my friend, Tom Boyd, who is studying abroad in China. Even though he makes fun of my Halloween costume (I got several compliments on it, and was told that I pulled off the look very well, so he can just bite me), I still read his articles and his blog. For those of you who aren’t, I encourage you to do so. Other blogs to check out include the blog of my roommate in Osaka (if you like my sense of humor, you will like his) and the blog of my friend in Athens (she is so much better at putting up pictures and giving regular updates on her blog that I feel a little guilty every time I read it).
I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has read my blog so far. Even if this is your first time reading (but hopefully not the last) it, I am grateful. Without an audience, I would have almost no motivation to record my experience. The feedback I've received has made all the time and effort worthwhile, and also reminds me that while I sometimes feel like I enjoy writing this blog more than you guys enjoy reading it (I really, REALLY do like writing this), I've caused more than a few laughs. My time in New Zealand is coming to a close, so this will be one of my last posts. Rest assured, since the Commissioner (my mom) and the Professor (my dad) will be coming to the country on Monday to join me for a three week tour of the islands followed by a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney, there are still more adventures for me to record and a few more tricks up my sleeves. But for now, I’m going to relax. Finals are over and Guy Fawkes Night is tonight, so I’m going down to the waterfront to watch the fireworks show. I imagine it will be a bittersweet experience. I love fireworks shows, but in a way, it will be like a sendoff from this city I have come to see as a home. I’ve had some interesting times here, both good and bad, but I couldn’t think of a better way to say goodbye. So my last thank you goes out to Wellington. It may be windy, cold, hilly, and populated by people who like to pick on guys dressed as board game characters, but I can’t think of a better place to have studied abroad.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
$9.50
Let me start with an apology. My lack of posts for this past month is inexcusable. NEAR inexcusable, that is. It would be completely inexcusable and thus damn my soul to writer’s hell (writing for the National Enquirer) if not for one thing: pocket change. For three and a half weeks I lived off of pocket change, specifically $9.50. Being poor (I lost my wallet in the Christchurch earthquake if you don't remember) is a full time job, so writing, pub hopping, and anything else that required money or didn't go towards procuring me additional funds was put on hold. It was, as you can imagine, as shitty an experience as it sounds. Peanut butter and jelly (always called jam over here as jelly is associated with what we Americans call Jell-O) sandwiches became a constant staple in my already dismally bland diet. I lived off a bag of rice that I bought on sale and managed to stretch out its contents for nearly nine days. Razors and shaving cream suddenly became luxuries, so I stopped shaving. The old Max Stewart had gone out the window, and his place, a hero emerged. A hero this world (and his alter ego i.e. me) was entirely unprepared for: Homeless Man.
By day he is your typical university student, attends classes, daydreams in said classes, etc. But behind closed doors he becomes a scruffy, penny-pinching vagabond with the uncanny ability to find spare change and make a single meal last for an entire day. His enemy? The bank.
My bank tried to be helpful, I’m sure of it. They even came close once or twice. But like with the new Star Wars movies, I ended up profoundly disappointed. Every day after returning from my classes, I would sequester myself in my room and unleash a fury upon my poor laptop’s keyboard as I typed out messages to my bank’s online help center. As their help staff, manned by demons by the names of Scott, Sonya, Beelzebub, Dev, etc., taunted with me progressively useless solutions to my problem, my messages became angrier and less verbose. It got to the point where my messages pretty much became thinly veiled references to a number of particularly profane (but useful) four-letter words.
Then came the phone calls. These became something of a dilemma. I had, during my trip to the South Island, elected to put off topping up (the kiwi term is "topping up", not "topping off") my prepaid cell phone minutes until my return. I’m still kicking myself for that. My minutes ran out within ten minutes of the first phone call. I was in trouble. I could live as a peasant for only so long. Seeing as how my student visa dictates that I am not allowed to have a job in this country (and thus support myself) and the harsh anti-pimping laws here, I decided to call in the big guns. Like any real man faced with danger, I called my mommy.
Thing is, my mother is a force to be reckoned with. She can make grown men cry like little girls, and makes Guantanamo interrogators look like sissies. Only if you cross her, that is. And as a few people have lived (just barely, though) to learn, messing with the mama bear’s cubs is a surefire way to piss her off. So explaining my situation to her via the cyber wonder that is Skype, we devised a two-pronged attack. I would continue my unrelenting written campaign against the bank’s online help employees and she would visit the local branch of my bank and confront them directly. I have been told that the employees there now consider the day of her visit as “The Day That Will Live in Infamy”. Whatever she did, it worked. Well, sort of.
In a somewhat Pyrrhic victory, I managed to get both a new ATM card and a new credit card. I call it Pyrrhic because both cards were originally shipped to wrong addresses. That’s right, addressES, as in plural. Despite my specific instructions and multiple references to my New Zealand address, my ATM card was sent to my campus address at Rice University, while my credit card was sent to my home address in Tulsa. I believe that the online help staff had a hand in this business, probably due to discovering that my words, like sticks and stones, could in fact hurt them. My mother’s wrath, however, is infinitely more terrifying, so the head of my bank’s local branch was cowed into waiving all delivery fees. I had to assure both her and my father that I could survive perfectly well despite the delay so at to avoid any poor banker from having his soul ripped from his body.
So I waited with a growling stomach and an increasingly shaggy appearance. Some may wonder why I simply didn’t borrow money. The answer? I have my pride. I may not have shame, but I have pride. But more than proud, I was curious. Could I survive? My grandfather had grown up around the time of the Great Depression in a house where having dust on what little furniture they owned was considered a luxury. I’ve often been recounted with tales of his days as a college boy foraging for food. He would regularly go for weeks straight eating one meal every other day. If he could do it, so could I. I started looking at my financial situation as a gameshow. “Congratulations, Mr. Stewart! You are the next contestant on Stretch That Dollar!” I horded every spare cent I could find like a dragon, fiercely guarding it from the outstretched hands of merchants and food sellers. I barely eked out enough cash to purchase a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of rice (all on sale) from the local convenience store. When I had amassed enough change, I would visit the local fish and chips shop at the end of Devon Street. Their English is poor, but their prices are unbeatable. A single meal from them costs the equivalent of $3 USD and can last for up to four meals. I am pretty sure that the old Vietnamese guys who run the place know me as “the poor kid”, “the boxing kid” (I would often stop by the shop with my boxing wraps still on my hands from class on my way back to my flat), or “the poor boxing kid”. Whatever they knew me as, they were always happy to see me and always knew my order.
I must confess though that my successful survival cannot be solely attributed to my own resourcefulness. Aside from my mother, my three roommates took it upon themselves to care for me during my times of poverty. At first it was in little ways. They would order just a little too much pizza and then claim that the one slice that remained would be discarded if someone (me) didn’t eat it. Sometimes one of them would cook up a meal only to “realize” that they made an extra serving, and would offer the food to the nearest person, once again me. I had courteously refused their offers of loans (they all offered separately) at first, determined to be self-sufficient. But after some cajoling from my parents, especially my father, I broke down and took out some loans at the First National Bank of Landcross Street. With cash in my pocket for the first time in weeks, I may have gone a little overboard. On the first night of relative financial security, I ordered a disgustingly large amount of food from Hell’s Pizza, and I made it rain on that poor delivery boy. Fortunately the full implications of my actions (spending most of my new loan money on a single meal) dawned on me as I gnawed on my fourth slice of Mayhem (Peanut Satay, Sweet Chili, Chicken, Capsicum, and Onions), and I made that order last until the week’s end.
The weeks of September flew by rather uneventfully until one day a knock came on our door. The pocket where my wallet once resided tingled. Could it be? I flew up the stairs like an Englishman out of an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. I threw open the door, and lo and behold, there stood a delivery guy. His name was probably Rick or Murray or something, but to me he was the messenger of God. I think he could tell by the look on my face that this was no normal delivery for me.
“You okay, bro?” he asked warily.
“Sure,” I said, “Is that package for me?”
“Uh, this is for Max,” he replied, “If you’re him, which I take it you are, then yes. The address says it’s from a place called Tulsa. You’re not actually from there are you?
It was taking every ounce of my willpower to hold the pen steady as I signed for the parcel.
“Yeah, actually, I am.”
“Wow, bro!” he said, genuinely surprised, “You must be hating our winter then. You’ve probably been miserable, haven’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
I gave him my best ironic smile and closed the door. And then I danced with that package. I literally waltzed into my living room with a FedEx envelope. I tore it open gleefully and let the little piece of plastic fall onto the couch. I stood awestruck by its beauty for at least a minute before I was able to pick it up. It was so… so…. new. And wonderful. And fancy. I was like a caveman looking at fire. I ran my fingers over the slightly raised engraving of my name admiring its slate blue color. My financial troubles were over.
A few days later and my credit card was joined by its younger brother, my ATM card. My reaction was equally joyous, the delivery guy equally unsettled. My first trip to the ATM, however, was less triumphant. In fact, it was a complete failure. Some neanderthalic dickhead at my bank deemed it a good idea to change my PIN for security reasons. For added security, said dickhead decided not to tell me. So I stood in front of the ATM repeatedly typing in the familiar four-digit code only for the machine to politely tell me to go fuck myself. Thankfully I didn’t take its advice and instead went crying (once again figuratively) to my mother. She sorted things out in her usual Jack Bauer-like manner, and I was given the new PIN within hours.
I had money. My money. My first order of business was to pay off my debts. I may sometimes play practical jokes on my roommates, I may order food under inappropriate pseudonyms, and I may have carved my brother’s name into a bathroom door in an attempt to get him in trouble, but I at least honor my debts. After making sure my honor would remain intact, I decided to go shopping. After wandering its streets with empty pockets for almost a month, Wellington looked like a completely different city. I walked down Cuba Street passing families with laughing children, street jazz bands, at least two balloon animal artists, and three street magicians. I liked to think that they were all there to celebrate the new holiday of Max Regains Money Day, but it turns out it was just an ordinary Saturday. I was mystified regardless. That mystification, however, did not prevent me from going into a New Zealand Army Surplus (I am pretty sure their standing army is three guys with a stick and maybe one with a board with a nail in it) and making one of the best purchases of my life. As soon as I saw it, I knew we were destined for each other. I am proud to say that I am now the proud owner of WWII aviator’s cap and goggles. I am currently wearing the ensemble as I type this, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Other than my financial pitfalls and woes, not much has happened. I continue to attend classes (less than three weeks left), I still box, and still perform various Maxtions around Wellington. Weeks passed and I survived on crumbs and, like Ringo, with a little help from my friends. I figure that while Ringo may not be the best Beatle to want to be, he is a millionaire and he did marry a Bond girl so I could do worse. I now stand tall and with pockets full, ready to go out into the city again. I was out of commission for a month, but I’m back with a vengeance. The universe tried to keep me down (and poor) and failed. The universe may be big, but I’m crazy. And in a fight between the two, always bet on crazy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The criminal tardiness of this latest post is also due to my ghastly Internet connection. I haven’t been able to sign into my blog (up until now) and change anything about it, which includes new posts. The Internet is very fickle over here, fickle (and vain) enough to auto-correct the “i” in its name to a capitalized “I” in its appearances in this note.
By day he is your typical university student, attends classes, daydreams in said classes, etc. But behind closed doors he becomes a scruffy, penny-pinching vagabond with the uncanny ability to find spare change and make a single meal last for an entire day. His enemy? The bank.
My bank tried to be helpful, I’m sure of it. They even came close once or twice. But like with the new Star Wars movies, I ended up profoundly disappointed. Every day after returning from my classes, I would sequester myself in my room and unleash a fury upon my poor laptop’s keyboard as I typed out messages to my bank’s online help center. As their help staff, manned by demons by the names of Scott, Sonya, Beelzebub, Dev, etc., taunted with me progressively useless solutions to my problem, my messages became angrier and less verbose. It got to the point where my messages pretty much became thinly veiled references to a number of particularly profane (but useful) four-letter words.
Then came the phone calls. These became something of a dilemma. I had, during my trip to the South Island, elected to put off topping up (the kiwi term is "topping up", not "topping off") my prepaid cell phone minutes until my return. I’m still kicking myself for that. My minutes ran out within ten minutes of the first phone call. I was in trouble. I could live as a peasant for only so long. Seeing as how my student visa dictates that I am not allowed to have a job in this country (and thus support myself) and the harsh anti-pimping laws here, I decided to call in the big guns. Like any real man faced with danger, I called my mommy.
Thing is, my mother is a force to be reckoned with. She can make grown men cry like little girls, and makes Guantanamo interrogators look like sissies. Only if you cross her, that is. And as a few people have lived (just barely, though) to learn, messing with the mama bear’s cubs is a surefire way to piss her off. So explaining my situation to her via the cyber wonder that is Skype, we devised a two-pronged attack. I would continue my unrelenting written campaign against the bank’s online help employees and she would visit the local branch of my bank and confront them directly. I have been told that the employees there now consider the day of her visit as “The Day That Will Live in Infamy”. Whatever she did, it worked. Well, sort of.
In a somewhat Pyrrhic victory, I managed to get both a new ATM card and a new credit card. I call it Pyrrhic because both cards were originally shipped to wrong addresses. That’s right, addressES, as in plural. Despite my specific instructions and multiple references to my New Zealand address, my ATM card was sent to my campus address at Rice University, while my credit card was sent to my home address in Tulsa. I believe that the online help staff had a hand in this business, probably due to discovering that my words, like sticks and stones, could in fact hurt them. My mother’s wrath, however, is infinitely more terrifying, so the head of my bank’s local branch was cowed into waiving all delivery fees. I had to assure both her and my father that I could survive perfectly well despite the delay so at to avoid any poor banker from having his soul ripped from his body.
So I waited with a growling stomach and an increasingly shaggy appearance. Some may wonder why I simply didn’t borrow money. The answer? I have my pride. I may not have shame, but I have pride. But more than proud, I was curious. Could I survive? My grandfather had grown up around the time of the Great Depression in a house where having dust on what little furniture they owned was considered a luxury. I’ve often been recounted with tales of his days as a college boy foraging for food. He would regularly go for weeks straight eating one meal every other day. If he could do it, so could I. I started looking at my financial situation as a gameshow. “Congratulations, Mr. Stewart! You are the next contestant on Stretch That Dollar!” I horded every spare cent I could find like a dragon, fiercely guarding it from the outstretched hands of merchants and food sellers. I barely eked out enough cash to purchase a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of rice (all on sale) from the local convenience store. When I had amassed enough change, I would visit the local fish and chips shop at the end of Devon Street. Their English is poor, but their prices are unbeatable. A single meal from them costs the equivalent of $3 USD and can last for up to four meals. I am pretty sure that the old Vietnamese guys who run the place know me as “the poor kid”, “the boxing kid” (I would often stop by the shop with my boxing wraps still on my hands from class on my way back to my flat), or “the poor boxing kid”. Whatever they knew me as, they were always happy to see me and always knew my order.
I must confess though that my successful survival cannot be solely attributed to my own resourcefulness. Aside from my mother, my three roommates took it upon themselves to care for me during my times of poverty. At first it was in little ways. They would order just a little too much pizza and then claim that the one slice that remained would be discarded if someone (me) didn’t eat it. Sometimes one of them would cook up a meal only to “realize” that they made an extra serving, and would offer the food to the nearest person, once again me. I had courteously refused their offers of loans (they all offered separately) at first, determined to be self-sufficient. But after some cajoling from my parents, especially my father, I broke down and took out some loans at the First National Bank of Landcross Street. With cash in my pocket for the first time in weeks, I may have gone a little overboard. On the first night of relative financial security, I ordered a disgustingly large amount of food from Hell’s Pizza, and I made it rain on that poor delivery boy. Fortunately the full implications of my actions (spending most of my new loan money on a single meal) dawned on me as I gnawed on my fourth slice of Mayhem (Peanut Satay, Sweet Chili, Chicken, Capsicum, and Onions), and I made that order last until the week’s end.
The weeks of September flew by rather uneventfully until one day a knock came on our door. The pocket where my wallet once resided tingled. Could it be? I flew up the stairs like an Englishman out of an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. I threw open the door, and lo and behold, there stood a delivery guy. His name was probably Rick or Murray or something, but to me he was the messenger of God. I think he could tell by the look on my face that this was no normal delivery for me.
“You okay, bro?” he asked warily.
“Sure,” I said, “Is that package for me?”
“Uh, this is for Max,” he replied, “If you’re him, which I take it you are, then yes. The address says it’s from a place called Tulsa. You’re not actually from there are you?
It was taking every ounce of my willpower to hold the pen steady as I signed for the parcel.
“Yeah, actually, I am.”
“Wow, bro!” he said, genuinely surprised, “You must be hating our winter then. You’ve probably been miserable, haven’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
I gave him my best ironic smile and closed the door. And then I danced with that package. I literally waltzed into my living room with a FedEx envelope. I tore it open gleefully and let the little piece of plastic fall onto the couch. I stood awestruck by its beauty for at least a minute before I was able to pick it up. It was so… so…. new. And wonderful. And fancy. I was like a caveman looking at fire. I ran my fingers over the slightly raised engraving of my name admiring its slate blue color. My financial troubles were over.
A few days later and my credit card was joined by its younger brother, my ATM card. My reaction was equally joyous, the delivery guy equally unsettled. My first trip to the ATM, however, was less triumphant. In fact, it was a complete failure. Some neanderthalic dickhead at my bank deemed it a good idea to change my PIN for security reasons. For added security, said dickhead decided not to tell me. So I stood in front of the ATM repeatedly typing in the familiar four-digit code only for the machine to politely tell me to go fuck myself. Thankfully I didn’t take its advice and instead went crying (once again figuratively) to my mother. She sorted things out in her usual Jack Bauer-like manner, and I was given the new PIN within hours.
I had money. My money. My first order of business was to pay off my debts. I may sometimes play practical jokes on my roommates, I may order food under inappropriate pseudonyms, and I may have carved my brother’s name into a bathroom door in an attempt to get him in trouble, but I at least honor my debts. After making sure my honor would remain intact, I decided to go shopping. After wandering its streets with empty pockets for almost a month, Wellington looked like a completely different city. I walked down Cuba Street passing families with laughing children, street jazz bands, at least two balloon animal artists, and three street magicians. I liked to think that they were all there to celebrate the new holiday of Max Regains Money Day, but it turns out it was just an ordinary Saturday. I was mystified regardless. That mystification, however, did not prevent me from going into a New Zealand Army Surplus (I am pretty sure their standing army is three guys with a stick and maybe one with a board with a nail in it) and making one of the best purchases of my life. As soon as I saw it, I knew we were destined for each other. I am proud to say that I am now the proud owner of WWII aviator’s cap and goggles. I am currently wearing the ensemble as I type this, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Other than my financial pitfalls and woes, not much has happened. I continue to attend classes (less than three weeks left), I still box, and still perform various Maxtions around Wellington. Weeks passed and I survived on crumbs and, like Ringo, with a little help from my friends. I figure that while Ringo may not be the best Beatle to want to be, he is a millionaire and he did marry a Bond girl so I could do worse. I now stand tall and with pockets full, ready to go out into the city again. I was out of commission for a month, but I’m back with a vengeance. The universe tried to keep me down (and poor) and failed. The universe may be big, but I’m crazy. And in a fight between the two, always bet on crazy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The criminal tardiness of this latest post is also due to my ghastly Internet connection. I haven’t been able to sign into my blog (up until now) and change anything about it, which includes new posts. The Internet is very fickle over here, fickle (and vain) enough to auto-correct the “i” in its name to a capitalized “I” in its appearances in this note.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The South Island Saga: Shaken Not Stirred
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? I’m not really sure, but I would imagine that the meeting would be similar to my Saturday morning in Christchurch. At about 4:30 in the morning I was thrown from my bed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. To put that into perspective, the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010 was slightly smaller. The Haitian earthquake affected the lives of three million people, and took the lives of an estimated 230,000. The Christchurch earthquake, known as the Canterbury Quake in the media, seriously injured only two people. One man suffered a heart attack during the chaos, but his death can’t be directly linked to the earthquake. The Canterbury Quake did, however, affect hundreds of thousands of lives that day, ruining businesses, destroying homes, and more. Out of those hundreds of thousands lives affected by the quake, I give you the story of one.
When I fell asleep on the night of September 3rd, my only concern for the following day was catching the shuttle to the train station. Adrenaline had been continuously surging through my veins for the past week, and all I was looking forward to was some peace, quiet, and a good night’s sleep in my bed back in Wellington. Fate, as usual, was not on my side.
The first thing I remember about the quake was the sound of church bells. I didn’t hear just one, or even a couple, but every single bell in the city. All of the bells clanged in chaotic cacophony of ringing metal, waking every soul for miles around. I had just opened my eyes when I felt the first tremors. And what tremors they were. I watched as a painting on the wall of my hotel room jumped from the wall with a spectacular crash. Over the din from outside, I heard the water in the bathroom’s toilet bowl sloshing around. I could even feel my own teeth rattling around in my jaws. A freight train may as well have been running through my room. My bed shook like one of those Magic Fingers massage beds, but cranked up to eleven. I smacked against the carpet with a muffled thump.
“You have got to be kidding me!” I groaned.
I have a knack for attracting disasters. The destruction of Hurricane Ike marked my first semester of college at Rice University. I grew up in the heart of Tornado Alley, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of cyclones. I was even born during the greatest blizzard to hit my hometown in over a century. As you can see, I’m no stranger to natural disasters.
Maybe it was past experience, maybe my adrenaline had all been spent, or maybe I was just too damn tired to care, but whatever it was that guided my actions, I didn’t panic. Instead I moved to the window with a sort of bemused detachment to look out over Cathedral Square from my fifth floor room window. Hundreds of people filled the square below wrapped in hotel provided blankets and quilts. They milled about the square either searching for their companions or to fight off the cold. I felt myself cock my head to one side. Why should I join them? Tiny as they appeared from high vantage point, I could still see that they looked cold and miserable. Even though the earthquake had cut the city’s power supply, including the power to my hotel, I at least had a bed and some privacy. So with the floor still swaying beneath my feet, I rubbed my eyes and stumbled to my bed to sleep until my alarm clock sounded. Ah hour and a half later, it did.
I rose from my bed and made my way to the window. The crowd outside had doubled. I wondered if this was what the Pope felt like before he gave mass. Probably not. I sighed and decided that if I were to join the throng outside then I would at least be showered. So grabbing my trusty flashlight from my backpack (Dora the Explorer would have been so proud), I went to test the hotel’s water supply. I was in luck. Aside from the small flicker of light from my flashlight, I showered in complete darkness. It was not an experience I would like to repeat. The dim lighting made me feel as if I were in some bizarre version of a slasher film. Still, I wasn’t to be dissuaded. Freshly scrubbed and with my bags packed, I dragged my luggage down five flights of stairs and into a candle-lit lobby.
Those hours in the lobby I count as some of the longest in my life. News trickled in at a painfully slow pace. The airport was closed. Schools were closed. All trains were cancelled. Christchurch was closed. There was no way I was leaving the city that day. But worse than my travel plans being cancelled, worse by far, was not being able to contact my family. I can’t even begin to describe how badly I wanted to tell them that I was safe. Bored out of my mind, but safe. I tried to solve both problems by calling home on my cellphone. I may as well have tried using a graphing calculator. I gave up.
Luckily my mother is a stubborn woman. Out of all the cell phone traffic no doubt clogging the city of Christchurch, my mother managed to get a call through to me. I don’t believe in the slightest that this was luck or anything like that, not at all. Instead, I like to think that her call was as persistent as she is. After assuring her and the rest of my family that I was unharmed by the quake, I felt considerably better. I resigned myself to people watching.
From what I could tell, there were few families. Those that were in the hotel lobby tended to cling to each other and look the most worried. The most populous group of the Camelot Hotel was the couples. Like the families, they tended to cling to each other. They did talk, however, but mainly to each other, and only about how they were going to flee the city. The final group, my group, was the people travelling Han style: solo. We seemed to be the least worried. In fact, most of us were pretty relaxed. Between reading my latest Bill Bryson book and eating the cornflakes provided by the hotel staff, I made friends with an amicable, elderly software developer from Darwin, Australia. He and four of his friends had been attending a meeting in the city, and he had decided to stay an extra day. I had found a brother in terms of luck.
When he asked me about what brought me to Christchurch, I told him that I was a student and, among other things, a writer (I am probably being a little too generous with the term).
“Is that so, my boy?” he asked with a grin, “Well then you should be pleased as punch, shouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like you said, mate,” he replied, “You’re a writer. Don’t you lot thrive on chaos?”
I smiled. He was right. In every disaster, there is a story waiting to be told. I was inspired. The city was ripe for exploring, waiting for me to chronicle the tragedy that had befallen it. My new friend wished me luck and asked me to bring back some pictures. If my life were to be made into a movie, I hope his part goes to Michael Caine.
Dawn was only just settling upon the city when I strode out onto its streets. I hadn’t shaved in almost two weeks and was wearing wrinkled clothes, yet I was still one of the least disheveled wanderers in Christchurch. From the looks on the faces of the people around me, I thought I had stepped into a zombie movie. And like any scholar of zombie movies, I knew what I had to do. First, assess the destruction. Second, find fellow survivors. Third, find food and other resources. Finally, kick some ass.
My camera came in handy for step one. I kept in mind my old Aussie friend’s request as I walked down the streets looking for destruction. Turns out, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Every corner I turned revealed some rubble or broken glass. I saw a Mexican restaurant with its entire front wall missing, like some sort of diorama. I passed a glassworks store, its entire inventory decimated. Worst of all, I saw a liquor store filled with broken bottles, precious spirits saturating the linoleum. An old couple looked inside shaking their heads and ready to weep. I wanted to as well. After that, I had seen enough. On to step two.
Since breakfast I had been communicating with my Wellington friends who also happened to be in Christchurch that fateful night. I was eager to hear if they had found a way out of the city because finding fellow survivors with similar objectives to one's own is a crucial step in living to to see the final credits roll in a zombie movie. None had. A few had been stranded at the airport without lodgings, so being the gentleman that I am, I offered them my hotel room. I figured pooling our resources (read: getting some money to help pay for a second night in the hotel) couldn’t hurt. They passed out within seconds of arriving at my hotel. I decided to let them sleep while I moved onto foraging.
I tried my best to recall any store or restaurant that looked as if it might have been open from my earlier wanderings. At least three survivors die in your typical zombie movie from trying to forage for food too late in the game. The key is to get your food early, while the zombie infection is still contained. The other commodity I needed was money. The main character usually finds himself in a situation where he needs to bribe some checkpoint guard to get his family or himself across the quarantine zone line. I felt I should be prepared for this eventuality. Apparently half the population had the same idea. Not until I slipped through a fair number of alleys and crossed a few bridges did I find a working ATM. The feel of a full wallet in my coat pocket was comforting. I would soon come to miss that feeling.
My errands complete, I decided to wake my friends and forage for food. Through all the numerous city blocks I explored, I found only one available food source: a small convenience store, apparently one with its own generator. The shop was jam-packed with fellow refugees. I found myself moving shoulder-to-shoulder through scared, confused customers in order to get my food. The cheap sandwiches I made back in my hotel rank among the best I have ever had.
But all was not well (aside from the obvious). As soon as I had finished my sandwiches, my companions and I were evacuated from my hotel (not before giving some photographs to a certain Australian). The hostel next door (thankfully I didn’t stay there) was at serious risk of collapsing, so all nearby buildings were emptied out into the streets. I was homeless. At least my appearance now matched my status. At least the receptionist was kind enough to book my group a reservation at a motel further down the road. We walked down the rubble-strewn roads with bags in tow to our new lodgings. Police officers questioned our story as we crossed through lockdown barriers until finally we found the Avenue Motor Lodge. It was there that I realized with horror that I no longer had my wallet. Throughout the entire ordeal of the earthquake, this was the first time that I panicked. I spent the rest of the night calling every location that I had visited in the past six hours with no success. I’ve never slept so poorly.
I awoke early the next morning to catch a bus out of the city. With a little luck, a lot of pleading, and some of my old acting skill, I managed to convince a travel agent to switch my reservations to the following day. I counted myself as one of the lucky few who managed to get out of Christchurch in a timely manner. I was happy, but the loss of my wallet still weighed heavily upon me. I slept nearly the entire bus ride to Picton and for the entirety of the ferry ride to Wellington. I was too drained to care about the scenery. My fatigue must have shown on my face when I arrived home to my flat, because my flatmates looked as if they had seen a ghost. I mean, I knew I looked like hell, but seriously? I guess I had been through hell, though. As I sat back in my desk chair, I wondered to myself: How was I to write about it? I had felt the full wrath of nature. I had seen a city in full lockdown. For a brief day, I had been a refugee. The problem was where to start. I decided to begin with a question. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
When I fell asleep on the night of September 3rd, my only concern for the following day was catching the shuttle to the train station. Adrenaline had been continuously surging through my veins for the past week, and all I was looking forward to was some peace, quiet, and a good night’s sleep in my bed back in Wellington. Fate, as usual, was not on my side.
The first thing I remember about the quake was the sound of church bells. I didn’t hear just one, or even a couple, but every single bell in the city. All of the bells clanged in chaotic cacophony of ringing metal, waking every soul for miles around. I had just opened my eyes when I felt the first tremors. And what tremors they were. I watched as a painting on the wall of my hotel room jumped from the wall with a spectacular crash. Over the din from outside, I heard the water in the bathroom’s toilet bowl sloshing around. I could even feel my own teeth rattling around in my jaws. A freight train may as well have been running through my room. My bed shook like one of those Magic Fingers massage beds, but cranked up to eleven. I smacked against the carpet with a muffled thump.
“You have got to be kidding me!” I groaned.
I have a knack for attracting disasters. The destruction of Hurricane Ike marked my first semester of college at Rice University. I grew up in the heart of Tornado Alley, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of cyclones. I was even born during the greatest blizzard to hit my hometown in over a century. As you can see, I’m no stranger to natural disasters.
Maybe it was past experience, maybe my adrenaline had all been spent, or maybe I was just too damn tired to care, but whatever it was that guided my actions, I didn’t panic. Instead I moved to the window with a sort of bemused detachment to look out over Cathedral Square from my fifth floor room window. Hundreds of people filled the square below wrapped in hotel provided blankets and quilts. They milled about the square either searching for their companions or to fight off the cold. I felt myself cock my head to one side. Why should I join them? Tiny as they appeared from high vantage point, I could still see that they looked cold and miserable. Even though the earthquake had cut the city’s power supply, including the power to my hotel, I at least had a bed and some privacy. So with the floor still swaying beneath my feet, I rubbed my eyes and stumbled to my bed to sleep until my alarm clock sounded. Ah hour and a half later, it did.
I rose from my bed and made my way to the window. The crowd outside had doubled. I wondered if this was what the Pope felt like before he gave mass. Probably not. I sighed and decided that if I were to join the throng outside then I would at least be showered. So grabbing my trusty flashlight from my backpack (Dora the Explorer would have been so proud), I went to test the hotel’s water supply. I was in luck. Aside from the small flicker of light from my flashlight, I showered in complete darkness. It was not an experience I would like to repeat. The dim lighting made me feel as if I were in some bizarre version of a slasher film. Still, I wasn’t to be dissuaded. Freshly scrubbed and with my bags packed, I dragged my luggage down five flights of stairs and into a candle-lit lobby.
Those hours in the lobby I count as some of the longest in my life. News trickled in at a painfully slow pace. The airport was closed. Schools were closed. All trains were cancelled. Christchurch was closed. There was no way I was leaving the city that day. But worse than my travel plans being cancelled, worse by far, was not being able to contact my family. I can’t even begin to describe how badly I wanted to tell them that I was safe. Bored out of my mind, but safe. I tried to solve both problems by calling home on my cellphone. I may as well have tried using a graphing calculator. I gave up.
Luckily my mother is a stubborn woman. Out of all the cell phone traffic no doubt clogging the city of Christchurch, my mother managed to get a call through to me. I don’t believe in the slightest that this was luck or anything like that, not at all. Instead, I like to think that her call was as persistent as she is. After assuring her and the rest of my family that I was unharmed by the quake, I felt considerably better. I resigned myself to people watching.
From what I could tell, there were few families. Those that were in the hotel lobby tended to cling to each other and look the most worried. The most populous group of the Camelot Hotel was the couples. Like the families, they tended to cling to each other. They did talk, however, but mainly to each other, and only about how they were going to flee the city. The final group, my group, was the people travelling Han style: solo. We seemed to be the least worried. In fact, most of us were pretty relaxed. Between reading my latest Bill Bryson book and eating the cornflakes provided by the hotel staff, I made friends with an amicable, elderly software developer from Darwin, Australia. He and four of his friends had been attending a meeting in the city, and he had decided to stay an extra day. I had found a brother in terms of luck.
When he asked me about what brought me to Christchurch, I told him that I was a student and, among other things, a writer (I am probably being a little too generous with the term).
“Is that so, my boy?” he asked with a grin, “Well then you should be pleased as punch, shouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like you said, mate,” he replied, “You’re a writer. Don’t you lot thrive on chaos?”
I smiled. He was right. In every disaster, there is a story waiting to be told. I was inspired. The city was ripe for exploring, waiting for me to chronicle the tragedy that had befallen it. My new friend wished me luck and asked me to bring back some pictures. If my life were to be made into a movie, I hope his part goes to Michael Caine.
Dawn was only just settling upon the city when I strode out onto its streets. I hadn’t shaved in almost two weeks and was wearing wrinkled clothes, yet I was still one of the least disheveled wanderers in Christchurch. From the looks on the faces of the people around me, I thought I had stepped into a zombie movie. And like any scholar of zombie movies, I knew what I had to do. First, assess the destruction. Second, find fellow survivors. Third, find food and other resources. Finally, kick some ass.
My camera came in handy for step one. I kept in mind my old Aussie friend’s request as I walked down the streets looking for destruction. Turns out, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Every corner I turned revealed some rubble or broken glass. I saw a Mexican restaurant with its entire front wall missing, like some sort of diorama. I passed a glassworks store, its entire inventory decimated. Worst of all, I saw a liquor store filled with broken bottles, precious spirits saturating the linoleum. An old couple looked inside shaking their heads and ready to weep. I wanted to as well. After that, I had seen enough. On to step two.
Since breakfast I had been communicating with my Wellington friends who also happened to be in Christchurch that fateful night. I was eager to hear if they had found a way out of the city because finding fellow survivors with similar objectives to one's own is a crucial step in living to to see the final credits roll in a zombie movie. None had. A few had been stranded at the airport without lodgings, so being the gentleman that I am, I offered them my hotel room. I figured pooling our resources (read: getting some money to help pay for a second night in the hotel) couldn’t hurt. They passed out within seconds of arriving at my hotel. I decided to let them sleep while I moved onto foraging.
I tried my best to recall any store or restaurant that looked as if it might have been open from my earlier wanderings. At least three survivors die in your typical zombie movie from trying to forage for food too late in the game. The key is to get your food early, while the zombie infection is still contained. The other commodity I needed was money. The main character usually finds himself in a situation where he needs to bribe some checkpoint guard to get his family or himself across the quarantine zone line. I felt I should be prepared for this eventuality. Apparently half the population had the same idea. Not until I slipped through a fair number of alleys and crossed a few bridges did I find a working ATM. The feel of a full wallet in my coat pocket was comforting. I would soon come to miss that feeling.
My errands complete, I decided to wake my friends and forage for food. Through all the numerous city blocks I explored, I found only one available food source: a small convenience store, apparently one with its own generator. The shop was jam-packed with fellow refugees. I found myself moving shoulder-to-shoulder through scared, confused customers in order to get my food. The cheap sandwiches I made back in my hotel rank among the best I have ever had.
But all was not well (aside from the obvious). As soon as I had finished my sandwiches, my companions and I were evacuated from my hotel (not before giving some photographs to a certain Australian). The hostel next door (thankfully I didn’t stay there) was at serious risk of collapsing, so all nearby buildings were emptied out into the streets. I was homeless. At least my appearance now matched my status. At least the receptionist was kind enough to book my group a reservation at a motel further down the road. We walked down the rubble-strewn roads with bags in tow to our new lodgings. Police officers questioned our story as we crossed through lockdown barriers until finally we found the Avenue Motor Lodge. It was there that I realized with horror that I no longer had my wallet. Throughout the entire ordeal of the earthquake, this was the first time that I panicked. I spent the rest of the night calling every location that I had visited in the past six hours with no success. I’ve never slept so poorly.
I awoke early the next morning to catch a bus out of the city. With a little luck, a lot of pleading, and some of my old acting skill, I managed to convince a travel agent to switch my reservations to the following day. I counted myself as one of the lucky few who managed to get out of Christchurch in a timely manner. I was happy, but the loss of my wallet still weighed heavily upon me. I slept nearly the entire bus ride to Picton and for the entirety of the ferry ride to Wellington. I was too drained to care about the scenery. My fatigue must have shown on my face when I arrived home to my flat, because my flatmates looked as if they had seen a ghost. I mean, I knew I looked like hell, but seriously? I guess I had been through hell, though. As I sat back in my desk chair, I wondered to myself: How was I to write about it? I had felt the full wrath of nature. I had seen a city in full lockdown. For a brief day, I had been a refugee. The problem was where to start. I decided to begin with a question. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Friday, September 10, 2010
The South Island Saga: For Queenstown and Country
“Yeah, he’s a hair-sniffer,” Sarah, one of the Aussie girls, told me casually when I inquired about the eccentricities of my Dutch roommate in Queenstown, Jack.
In addition to being a hair sniffer, Jack was an odd guy (although I believe that hair-sniffing alone would put him in that category). If he wasn’t drunk or hungover, he was sleeping. I had heard that he had been a banker back in the Netherlands (it would certainly explain his extremely nice clothes) but only through hearsay. Within the first ten minutes of moving our bags into our room in Queenstown, he casually informed Eric, the other American male, and me that he was on this trip because his girlfriend had died recently. Whether the trip was out of mourning or celebration for her passing away (I never did learn the circumstances of her demise either), I never did discover, but he enthusiastically showed us pictures regardless. I don’t think he caught on to our discomfort. In fact, he never seemed to catch on to any of my discomfort. I don’t consider myself easily embarrassed or anything like that, but Jack made me call that ability into question. Not once, not twice, but THREE times did I have to stop him from creeping up behind me and stroking my hair. I’m pretty sure he got a good whiff of it as well. Damn my use of fragrant shampoo and conditioner! I believe he tried to make up for his earlier displays of affection toward my hair by offering me a seat on his knee in an otherwise chair-less bar. I politely declined. That’s why the morning after my foray into bungee jumping I tried to leave my room as quietly as possible so as not to wake the crazy Dutch bastard in my living room.
I found myself feeling surprisingly relaxed as the little van rumbled down the road to Shotover Canyon. My new friends from my tour were of a similar state, but due more to being hungover or still drunk than the Zen-like state of mind I was experiencing. The drop from Nevis Jump was 134 meters, and the drop for the canyon swing was only 90 meters. The swinging arc, however, totaled 200 meters and reached speeds of over 150 kilometers per hour. The real difference, to me at least, was in the takeoff. For bungee jumping, I had no choice but to be strapped in by my feet in order to dive off of the platform headfirst. The canyon swing allowed for over ten different release styles. I could sprint off of the edge. I could fall backwards. I could do a handstand walk off of the ledge. I could be strapped to a chair and pushed off. With two turns on the swing, I had to consider carefully. I eventually settled on a release called “Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood” and a backwards tandem jump.
So what is a “Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood”? Other than a great and colorful name for a cocktail, the “Gimp Boy” (as it is known to the employees of the canyon swing) involves the participant being strung up by his feet and hung over the edge looking straight down at the canyon. On the company’s scale of scariness, the style is rated 5/5 pairs of soiled underwear, the most frightening of the frightening. I asked why the reference to a gimp in the title and, ever the wiseass, queried whether the jump involved wearing a gimp mask. The man strapping me into my harness gave me a big smile, thanked me for asking, and pulled a gimp mask over my head. To top off my disturbing appearance, the jumpmasters attached a gimped out teddy bear to my harness. I had so, so many questions, but the last time I asked one I ended up being put into a piece of S&M gear. Besides, the time for asking questions was over. It was time for action.
I stepped to the ledge and had the two jumpmasters string me up over the lip of the canyon. I closed my eyes. There was no way I was going to open them until the release. I heard one of the men tell me to have fun and then heard the soft purr of a sliding rope. My eyes shot open. Imagine looking through the lens of a camera and zooming in on a canyon floor. Now imagine that instead of just looking, you are experiencing the zoom. My eyes watered with the speed of my descent. Then suddenly I was flying like Superman, if Superman were into leather, whips, and chains. I felt like I could break the sound barrier. Just when I was about to reach the other end of the canyon, I started moving back. I moved like a pendulum until I was hauled back up to the platform. Once again, I was grinning like a maniac as I was taken out of my harness.
The grinning stopped when I was strapped in again, this time for my tandem jump. I had jumped less than twenty minutes ago, but I was still nervous. Falling from the edge of a chasm in the earth makes most people nervous. It’s healthy. Plus, this time I wasn’t going to be able to see where I was falling. I waddled to the platform with my Aussie friend Sarah, grateful that she was more nervous than I was. The men at the canyon swing are notorious for toying with their customers and once they saw me come back for round two, they made no exception. They chatted with us amiably about our lives, the weather, and everything in between while we leaned back over the edge suspended by a single rope. Mid-question they dropped us. Bastards. The flying feeling returned. I could get used to this. Alas, my flight stopped all too soon. We were pulled back up to my now sober colleagues, and I braced myself for the biggest jump of my life.
My first thought upon walking to the headquarters of the skydiving company, N-Zone, was that I was hungry. I knew I couldn’t have taken one bite, though. The idea of jumping from a plane tends to kill the appetite. I signed my life away for the umpteenth time as I sat in a waiting room watching an instructional DVD with about twenty other terrified looking individuals. I rode out to the company’s airfield with two of the Irish lasses (and rather comely ones might I add) from my tour group and resolved to be a man and hide any sign of fear or anxiety. When we arrived at the airfield I squinted into the sky and could just barely make out the tiny outline of a plane and an even tinier human. The whole showing no anxiety thing wasn’t going well.
After an eternity of waiting, we were eventually led into the hangar to jumpsuit up. The full regalia made us look like the henchmen of a James Bond villain. For some odd reason, this comforted me. I was then given a brief, but thorough run-through of what to expect in the plane with my tandem master, Marius. Marius was an experienced skydiver with over eight years of experience and at least 5000 jumps under his belt. I was in good hands.
The moment of truth arrived. Our tandem masters grabbed us by the belt (maybe they are afraid we would bolt?) and led us into a plane a little larger than a boiler room. Miraculously, all three customers, the three tandem masters, and three photographers managed to fit. With a labored effort, the plane managed to take off. My anxiousness rose with our elevation. I wanted to jump, but I couldn’t stand thinking about it. Fortunately we had preparations to take my mind off of things. Unfortunately, this involved me sitting involved on Marius lap while he secured our harnesses. The other two gentlemen tandem masters seemed pleased to have two bonny babes on their laps. I felt that I should have apologized to Marius. Something along the lines of, “Sorry for being a dude, bro,” or possibly something more eloquent. Neither of us enjoyed the experience.
Before I could come up with the words, I looked up to the plane’s door and noticed that one of the Irish girls was gone. By the time I registered the fact that she had jumped, the second one was out the door. I was next. I dangled outside the plane, looking at the ground 12,000 feet below as my photographer took a picture from the wing of the plane. “Wow,” I thought, “I’m actually jumping out of a-“
I didn’t have time to complete the thought. A surreal feeling overcame me as I looked back and saw the plane fly on without me. The thought of panicking briefly crossed my mind as my ride flew off without me, but I quickly dismissed it as pointless. I was soaring through the sky like Icarus before his fall. I’m pretty sure I turned red and started sparking because of the speed at which I was descending. Cold air streaked off of me snapping all my senses to attention. After thirty seconds of freefall, the thought finally hit me that I was actually skydiving, that I was rocketing toward the ground crotch-first at over 200 kilometers per hour. The thought made me smile, or it would have had the air blasting against my face not forced it into one expression. And after forty-five seconds, the parachute deployed, and I was upright.
This was my first chance to look at the land below me as the freefall had otherwise occupied my mind with other thoughts. I am going to see if I can get credited for discovering paradise, because that is what I saw. From snow-capped mountains to sparkling rivers and lakes to lush green forests, every treasure of this little planet of ours was spread out beneath me. I was all at once detached from the land and yet never felt closer to it. There was something profoundly Zen-like about the moment. Apart from my harness straps cutting off the blood supply in my thighs and the fact that I was attached to a dude, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed.
Marius and I spiraled lazily toward the ground while he gave me a tour of Queenstown and the South Island from the air. The whole time I wondered if he still felt the thrill of skydiving when he jumped. Was every trip into the sky a thrill or just another day at the office? For his sake, I hope it was the former. I may have started my descent in what would have been the largest recorded pelvic thrust in history, but I ended up landing square on my ass. A few hundred yards from the ground, Marius told me to lift my legs so that he could take the brunt of the impact. There was no way I was going to get a sprained ankle and ruin the rest of my time in this majestic country, so I dutifully obeyed. We slid more than landed onto the soft grass of the airfield, and I somehow ended up sitting cross-legged in front of my smiling cameraman. Even the French judge would have given that landing a 10.
As I was escorted back to the hangar with my two Irish companions, all we could talk about was the jump. I was tempted to go into the reception area and sign up for a second jump. Alas, time and my wallet were against me. The girls and I were only allowed a few minutes to relive our experiences before the company van whisked us back to Queenstown. My adrenaline adventures were over, and I still had all my limbs and vital organs. It was time for a celebration.
I might have been understating what happened that night when I said a celebration was in order. I celebrated. My new friends partied like fucking Caligula. I estimate that about half of our group showed up at the bus wearing sunglasses and the previous night’s clothes. Among other things that happened, my friend Eric kicked down a door (because that’s what America does), one of the Australian girls almost ended up in a fistfight with a man who looked like a Miami Vice extra, and Jack the Dutchman took a “nap” in the local cemetery. I’m positive that Queenstown was glad to see us leave when we did. She certainly did give us a grand farewell. The weather, however, was not so kind.
As we departed the adrenaline capital of the world and made our way toward Mt. Cook, we experienced the first snowfall I have seen in New Zealand. Now I had seen a lot of snow on top of mountains and literally tons of ice (an entire goddamn glacier’s worth), but aside from a few scattered flakes here and there, this was the first flurry. Some of the Australians had never seen snowy weather, and were remarking on its beauty. Meanwhile, I was marveling at the fact that I was experiencing snow in September. Normally I would associate Labor Day weekend with BBQs and such, but there I was standing in the middle of a September snowfall. Before I had time to further ruminate on my situation, I was whisked away to the bus.
The last stop of tour was a little place out in the country called Morelea Farm. Apparently no tour of New Zealand is complete without a trip to a family owned sheep farm. The owner of the farmer, a man named Stan, met us outside of the barn. The man looked an awful lot like what one would expect a sheep farmer to look like: gray hair, sheep dog following him, a hybrid cowboy/farmer’s hat, a way of moving that was more moseying than walking. He was even wearing a wool sweater from the wool of his sheep. He guided us into the barn and explained his family’s history in the sheep farming business, and how the industry has changed. As a result of Stan's conferred wisdom, I no longer wanted to be a sheep farmer (not that I actually ever had the desire to be in the first place). He did, however, enthusiastically show us one of the newborn lambs and let us pass him around the group. I am willing to sacrifice some man-points to admit that it was adorable. After everyone had their turn cooing, Stan brought out one of the adult sheep for a shearing demonstration. That part was graphic. I think Guantanamo Bay interrogators are gentler than Stan was. Then again, the sheep didn’t seem to care about the manhandling. Less than half a minute later, the sheep was shivering and Stan was grinning over a big pile of wool. We concluded our tour of the farm with scones (pronounced like the “sc” in scald and “awns” in dawns) and jam with Stan’s wife Angela in their farmhouse. So with full stomachs and the resolve to not eat lamb again (at least for a while) after holding a baby lamb, we departed for Christchurch.
My holiday had been a pleasant one, a marked success in my book. No lost luggage, no hospitalizing injuries, a trip free of major disasters. I was so pleased with my vacation that I decided to order a steak for dinner that night to celebrate my good fortune and the end to my adventures in the South Island. It would take me another day to learn a valuable lesson: don’t celebrate until you’re out of the woods. I can really be a fucking idiot sometimes.
In addition to being a hair sniffer, Jack was an odd guy (although I believe that hair-sniffing alone would put him in that category). If he wasn’t drunk or hungover, he was sleeping. I had heard that he had been a banker back in the Netherlands (it would certainly explain his extremely nice clothes) but only through hearsay. Within the first ten minutes of moving our bags into our room in Queenstown, he casually informed Eric, the other American male, and me that he was on this trip because his girlfriend had died recently. Whether the trip was out of mourning or celebration for her passing away (I never did learn the circumstances of her demise either), I never did discover, but he enthusiastically showed us pictures regardless. I don’t think he caught on to our discomfort. In fact, he never seemed to catch on to any of my discomfort. I don’t consider myself easily embarrassed or anything like that, but Jack made me call that ability into question. Not once, not twice, but THREE times did I have to stop him from creeping up behind me and stroking my hair. I’m pretty sure he got a good whiff of it as well. Damn my use of fragrant shampoo and conditioner! I believe he tried to make up for his earlier displays of affection toward my hair by offering me a seat on his knee in an otherwise chair-less bar. I politely declined. That’s why the morning after my foray into bungee jumping I tried to leave my room as quietly as possible so as not to wake the crazy Dutch bastard in my living room.
I found myself feeling surprisingly relaxed as the little van rumbled down the road to Shotover Canyon. My new friends from my tour were of a similar state, but due more to being hungover or still drunk than the Zen-like state of mind I was experiencing. The drop from Nevis Jump was 134 meters, and the drop for the canyon swing was only 90 meters. The swinging arc, however, totaled 200 meters and reached speeds of over 150 kilometers per hour. The real difference, to me at least, was in the takeoff. For bungee jumping, I had no choice but to be strapped in by my feet in order to dive off of the platform headfirst. The canyon swing allowed for over ten different release styles. I could sprint off of the edge. I could fall backwards. I could do a handstand walk off of the ledge. I could be strapped to a chair and pushed off. With two turns on the swing, I had to consider carefully. I eventually settled on a release called “Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood” and a backwards tandem jump.
So what is a “Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood”? Other than a great and colorful name for a cocktail, the “Gimp Boy” (as it is known to the employees of the canyon swing) involves the participant being strung up by his feet and hung over the edge looking straight down at the canyon. On the company’s scale of scariness, the style is rated 5/5 pairs of soiled underwear, the most frightening of the frightening. I asked why the reference to a gimp in the title and, ever the wiseass, queried whether the jump involved wearing a gimp mask. The man strapping me into my harness gave me a big smile, thanked me for asking, and pulled a gimp mask over my head. To top off my disturbing appearance, the jumpmasters attached a gimped out teddy bear to my harness. I had so, so many questions, but the last time I asked one I ended up being put into a piece of S&M gear. Besides, the time for asking questions was over. It was time for action.
I stepped to the ledge and had the two jumpmasters string me up over the lip of the canyon. I closed my eyes. There was no way I was going to open them until the release. I heard one of the men tell me to have fun and then heard the soft purr of a sliding rope. My eyes shot open. Imagine looking through the lens of a camera and zooming in on a canyon floor. Now imagine that instead of just looking, you are experiencing the zoom. My eyes watered with the speed of my descent. Then suddenly I was flying like Superman, if Superman were into leather, whips, and chains. I felt like I could break the sound barrier. Just when I was about to reach the other end of the canyon, I started moving back. I moved like a pendulum until I was hauled back up to the platform. Once again, I was grinning like a maniac as I was taken out of my harness.
The grinning stopped when I was strapped in again, this time for my tandem jump. I had jumped less than twenty minutes ago, but I was still nervous. Falling from the edge of a chasm in the earth makes most people nervous. It’s healthy. Plus, this time I wasn’t going to be able to see where I was falling. I waddled to the platform with my Aussie friend Sarah, grateful that she was more nervous than I was. The men at the canyon swing are notorious for toying with their customers and once they saw me come back for round two, they made no exception. They chatted with us amiably about our lives, the weather, and everything in between while we leaned back over the edge suspended by a single rope. Mid-question they dropped us. Bastards. The flying feeling returned. I could get used to this. Alas, my flight stopped all too soon. We were pulled back up to my now sober colleagues, and I braced myself for the biggest jump of my life.
My first thought upon walking to the headquarters of the skydiving company, N-Zone, was that I was hungry. I knew I couldn’t have taken one bite, though. The idea of jumping from a plane tends to kill the appetite. I signed my life away for the umpteenth time as I sat in a waiting room watching an instructional DVD with about twenty other terrified looking individuals. I rode out to the company’s airfield with two of the Irish lasses (and rather comely ones might I add) from my tour group and resolved to be a man and hide any sign of fear or anxiety. When we arrived at the airfield I squinted into the sky and could just barely make out the tiny outline of a plane and an even tinier human. The whole showing no anxiety thing wasn’t going well.
After an eternity of waiting, we were eventually led into the hangar to jumpsuit up. The full regalia made us look like the henchmen of a James Bond villain. For some odd reason, this comforted me. I was then given a brief, but thorough run-through of what to expect in the plane with my tandem master, Marius. Marius was an experienced skydiver with over eight years of experience and at least 5000 jumps under his belt. I was in good hands.
The moment of truth arrived. Our tandem masters grabbed us by the belt (maybe they are afraid we would bolt?) and led us into a plane a little larger than a boiler room. Miraculously, all three customers, the three tandem masters, and three photographers managed to fit. With a labored effort, the plane managed to take off. My anxiousness rose with our elevation. I wanted to jump, but I couldn’t stand thinking about it. Fortunately we had preparations to take my mind off of things. Unfortunately, this involved me sitting involved on Marius lap while he secured our harnesses. The other two gentlemen tandem masters seemed pleased to have two bonny babes on their laps. I felt that I should have apologized to Marius. Something along the lines of, “Sorry for being a dude, bro,” or possibly something more eloquent. Neither of us enjoyed the experience.
Before I could come up with the words, I looked up to the plane’s door and noticed that one of the Irish girls was gone. By the time I registered the fact that she had jumped, the second one was out the door. I was next. I dangled outside the plane, looking at the ground 12,000 feet below as my photographer took a picture from the wing of the plane. “Wow,” I thought, “I’m actually jumping out of a-“
I didn’t have time to complete the thought. A surreal feeling overcame me as I looked back and saw the plane fly on without me. The thought of panicking briefly crossed my mind as my ride flew off without me, but I quickly dismissed it as pointless. I was soaring through the sky like Icarus before his fall. I’m pretty sure I turned red and started sparking because of the speed at which I was descending. Cold air streaked off of me snapping all my senses to attention. After thirty seconds of freefall, the thought finally hit me that I was actually skydiving, that I was rocketing toward the ground crotch-first at over 200 kilometers per hour. The thought made me smile, or it would have had the air blasting against my face not forced it into one expression. And after forty-five seconds, the parachute deployed, and I was upright.
This was my first chance to look at the land below me as the freefall had otherwise occupied my mind with other thoughts. I am going to see if I can get credited for discovering paradise, because that is what I saw. From snow-capped mountains to sparkling rivers and lakes to lush green forests, every treasure of this little planet of ours was spread out beneath me. I was all at once detached from the land and yet never felt closer to it. There was something profoundly Zen-like about the moment. Apart from my harness straps cutting off the blood supply in my thighs and the fact that I was attached to a dude, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed.
Marius and I spiraled lazily toward the ground while he gave me a tour of Queenstown and the South Island from the air. The whole time I wondered if he still felt the thrill of skydiving when he jumped. Was every trip into the sky a thrill or just another day at the office? For his sake, I hope it was the former. I may have started my descent in what would have been the largest recorded pelvic thrust in history, but I ended up landing square on my ass. A few hundred yards from the ground, Marius told me to lift my legs so that he could take the brunt of the impact. There was no way I was going to get a sprained ankle and ruin the rest of my time in this majestic country, so I dutifully obeyed. We slid more than landed onto the soft grass of the airfield, and I somehow ended up sitting cross-legged in front of my smiling cameraman. Even the French judge would have given that landing a 10.
As I was escorted back to the hangar with my two Irish companions, all we could talk about was the jump. I was tempted to go into the reception area and sign up for a second jump. Alas, time and my wallet were against me. The girls and I were only allowed a few minutes to relive our experiences before the company van whisked us back to Queenstown. My adrenaline adventures were over, and I still had all my limbs and vital organs. It was time for a celebration.
I might have been understating what happened that night when I said a celebration was in order. I celebrated. My new friends partied like fucking Caligula. I estimate that about half of our group showed up at the bus wearing sunglasses and the previous night’s clothes. Among other things that happened, my friend Eric kicked down a door (because that’s what America does), one of the Australian girls almost ended up in a fistfight with a man who looked like a Miami Vice extra, and Jack the Dutchman took a “nap” in the local cemetery. I’m positive that Queenstown was glad to see us leave when we did. She certainly did give us a grand farewell. The weather, however, was not so kind.
As we departed the adrenaline capital of the world and made our way toward Mt. Cook, we experienced the first snowfall I have seen in New Zealand. Now I had seen a lot of snow on top of mountains and literally tons of ice (an entire goddamn glacier’s worth), but aside from a few scattered flakes here and there, this was the first flurry. Some of the Australians had never seen snowy weather, and were remarking on its beauty. Meanwhile, I was marveling at the fact that I was experiencing snow in September. Normally I would associate Labor Day weekend with BBQs and such, but there I was standing in the middle of a September snowfall. Before I had time to further ruminate on my situation, I was whisked away to the bus.
The last stop of tour was a little place out in the country called Morelea Farm. Apparently no tour of New Zealand is complete without a trip to a family owned sheep farm. The owner of the farmer, a man named Stan, met us outside of the barn. The man looked an awful lot like what one would expect a sheep farmer to look like: gray hair, sheep dog following him, a hybrid cowboy/farmer’s hat, a way of moving that was more moseying than walking. He was even wearing a wool sweater from the wool of his sheep. He guided us into the barn and explained his family’s history in the sheep farming business, and how the industry has changed. As a result of Stan's conferred wisdom, I no longer wanted to be a sheep farmer (not that I actually ever had the desire to be in the first place). He did, however, enthusiastically show us one of the newborn lambs and let us pass him around the group. I am willing to sacrifice some man-points to admit that it was adorable. After everyone had their turn cooing, Stan brought out one of the adult sheep for a shearing demonstration. That part was graphic. I think Guantanamo Bay interrogators are gentler than Stan was. Then again, the sheep didn’t seem to care about the manhandling. Less than half a minute later, the sheep was shivering and Stan was grinning over a big pile of wool. We concluded our tour of the farm with scones (pronounced like the “sc” in scald and “awns” in dawns) and jam with Stan’s wife Angela in their farmhouse. So with full stomachs and the resolve to not eat lamb again (at least for a while) after holding a baby lamb, we departed for Christchurch.
My holiday had been a pleasant one, a marked success in my book. No lost luggage, no hospitalizing injuries, a trip free of major disasters. I was so pleased with my vacation that I decided to order a steak for dinner that night to celebrate my good fortune and the end to my adventures in the South Island. It would take me another day to learn a valuable lesson: don’t celebrate until you’re out of the woods. I can really be a fucking idiot sometimes.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The South Island Saga: The Iceman Cometh and The Fall from Grace
The morning was cold and bitter when the Topdeck tour bus departed from Cathedral Square of Christchurch. Spirits were high, however, among the 22 souls embarking on the South Island trek. A good half of the group had already been on the tour for the past seven days, and had already started bonding. Meanwhile, us newbies shuffled awkwardly into empty aisles on the bus and nervously avoided eye contact. Thankfully, we went through the familiar song and dance of name introductions, countries of origins, and such. Out of the entire group, we had about ten Aussies, five Irish lasses, three Americans (including yours truly), one Polish girl, a Brit, and one crazyass Dutchman (more on that later). With pleasantries exchanged, we made our way to the pounamu capital of New Zealand.
Pounamu, called greenstone by the first European explorers to reach New Zealand, is known more commonly as jade. The Maori people valued pounamu more than gold, thus it became the lifeblood of the Maori economy. Apart from its beautiful green coloring, jade is a hard substance that can hold a razor sharp edge. It was used in everything from basic tools to tribal weapons. Pounamu artifacts are passed down among Maori families growing in value with every generation. The Maori people believe that the soul of the previous owner of a piece of jade inhabits the piece when the owner passes away. Even if the owner isn’t dead, a piece of the owner’s soul still inhabits the piece. A gift of pounamu is therefore considered semi-sacred because the giver entrusts the receiver of the pounamu with a piece of his or her soul. It’s a lot like a non-evil version of a horcrux.
The little town we visited seemed composed almost entirely out of jade shops. If a building wasn’t an actual jade vendor, then it had some reference to jade in its name. I puttered pointlessly or ambled aimlessly, I forget which, around town and ran into some friends from Wellington roadtripping around the South Island. This would soon become a common occurrence on my tour, but the first time was nonetheless jolting. Out of an entire island and about twenty Australearn people, and I manage to run into two of them within the first four hours of my tour. New Zealand should be a key feature of the Small World ride.
With basking in the glorious green glow of jade out of the way, our ragtag team of travelers departed for the base of Fox Glacier. New Zealand is home to over 3,000 glaciers with Tasmin Glacier (named after Abel Tasmin, the Dutch dude who “discovered” New Zealand) being the largest. Fox Glacier, our destination, is New Zealand’s third largest. The ice would have to wait until tomorrow, however, because the sun began to set as our bus rolled into the inn at Fox Glacier’s base.
Our first priority was scoping out the local bar and enjoying a pint and each other’s company. Life doesn’t get much better than enjoying an ice-cold glass of Tui’s and discussing the various cultures of this great world. I found it slightly comforting to know that bro culture is not exclusively American, but found in pretty much every English speaking country out there, albeit under different names (in Australia they are called lads, and referred to as chavs in Ireland and Britain). Guidos, unfortunately, are solely an American phenomenon. Explaining Snooki to our English-speaking cousins was no easy task. Thanks a lot, Jersey Shore.
We continued bonding when night fell upon the land, and we embarked on a glowworm tour through a nearby forest. Other than the soft bluish-green glow of the glowworms, we were in total darkness. We walked single file through the forest, hands grasping the coat of the person in front of us and shuffling through the dirt. Nervous whispers flew through the night air with each breaking twig as our little group blindly marched on through the night. Most people found the experience of walking through a pitch-black forest unnerving, but my only thought was the possibility of me breaking off from the group to empty out the beer in my bladder. I had seen enough glow worm clusters (they look like hotel bed sheets under a black light) to last a lifetime by the time we emerged from the woods, so without hesitation I found a nearby woody copse to relieve myself. I practically skipped back to the hotel out of relief.
Our lodgings didn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’ve stayed in worse, but not by much. Two beds and bunk beds were the sole furnishings of the room. I placed my bags on the bottom bunk and tested the mattress. Not half bad. Eric, one of the other Americans, climbed up to the top bunk. The beds gave a deafening groan. Very bad. Fortunately, our resident Dutchman, Jack, decided that he would pay for his own room rather than stay in the little boiler room. I wasn’t going to have to lay awake in my bed waiting to be crushed like a bug. Hooray.
When morning descended upon Fox Glacier, 22 intrepid travelers followed it. The glacier in morning light was nothing short of remarkable. Imagine an entire valley almost filled to the brim with ice as if a flood had stopped halfway through its course.. Shades of gray, white, and blue sparkled in the sunlight, inviting us to explore its craggy terrain. We started our hike at the base of glacier’s ice where it trickled out into a freezing stream. In a single file line we walked up the valley’s sides until we reached an accessible edge of the ice. Our guide distributed crampons (a delightful word, in my opinion) for the coming portion of our journey. Crampons are essentially steel spikes attached to the insteps of a pair of hiking boots. Not only do they help the wearer retain firm footing on slick, icy surfaces, but they have the amusing side effect of forcing them to waddle bow-legged as well. And in that fashion our party began to make its way up the glacier. Our guide led the way, stopping intermittently to hack out a more stable step with her comically large pickaxe. After one hour of hiking, we had barely made a dent in the path to the top. We had never planned on it. Fox Glacier is several kilometers long, so it was out of the question. We did hike high enough, however, to take some nice photographs on the ice, the mountains, our crampons, and anything else we lighted upon. I felt like an astronaut on a different world atop the glacier. Surely, this was not Earth. Or at least not the Earth that we know. I may as well have been standing on Pluto. But when touchdown brought me round again, I was assured that I was still on my home planet by the familiar feel of a café and a chicken sandwich. I had barely put down my napkin (called serviettes here) when we were hustled back on to our bus to depart for Queenstown.
Queenstown, New Zealand is widely regarded as the adventure capital of the South Island, New Zealand, and in some circles, the entire world. Would you care to throw yourself out of a perfectly good plane? You can do it in Queenstown. Perhaps I could entice you to leap out of a metal pod above a canyon and plummet 134 meters while attached only to a rope? Queenstown specializes in that. How about hang gliding? Parasailing? Canyon swinging? All of the above? Queenstown has it all. If you like jumping off of really high shit or just enjoy the thrill of hot, nasty badass speed, then Queenstown is the place for you. And for the next few days, it would be all mine.
My first priority was bungee jumping. When you go to New Zealand, you bungee jump. If you didn’t, it would be like going to China and not going to the Great Wall. It is just something you do.
I figured that if I were to throw myself off a ledge headfirst, I would jump off of the highest ledge available. The Nevis Jump, measuring an impressive 134 meters, is the highest bungee jump in New Zealand and one of the highest in the world. Compared to the original site of bungee jumping, AJ Hackett Bridge (named after the undoubtedly suicidal inventor of bungee jumping), a meager 47 meters, Nevis is a monster.
I arrived at The Station, the headquarters of AJ Hackett Bungy (the world’s oldest and most respected bungee jumping company in the world), early on the first morning of my stay in Queenstown. I had been plagued by dreams of falling and hadn’t been able to stomach breakfast, so I am positive that I looked like hell when I reached the counter.
“I’d like to do the Nevis Jump,” I said to the man behind the counter. He barked out a quick laugh and gave me a wry grin.
“Do ya’ now?” he asked, “Good for you.”
After ensuring the man of my slightly wavering resolve, he presented me with multiple forms asking for my height, weight, next of kin, promise not to take legal action in the event of tragedy, etc. This would be the first of many times that I would sign my life away. He peered over my signature and gave a nod of approval before handing me my ticket. On top of the ticket, in large bold letters read the words “TOE TAG”. Comforting.
I tried to keep my eyes glued to the horizon and sky as the company van took us up a winding gravel road to the bungee site. I didn’t want to know how high we had gone. The van eventually pulled up in front of a clean, sleek metal building where we were outfitted with harnesses and given one last chance to use the bathroom. They had obviously foreseen the very real possibility that I might soil myself.
The Nevis Jump is situated in the center of a large canyon. The jump station is suspended in the center of the canyon by several steel cords, giving it a levitating appearance. We jumpers were ferried into a gondola and sent along one of these steel cords to the little hanging pod in the sky. I could feel the wires sag under our combined weight as we made our way across. I’m pretty sure I have a few white hairs because of it. The jump station itself was thankfully more stable. The stability came with a catch, though. I could see every jumper. There was essentially no partition to block the view of those waiting to jump and the current jumper. I did my best to steel my nerves, but found it exceedingly difficult when I could plainly see the nice Australian man I talked to a couple of minutes ago vanish with a scream from the platform.
“Maxwell?” a voice asked.
I jerked my head up. I meant to say something along the lines of, “Yes, that’s me. I take it that it is my turn to participate in this activity?” Instead, a barely audible squeak sufficed. The jump master led me to a dentist chair (they really do their best to inspire all kinds of fear, don’t they?) and instructed me to sit while he attached my bungee cord and explained when to pull the ripcord that would pull me upright when I was ready to be hauled back up after the jump. I’ve never listened to instructions so intently in my life. With a few testing pulls on my harness and cords, he deemed I was ready to jump.
I swung my feet and literally inched (my feet were bound) to the edge of the platform, my eyes fixed on the mountains in front of me. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Repeat. I smiled nervously in the general direction of flashing cameras, but nothing in the outside world was registering in my head. The countdown started.
Three.
My heart is hammering.
Two.
I’ve started questioning my sanity. Why the fuck did I want to do this in the first place?
One.
I’m going to kick myself for the rest of my life if I don’t. Need to stop thinking! I just need to bend my legs and jump when he says…
BIG DIVE, MAX!
I launched into the air, my muscles taking control over my body. “EEEEAAAGGGLLLEEE!” I roar as I reached the top of my dive with my arms outstretched like wings. The nervousness, the anxiety, the fear, they all left me as soon as my feet left the platform. Then I plummeted. I plummeted for 8.5 seconds. That’s a long time. Count it out to yourself. Now imagine your stomach being left about a football field and a half above you as you hurtle towards the ground. Then I stopped. I felt myself being hauled back up, like someone had hit the reverse button on my life’s remote control. I bounced a couple more times before giving the cord on my ankle a mighty pull and flipped myself upright. Small bits of snow floated past me as I took in the serene canyon around me. Wow.
After what seemed like an eternity, I was hauled back up to the jump platform. I was cold. I was hungry. I needed a beer. I needed a tequila shot. I needed ten tequila shots. I needed to piss, shit, whoop for joy, laugh like a madman, call my parents and tell them I love them. I settled for a contented sigh and my first genuine smile of the day.
I forgot much of the drive back to Queenstown. I was lost in my own little world, reliving the jump over and over again in my head. Bungee jumping is not something I would try again soon, but one day, one day far, far away, I might take up the harness again. I celebrated my achievement that night at Queenstown’s Minus 5 bar, an ice bar that is constantly kept at -5° C. My mother would have hated it. The hostess gave us big, warm parkas and gloves and escorted us into what was essentially a giant freezer. There were ice sculptures everywhere. Horses. Penguins. Kiwis. A delightfully inappropriate statue of a man with a strategically placed ice chute in place of his manhood. With the exception of the floor, almost everything in the room was made of ice. Our drinks were served to us in cups of solid ice, chilling every drink perfectly. We were allowed thirty minutes to cavort around in our winter wonderland before we were forced to move on to another bar.
As we sat around the fire (a welcome respite from the ice bar) at the next bar, I couldn’t stop smiling. I had just checked off bungee jumping off of my bucket list. And the next day, I would add two more: canyon swinging and skydiving. My Queenstown saga was only just beginning.
Pounamu, called greenstone by the first European explorers to reach New Zealand, is known more commonly as jade. The Maori people valued pounamu more than gold, thus it became the lifeblood of the Maori economy. Apart from its beautiful green coloring, jade is a hard substance that can hold a razor sharp edge. It was used in everything from basic tools to tribal weapons. Pounamu artifacts are passed down among Maori families growing in value with every generation. The Maori people believe that the soul of the previous owner of a piece of jade inhabits the piece when the owner passes away. Even if the owner isn’t dead, a piece of the owner’s soul still inhabits the piece. A gift of pounamu is therefore considered semi-sacred because the giver entrusts the receiver of the pounamu with a piece of his or her soul. It’s a lot like a non-evil version of a horcrux.
The little town we visited seemed composed almost entirely out of jade shops. If a building wasn’t an actual jade vendor, then it had some reference to jade in its name. I puttered pointlessly or ambled aimlessly, I forget which, around town and ran into some friends from Wellington roadtripping around the South Island. This would soon become a common occurrence on my tour, but the first time was nonetheless jolting. Out of an entire island and about twenty Australearn people, and I manage to run into two of them within the first four hours of my tour. New Zealand should be a key feature of the Small World ride.
With basking in the glorious green glow of jade out of the way, our ragtag team of travelers departed for the base of Fox Glacier. New Zealand is home to over 3,000 glaciers with Tasmin Glacier (named after Abel Tasmin, the Dutch dude who “discovered” New Zealand) being the largest. Fox Glacier, our destination, is New Zealand’s third largest. The ice would have to wait until tomorrow, however, because the sun began to set as our bus rolled into the inn at Fox Glacier’s base.
Our first priority was scoping out the local bar and enjoying a pint and each other’s company. Life doesn’t get much better than enjoying an ice-cold glass of Tui’s and discussing the various cultures of this great world. I found it slightly comforting to know that bro culture is not exclusively American, but found in pretty much every English speaking country out there, albeit under different names (in Australia they are called lads, and referred to as chavs in Ireland and Britain). Guidos, unfortunately, are solely an American phenomenon. Explaining Snooki to our English-speaking cousins was no easy task. Thanks a lot, Jersey Shore.
We continued bonding when night fell upon the land, and we embarked on a glowworm tour through a nearby forest. Other than the soft bluish-green glow of the glowworms, we were in total darkness. We walked single file through the forest, hands grasping the coat of the person in front of us and shuffling through the dirt. Nervous whispers flew through the night air with each breaking twig as our little group blindly marched on through the night. Most people found the experience of walking through a pitch-black forest unnerving, but my only thought was the possibility of me breaking off from the group to empty out the beer in my bladder. I had seen enough glow worm clusters (they look like hotel bed sheets under a black light) to last a lifetime by the time we emerged from the woods, so without hesitation I found a nearby woody copse to relieve myself. I practically skipped back to the hotel out of relief.
Our lodgings didn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’ve stayed in worse, but not by much. Two beds and bunk beds were the sole furnishings of the room. I placed my bags on the bottom bunk and tested the mattress. Not half bad. Eric, one of the other Americans, climbed up to the top bunk. The beds gave a deafening groan. Very bad. Fortunately, our resident Dutchman, Jack, decided that he would pay for his own room rather than stay in the little boiler room. I wasn’t going to have to lay awake in my bed waiting to be crushed like a bug. Hooray.
When morning descended upon Fox Glacier, 22 intrepid travelers followed it. The glacier in morning light was nothing short of remarkable. Imagine an entire valley almost filled to the brim with ice as if a flood had stopped halfway through its course.. Shades of gray, white, and blue sparkled in the sunlight, inviting us to explore its craggy terrain. We started our hike at the base of glacier’s ice where it trickled out into a freezing stream. In a single file line we walked up the valley’s sides until we reached an accessible edge of the ice. Our guide distributed crampons (a delightful word, in my opinion) for the coming portion of our journey. Crampons are essentially steel spikes attached to the insteps of a pair of hiking boots. Not only do they help the wearer retain firm footing on slick, icy surfaces, but they have the amusing side effect of forcing them to waddle bow-legged as well. And in that fashion our party began to make its way up the glacier. Our guide led the way, stopping intermittently to hack out a more stable step with her comically large pickaxe. After one hour of hiking, we had barely made a dent in the path to the top. We had never planned on it. Fox Glacier is several kilometers long, so it was out of the question. We did hike high enough, however, to take some nice photographs on the ice, the mountains, our crampons, and anything else we lighted upon. I felt like an astronaut on a different world atop the glacier. Surely, this was not Earth. Or at least not the Earth that we know. I may as well have been standing on Pluto. But when touchdown brought me round again, I was assured that I was still on my home planet by the familiar feel of a café and a chicken sandwich. I had barely put down my napkin (called serviettes here) when we were hustled back on to our bus to depart for Queenstown.
Queenstown, New Zealand is widely regarded as the adventure capital of the South Island, New Zealand, and in some circles, the entire world. Would you care to throw yourself out of a perfectly good plane? You can do it in Queenstown. Perhaps I could entice you to leap out of a metal pod above a canyon and plummet 134 meters while attached only to a rope? Queenstown specializes in that. How about hang gliding? Parasailing? Canyon swinging? All of the above? Queenstown has it all. If you like jumping off of really high shit or just enjoy the thrill of hot, nasty badass speed, then Queenstown is the place for you. And for the next few days, it would be all mine.
My first priority was bungee jumping. When you go to New Zealand, you bungee jump. If you didn’t, it would be like going to China and not going to the Great Wall. It is just something you do.
I figured that if I were to throw myself off a ledge headfirst, I would jump off of the highest ledge available. The Nevis Jump, measuring an impressive 134 meters, is the highest bungee jump in New Zealand and one of the highest in the world. Compared to the original site of bungee jumping, AJ Hackett Bridge (named after the undoubtedly suicidal inventor of bungee jumping), a meager 47 meters, Nevis is a monster.
I arrived at The Station, the headquarters of AJ Hackett Bungy (the world’s oldest and most respected bungee jumping company in the world), early on the first morning of my stay in Queenstown. I had been plagued by dreams of falling and hadn’t been able to stomach breakfast, so I am positive that I looked like hell when I reached the counter.
“I’d like to do the Nevis Jump,” I said to the man behind the counter. He barked out a quick laugh and gave me a wry grin.
“Do ya’ now?” he asked, “Good for you.”
After ensuring the man of my slightly wavering resolve, he presented me with multiple forms asking for my height, weight, next of kin, promise not to take legal action in the event of tragedy, etc. This would be the first of many times that I would sign my life away. He peered over my signature and gave a nod of approval before handing me my ticket. On top of the ticket, in large bold letters read the words “TOE TAG”. Comforting.
I tried to keep my eyes glued to the horizon and sky as the company van took us up a winding gravel road to the bungee site. I didn’t want to know how high we had gone. The van eventually pulled up in front of a clean, sleek metal building where we were outfitted with harnesses and given one last chance to use the bathroom. They had obviously foreseen the very real possibility that I might soil myself.
The Nevis Jump is situated in the center of a large canyon. The jump station is suspended in the center of the canyon by several steel cords, giving it a levitating appearance. We jumpers were ferried into a gondola and sent along one of these steel cords to the little hanging pod in the sky. I could feel the wires sag under our combined weight as we made our way across. I’m pretty sure I have a few white hairs because of it. The jump station itself was thankfully more stable. The stability came with a catch, though. I could see every jumper. There was essentially no partition to block the view of those waiting to jump and the current jumper. I did my best to steel my nerves, but found it exceedingly difficult when I could plainly see the nice Australian man I talked to a couple of minutes ago vanish with a scream from the platform.
“Maxwell?” a voice asked.
I jerked my head up. I meant to say something along the lines of, “Yes, that’s me. I take it that it is my turn to participate in this activity?” Instead, a barely audible squeak sufficed. The jump master led me to a dentist chair (they really do their best to inspire all kinds of fear, don’t they?) and instructed me to sit while he attached my bungee cord and explained when to pull the ripcord that would pull me upright when I was ready to be hauled back up after the jump. I’ve never listened to instructions so intently in my life. With a few testing pulls on my harness and cords, he deemed I was ready to jump.
I swung my feet and literally inched (my feet were bound) to the edge of the platform, my eyes fixed on the mountains in front of me. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Repeat. I smiled nervously in the general direction of flashing cameras, but nothing in the outside world was registering in my head. The countdown started.
Three.
My heart is hammering.
Two.
I’ve started questioning my sanity. Why the fuck did I want to do this in the first place?
One.
I’m going to kick myself for the rest of my life if I don’t. Need to stop thinking! I just need to bend my legs and jump when he says…
BIG DIVE, MAX!
I launched into the air, my muscles taking control over my body. “EEEEAAAGGGLLLEEE!” I roar as I reached the top of my dive with my arms outstretched like wings. The nervousness, the anxiety, the fear, they all left me as soon as my feet left the platform. Then I plummeted. I plummeted for 8.5 seconds. That’s a long time. Count it out to yourself. Now imagine your stomach being left about a football field and a half above you as you hurtle towards the ground. Then I stopped. I felt myself being hauled back up, like someone had hit the reverse button on my life’s remote control. I bounced a couple more times before giving the cord on my ankle a mighty pull and flipped myself upright. Small bits of snow floated past me as I took in the serene canyon around me. Wow.
After what seemed like an eternity, I was hauled back up to the jump platform. I was cold. I was hungry. I needed a beer. I needed a tequila shot. I needed ten tequila shots. I needed to piss, shit, whoop for joy, laugh like a madman, call my parents and tell them I love them. I settled for a contented sigh and my first genuine smile of the day.
I forgot much of the drive back to Queenstown. I was lost in my own little world, reliving the jump over and over again in my head. Bungee jumping is not something I would try again soon, but one day, one day far, far away, I might take up the harness again. I celebrated my achievement that night at Queenstown’s Minus 5 bar, an ice bar that is constantly kept at -5° C. My mother would have hated it. The hostess gave us big, warm parkas and gloves and escorted us into what was essentially a giant freezer. There were ice sculptures everywhere. Horses. Penguins. Kiwis. A delightfully inappropriate statue of a man with a strategically placed ice chute in place of his manhood. With the exception of the floor, almost everything in the room was made of ice. Our drinks were served to us in cups of solid ice, chilling every drink perfectly. We were allowed thirty minutes to cavort around in our winter wonderland before we were forced to move on to another bar.
As we sat around the fire (a welcome respite from the ice bar) at the next bar, I couldn’t stop smiling. I had just checked off bungee jumping off of my bucket list. And the next day, I would add two more: canyon swinging and skydiving. My Queenstown saga was only just beginning.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The South Island Saga: By Land and By Sea
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have divided my chronicles of my trip to the South Island into multiple posts in chronological order. I know that many of you are eager to hear about my experience in the Canterbury Quake (that is what the news called the earthquake that hit Christchurch while I was staying there), but for the sake of my memory, that particular incident will have to wait. I have a number of posts saved up that I will post throughout this week, and hopefully by the end of the week I should have the events of the great earthquake immortalized in print. I also recognize the irony present in the ending of this particular post (I wrote this particular one a week before the earthquake).
Christchurch is the largest city of New Zealand’s South Island. I currently have a perfect view from my lodgings of the huge cathedral in the city’s center. I don’t know if it is the eponymous church of the city, but it is still impressive. When I woke up this morning, my mind was flooded with thousands of possibilities of how my trip here could go wrong. I could have lost my passport (possible), my baggage could have been lost (more likely), I could have been robbed by gypsies (less likely), or the train could have been rigged to explode had it decelerated below 55 mph (since I am, thankfully, not Keanu Reeves, well outside the realm of possibility). None of these things happened. But here’s what did.
The morning started out cold and brisk in Wellington with an ATM run and a quick nutritional investment (a Cadbury chocolate bar tucked into my inside coat pocket for later) before my cab showed up at good ol' 11 Landcross Street. I pressed my forehead against the window as we approached the docks in the hopes of seeing my ship, Arahua. The Arahua is one of two ferry boats that takes passengers between the straits of the North and South Islands and to Picton in about 3 hours. What a ship she was. Among the many facilities included on the ferry were a bar, a cafeteria, a movie theater, a salon, and an anti-gravity chamber if I recall correctly. But out of all the places in the ship a young man could choose to spend his time (not the bar mainly because morning drinking didn’t seem especially appealing… and their selection was pitiful), I found the observation deck to be the most entertaining. The wind in my hair and the smell of the ocean, it was all terribly exciting. I felt like I imagined my ancestors did crossing the Atlantic, headed for the New World with packs on their backs and a pocket full of dreams. Then, unlike my ancestors, I was smacked in the face the by a wind-blown pink hat belonging to a nice lady from Pennsylvania. She took my picture for me as an apology.
Three hours, several hundred pages of a Bill Bryson book, and one fish and chips later, the Arahua greeted the shores of Picton. My fellow passengers wordlessly formed a mindless herd and milled towards a stairwell. Out of lack of any sense of direction, I followed them. The cattle drive eventually brought me to a lower deck that I imagine would have made a pleasant home for Plague-carrying rats. I gingerly stepped over pulleys as large as infants and great rotting wooden beams littering the floor, instantly regretting my decision to follow the horde. This was probably how my ancestors actually felt.
Unlike my ancestors, I managed to get off the boat and enter the new land without having to change my last name or anything like that. In fact, as soon as I got off the gangway, I was pretty much forgotten about. I stared helplessly up at the numerous signs indicating all manner of services, railway station not included. I swallowed my manly pride (I would have preferred a beer) and asked for directions. Apparently the railway station was literally next door to the ferry dock. Way to go, Max. So three minutes later, I was tucked away in car U of the Tranz Scenic with minutes to spare.
The train departed from Platform 9 (3/4 more and a boyhood dream would have been fulfilled) at 2:00 for a five-hour journey down the South Island’s scenic eastern coast. I often promote myself as a cynical optimist or sometimes an optimistic cynic (there is a subtle but distinct difference between the two), but there is something about train travel that brings out the romantic in me. In the literary sense at least. I pictured myself right in the middle of Murder on the Orient Express as the train rumbled along, just waiting for the conductor to call upon my sleuthing prowess to solve a ghastly murder in the first class compartment. The next moment I was James Bond dodging assassins in train cars while hightailing it out of Russia.
Meanwhile, back in reality, I sat in a bright blue seat, my focus alternating between my book and the landscape. Watching the scenery blur by like it did, I could have easily been in a very advanced Disneyworld ride. Certainly this wasn’t reality. The landscape would change from luscious beaches to rolling pines straight out of Yellowstone, and then back again with some jungle ferns in between. I am pretty sure we went straight through Narnia.
I would have asked the young Indian couple sitting directly across from me if they had seen any lions, witches, or wardrobes, but thought better of it. They were actually very pleasant travelling companions. They had been living in New York for the past two years where the woman (I never got her name) was studying to be a dentist (she had been one in India and was getting her degree Americanized) and her husband Ahmed was attending law school. They politely asked me about myself, but due to their incomplete grasp of English, I’m pretty sure that they walked away with the impression that I was a PhD student. I was too flattered to argue. We spent most of the time in contented silence, however. Normally I am not a supporter of public display of affection (I have been known to use a water gun to make my views known), but I had to make an exception for these two. The two of them seemed so happy together, so happy to be in New Zealand, so happy in general. Also the fact that they we would be sitting within five feet of each other for five hours forced us to accept the situation. They had each other and me…. well, I had my book. A little sad, yes, but definitely not the most pathetic event of the evening.
The train creaked into Christchurch at about 7:00 to the general relief of all. I caught a shuttle to my hotel and settled in without problems. An apologetic smile and a slightly befuddled, yet still earnest, expression works wonders over here. The concierge even gave me a voucher for a free drink at the hotel bar (I guess I looked like I needed it?). For frugality’s sake, I decided to eat there to save some much-needed money. Remember when I said that the saddest part of the night was yet to come? It showed up at dinner. I was literally the only patron in the entire restaurant. I think the maître de was embarrassed. As was the bartender. Pretty much every employee there felt awkward as I shuffled over to one of the several dozen empty tables. The redeeming feature of the meal, if you could call it that, was the style of the food. The place was a Scottish restaurant, and Scottish food, like all of Scottish culture, was created based on a series of escalating dares. So when my eyes came across fried Haggis balls on the menu, the Braveheart theme started playing and my vision went tartan. And so my first act on what promises to be a weekend of daring and adventure was eating fried sheep innards. My Celtic forbearers, though they wore skirts in freezing weather and played an instrument that looks an awful lot like a handheld vacuum my family owned when I was kid, made a pretty decent dish. Maybe it was the combination of haggis, a margarita, and penne pasta (some food connoisseur is rolling over in his grave right now), maybe it was the five-hour train ride, but whatever it was, it had me exhausted by the end of the meal.
Tomorrow morning begins my odyssey into all that is awesome in southern New Zealand. With the picturesque cathedral outside my hotel room window looming over me like a sober judge, the idea of cavorting about town suddenly lost its appeal. An omen, perhaps? God, I hope not.
Christchurch is the largest city of New Zealand’s South Island. I currently have a perfect view from my lodgings of the huge cathedral in the city’s center. I don’t know if it is the eponymous church of the city, but it is still impressive. When I woke up this morning, my mind was flooded with thousands of possibilities of how my trip here could go wrong. I could have lost my passport (possible), my baggage could have been lost (more likely), I could have been robbed by gypsies (less likely), or the train could have been rigged to explode had it decelerated below 55 mph (since I am, thankfully, not Keanu Reeves, well outside the realm of possibility). None of these things happened. But here’s what did.
The morning started out cold and brisk in Wellington with an ATM run and a quick nutritional investment (a Cadbury chocolate bar tucked into my inside coat pocket for later) before my cab showed up at good ol' 11 Landcross Street. I pressed my forehead against the window as we approached the docks in the hopes of seeing my ship, Arahua. The Arahua is one of two ferry boats that takes passengers between the straits of the North and South Islands and to Picton in about 3 hours. What a ship she was. Among the many facilities included on the ferry were a bar, a cafeteria, a movie theater, a salon, and an anti-gravity chamber if I recall correctly. But out of all the places in the ship a young man could choose to spend his time (not the bar mainly because morning drinking didn’t seem especially appealing… and their selection was pitiful), I found the observation deck to be the most entertaining. The wind in my hair and the smell of the ocean, it was all terribly exciting. I felt like I imagined my ancestors did crossing the Atlantic, headed for the New World with packs on their backs and a pocket full of dreams. Then, unlike my ancestors, I was smacked in the face the by a wind-blown pink hat belonging to a nice lady from Pennsylvania. She took my picture for me as an apology.
Three hours, several hundred pages of a Bill Bryson book, and one fish and chips later, the Arahua greeted the shores of Picton. My fellow passengers wordlessly formed a mindless herd and milled towards a stairwell. Out of lack of any sense of direction, I followed them. The cattle drive eventually brought me to a lower deck that I imagine would have made a pleasant home for Plague-carrying rats. I gingerly stepped over pulleys as large as infants and great rotting wooden beams littering the floor, instantly regretting my decision to follow the horde. This was probably how my ancestors actually felt.
Unlike my ancestors, I managed to get off the boat and enter the new land without having to change my last name or anything like that. In fact, as soon as I got off the gangway, I was pretty much forgotten about. I stared helplessly up at the numerous signs indicating all manner of services, railway station not included. I swallowed my manly pride (I would have preferred a beer) and asked for directions. Apparently the railway station was literally next door to the ferry dock. Way to go, Max. So three minutes later, I was tucked away in car U of the Tranz Scenic with minutes to spare.
The train departed from Platform 9 (3/4 more and a boyhood dream would have been fulfilled) at 2:00 for a five-hour journey down the South Island’s scenic eastern coast. I often promote myself as a cynical optimist or sometimes an optimistic cynic (there is a subtle but distinct difference between the two), but there is something about train travel that brings out the romantic in me. In the literary sense at least. I pictured myself right in the middle of Murder on the Orient Express as the train rumbled along, just waiting for the conductor to call upon my sleuthing prowess to solve a ghastly murder in the first class compartment. The next moment I was James Bond dodging assassins in train cars while hightailing it out of Russia.
Meanwhile, back in reality, I sat in a bright blue seat, my focus alternating between my book and the landscape. Watching the scenery blur by like it did, I could have easily been in a very advanced Disneyworld ride. Certainly this wasn’t reality. The landscape would change from luscious beaches to rolling pines straight out of Yellowstone, and then back again with some jungle ferns in between. I am pretty sure we went straight through Narnia.
I would have asked the young Indian couple sitting directly across from me if they had seen any lions, witches, or wardrobes, but thought better of it. They were actually very pleasant travelling companions. They had been living in New York for the past two years where the woman (I never got her name) was studying to be a dentist (she had been one in India and was getting her degree Americanized) and her husband Ahmed was attending law school. They politely asked me about myself, but due to their incomplete grasp of English, I’m pretty sure that they walked away with the impression that I was a PhD student. I was too flattered to argue. We spent most of the time in contented silence, however. Normally I am not a supporter of public display of affection (I have been known to use a water gun to make my views known), but I had to make an exception for these two. The two of them seemed so happy together, so happy to be in New Zealand, so happy in general. Also the fact that they we would be sitting within five feet of each other for five hours forced us to accept the situation. They had each other and me…. well, I had my book. A little sad, yes, but definitely not the most pathetic event of the evening.
The train creaked into Christchurch at about 7:00 to the general relief of all. I caught a shuttle to my hotel and settled in without problems. An apologetic smile and a slightly befuddled, yet still earnest, expression works wonders over here. The concierge even gave me a voucher for a free drink at the hotel bar (I guess I looked like I needed it?). For frugality’s sake, I decided to eat there to save some much-needed money. Remember when I said that the saddest part of the night was yet to come? It showed up at dinner. I was literally the only patron in the entire restaurant. I think the maître de was embarrassed. As was the bartender. Pretty much every employee there felt awkward as I shuffled over to one of the several dozen empty tables. The redeeming feature of the meal, if you could call it that, was the style of the food. The place was a Scottish restaurant, and Scottish food, like all of Scottish culture, was created based on a series of escalating dares. So when my eyes came across fried Haggis balls on the menu, the Braveheart theme started playing and my vision went tartan. And so my first act on what promises to be a weekend of daring and adventure was eating fried sheep innards. My Celtic forbearers, though they wore skirts in freezing weather and played an instrument that looks an awful lot like a handheld vacuum my family owned when I was kid, made a pretty decent dish. Maybe it was the combination of haggis, a margarita, and penne pasta (some food connoisseur is rolling over in his grave right now), maybe it was the five-hour train ride, but whatever it was, it had me exhausted by the end of the meal.
Tomorrow morning begins my odyssey into all that is awesome in southern New Zealand. With the picturesque cathedral outside my hotel room window looming over me like a sober judge, the idea of cavorting about town suddenly lost its appeal. An omen, perhaps? God, I hope not.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Lost Chapters: Part 1
I’ve been going through my posts recently, and I’ve noticed a trend. Everything I have written so far is an episodic format. I’ve been telling myself that I’ve been waiting to write a new post, because I needed to accumulate new stories. And that worked… for a while. I’ve come to the conclusion that every day can’t be a tale of intrigue and expense. I just don’t have the budget for that. There are just going to be some days where my biggest achievement is showering before noon. So instead of waiting for the days of intrigue to pile up into a story, I’ve decided to jot down some moments. They are in no particular order and are in no way tied together. These tidbits didn’t tie in particularly well with any of my last posts or were too short for a post of their own. Some are experiences I’ve actually sought out, and others are from just being there. Some are recent, some happened months ago. But here they are now for your reading pleasure: my lost chapters.
1. I breathed into my hands to warm them up. The Kiwi Paka parking lot wasn’t exactly the warmest spot in Rotorua. I was regretting not bringing a hat for my ears when I heard it. Damn was I grateful that I didn’t bring that hat, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard this gem.
Random Bus Driver: “I tell you what, bro, I’m so hungry that I could eat the ass out of a low flying duck.”
Shakespearian in its obscenity. Potent and more than a little disturbing in its imagery. I almost asked this foul-mouthed poet if he could repeat the phrase just so I could make sure that I heard right. Where had he come across this phrase? Did he use it frequently? Was this an exclusively kiwi colloquialism? Have any ducks suffered (or enjoyed, I don’t know how ducks swing) the experience of flying too close to you? I am sure that if I said this anywhere, from a family baptism to an Irish dockworker’s union meeting, it would earn me the stares of all in the room. I haven’t had the chance to use it yet (saving it for a wedding toast or national TV appearance), but I am glad to have it tucked safely away in my repertoire.
2. I wandered down Cuba Street, my eyes jumping from sign to sign. Hopefully they would light upon one promising good food for my growling stomach. My hopes weren’t particularly high for finding any. My one-hour nap that afternoon had turned into a six, so the hour was late. The dinner rush had long since passed, and the bar crowd hadn’t yet descended upon the city leaving the streets empty. I was caught in some sort of sustenance provider limbo. I rounded the corner, lost in my own thoughts, and was hit by an explosion of music.
Hari Krishnas. I couldn’t believe it. I thought they only existed in the Airplane movies and episodes of Scrubs, but here they were standing, actually more like prancing, before me. I was awe-struck. They skipped, they sang, they smiled, and every person on their side of the street quickly switched sidewalks. These guys were the real deal. They were even wearing robes and rocking the shaved head look. I became entranced by the fresh tambourine beats they were laying down. Meanwhile, everyone around me moved on like the crowd of dancing, bald men and women were invisible.
It may have been an everyday occurrence for these people, but where I’m from, these things just don't happen. Torn by inner conflict, I stood in the middle of the pathway like an asshole. Part of me wanted to go up to them and ask them for a flower (they were giving them out, thus further solidifying their legitimacy in my book). Another part told me to pull a Balloon Boy and hide. And yet another part of me wanted to join them. I wouldn’t have gone so far as shaving my head, but I would have skipped and sang and reveled in their whimsical fuckery just as much as the next guy.
But before I could decide, they were gone. The silence of the night had replaced their childlike laughter and the beat of the tambourine. My heart sank. And then my stomach growled. That’s when I saw the Indian restaurant. Surely it must have been some kind of sign. The place was one letter away from the spelling of my hometown to boot.
So it is to the Hari Krishnas that I extend my thanks. You may have not led me to enlightenment or salvation, but you did lead me to an Indian restaurant.
3. I walked into a club (I don’t remember the name nor do I want to) late one Saturday night. The inside looked like a Lady GaGa music video complete with dancers in eccentric costumes. I got scared. I left said club.
4. I have seen the same son-of-a-bitch riding his unicycle around Wellington at least five times. Each time I see him it is always out of the corner of my eye, except for the last time. This most recent sighting involved him pedaling uphill with a bottle of wine in each hand and groceries on his back. He had hair as long as his beard, like a young Dumbledore or something. And if he didn’t have that casual, smug look on his face I would have deemed him a champion.
5. A few of my friends were going to spend the evening at the San Francisco Bathhouse (a club, no nudity or anything else that might be implied by the name) to support one of the girls who lived in their building who was going to be playing guitar there that night. I had just finished a paper, so I figured I should go out and celebrate. The club had a number of acoustic guitar players on their set list to mark the end of their month long salute to folk acoustical music.
I like folk music as much as the next guy, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, and guys like that are great in my book. That being said, the show wasn’t really my scene. I distinctly remember one song about the artist’s fondness for putting her hands on bare patches of earth. I know I shouldn’t judge and just respect the artist and all, but I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow for that number. The highlight of the night was a soulful, acoustic cover of Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance”. With the words slowed down and without the pounding bass, I noticed that the lyrics were pretty out there. Oh, no, wait. I knew that the first time I heard the song. My bad. Game on.
6. I saw three very white kids breakdancing in a plaza down by the waterfront. I found their lack of skill disturbing.
7. After my first night of mid-trimester break, I celebrated. Hard. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have started drinking wine at 6:00 when I planned on going out at 10:00, but hindsight is 20/20. No memory losses or worshiping of the porcelain god, I’m happy to report, but enough to inspire some interesting actions upon return from one of my neighbor’s birthday party. Did I make a series of embarrassing phone calls? No. Did I set something on fire? Try again. Get into a fight? Don’t think so. So what did I do?
If you guessed built a massive pillow fort in my living room, then you are a damn good guesser. Years of extensive training and natural MacGyver-like instincts guided my hands (and wine, lots of wine) resulting in the towering Fort Kickass!. I am sure if the monkeys from 2001: A Space Odyssey had been there, they would have worshipped it like the monolith it was. My American roommates were duly impressed with Fort Kickass! when they individually returned from their nights out, while Hanah, though impressed, was more confused than anything upon returning home to find that a pillow stronghold had been constructed in the lounge. Their authority would not have been recognized in Fort Kickass! even if they had been annoyed. I spent the remainder of the night memorizing the “Ducks Fly Together” speech from The Mighty Ducks and trying to adopt a puppy online. I succeeded in only one of these endeavors. If my roommates weren’t aware that they were living with a kindergartener earlier, they sure as hell are now.
8. One of my first nights out in Wellington, I stumbled into a snippet of a conversation that I desperately would have liked to have heard in its entirety. It was only 9:00 in the evening in what was shaping up to be a very calm Wednesday night. I had just left some bar (The Establishment, I think it was) and was heading to another when I passed a cabstand. Two girls wearing plastic, bright purple top hats that read “Happy New Year” (keep in mind that this was July) were trying and failing to position themselves in the backseat of a cab. One was only vaguely aware of what was happening and the other alternated between shouting at the cab driver and her friend. The poor cabby had an expression on his face that was a cross between, “Please don’t puke on me” and “I’m regretting every life decision that I’ve ever made”. By itself, the picture was amusing. The audio pushed it into the realm of classics.
Random Still Functioning Drunk Chick: “I’ll see if we can get the pool cue back later, but just be glad that your ear stopped bleeding!”
Now imagine hearing that in a kiwi accent, and tell me that you don’t want to know what happened. If I hadn’t been afraid of the yelling drunk girl giving me a swift kick to the crotch (she had on a wicked looking pair of stilettos, so my fear was justified), I would have gotten into the cab with them just to find out the context of the aforementioned quote. Alas, I watched longingly as they sped off into the night, probably to go steal a tiger from Mike Tyson or something. I can only hope to have an adventure equal to theirs in obscurity and scope.
My eyes are open and constantly searching for the next story in my ongoing collection of scenes from Wellington. In a couple of days I’ll be heading off to Christchurch to embark on a truly epic tour of the South Island, so tales of my adventures and my musings will be in abundance. And as long I have readers, my pen will be at the ready.
P.S. – If anybody has any requests or ideas for things for me to do and write about here in New Zealand, please leave a comment. I’m open to ideas, and I would also be more than willing to cover new topics in my posts if it would make my readership happy.
1. I breathed into my hands to warm them up. The Kiwi Paka parking lot wasn’t exactly the warmest spot in Rotorua. I was regretting not bringing a hat for my ears when I heard it. Damn was I grateful that I didn’t bring that hat, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard this gem.
Random Bus Driver: “I tell you what, bro, I’m so hungry that I could eat the ass out of a low flying duck.”
Shakespearian in its obscenity. Potent and more than a little disturbing in its imagery. I almost asked this foul-mouthed poet if he could repeat the phrase just so I could make sure that I heard right. Where had he come across this phrase? Did he use it frequently? Was this an exclusively kiwi colloquialism? Have any ducks suffered (or enjoyed, I don’t know how ducks swing) the experience of flying too close to you? I am sure that if I said this anywhere, from a family baptism to an Irish dockworker’s union meeting, it would earn me the stares of all in the room. I haven’t had the chance to use it yet (saving it for a wedding toast or national TV appearance), but I am glad to have it tucked safely away in my repertoire.
2. I wandered down Cuba Street, my eyes jumping from sign to sign. Hopefully they would light upon one promising good food for my growling stomach. My hopes weren’t particularly high for finding any. My one-hour nap that afternoon had turned into a six, so the hour was late. The dinner rush had long since passed, and the bar crowd hadn’t yet descended upon the city leaving the streets empty. I was caught in some sort of sustenance provider limbo. I rounded the corner, lost in my own thoughts, and was hit by an explosion of music.
Hari Krishnas. I couldn’t believe it. I thought they only existed in the Airplane movies and episodes of Scrubs, but here they were standing, actually more like prancing, before me. I was awe-struck. They skipped, they sang, they smiled, and every person on their side of the street quickly switched sidewalks. These guys were the real deal. They were even wearing robes and rocking the shaved head look. I became entranced by the fresh tambourine beats they were laying down. Meanwhile, everyone around me moved on like the crowd of dancing, bald men and women were invisible.
It may have been an everyday occurrence for these people, but where I’m from, these things just don't happen. Torn by inner conflict, I stood in the middle of the pathway like an asshole. Part of me wanted to go up to them and ask them for a flower (they were giving them out, thus further solidifying their legitimacy in my book). Another part told me to pull a Balloon Boy and hide. And yet another part of me wanted to join them. I wouldn’t have gone so far as shaving my head, but I would have skipped and sang and reveled in their whimsical fuckery just as much as the next guy.
But before I could decide, they were gone. The silence of the night had replaced their childlike laughter and the beat of the tambourine. My heart sank. And then my stomach growled. That’s when I saw the Indian restaurant. Surely it must have been some kind of sign. The place was one letter away from the spelling of my hometown to boot.
So it is to the Hari Krishnas that I extend my thanks. You may have not led me to enlightenment or salvation, but you did lead me to an Indian restaurant.
3. I walked into a club (I don’t remember the name nor do I want to) late one Saturday night. The inside looked like a Lady GaGa music video complete with dancers in eccentric costumes. I got scared. I left said club.
4. I have seen the same son-of-a-bitch riding his unicycle around Wellington at least five times. Each time I see him it is always out of the corner of my eye, except for the last time. This most recent sighting involved him pedaling uphill with a bottle of wine in each hand and groceries on his back. He had hair as long as his beard, like a young Dumbledore or something. And if he didn’t have that casual, smug look on his face I would have deemed him a champion.
5. A few of my friends were going to spend the evening at the San Francisco Bathhouse (a club, no nudity or anything else that might be implied by the name) to support one of the girls who lived in their building who was going to be playing guitar there that night. I had just finished a paper, so I figured I should go out and celebrate. The club had a number of acoustic guitar players on their set list to mark the end of their month long salute to folk acoustical music.
I like folk music as much as the next guy, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, and guys like that are great in my book. That being said, the show wasn’t really my scene. I distinctly remember one song about the artist’s fondness for putting her hands on bare patches of earth. I know I shouldn’t judge and just respect the artist and all, but I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow for that number. The highlight of the night was a soulful, acoustic cover of Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance”. With the words slowed down and without the pounding bass, I noticed that the lyrics were pretty out there. Oh, no, wait. I knew that the first time I heard the song. My bad. Game on.
6. I saw three very white kids breakdancing in a plaza down by the waterfront. I found their lack of skill disturbing.
7. After my first night of mid-trimester break, I celebrated. Hard. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have started drinking wine at 6:00 when I planned on going out at 10:00, but hindsight is 20/20. No memory losses or worshiping of the porcelain god, I’m happy to report, but enough to inspire some interesting actions upon return from one of my neighbor’s birthday party. Did I make a series of embarrassing phone calls? No. Did I set something on fire? Try again. Get into a fight? Don’t think so. So what did I do?
If you guessed built a massive pillow fort in my living room, then you are a damn good guesser. Years of extensive training and natural MacGyver-like instincts guided my hands (and wine, lots of wine) resulting in the towering Fort Kickass!. I am sure if the monkeys from 2001: A Space Odyssey had been there, they would have worshipped it like the monolith it was. My American roommates were duly impressed with Fort Kickass! when they individually returned from their nights out, while Hanah, though impressed, was more confused than anything upon returning home to find that a pillow stronghold had been constructed in the lounge. Their authority would not have been recognized in Fort Kickass! even if they had been annoyed. I spent the remainder of the night memorizing the “Ducks Fly Together” speech from The Mighty Ducks and trying to adopt a puppy online. I succeeded in only one of these endeavors. If my roommates weren’t aware that they were living with a kindergartener earlier, they sure as hell are now.
8. One of my first nights out in Wellington, I stumbled into a snippet of a conversation that I desperately would have liked to have heard in its entirety. It was only 9:00 in the evening in what was shaping up to be a very calm Wednesday night. I had just left some bar (The Establishment, I think it was) and was heading to another when I passed a cabstand. Two girls wearing plastic, bright purple top hats that read “Happy New Year” (keep in mind that this was July) were trying and failing to position themselves in the backseat of a cab. One was only vaguely aware of what was happening and the other alternated between shouting at the cab driver and her friend. The poor cabby had an expression on his face that was a cross between, “Please don’t puke on me” and “I’m regretting every life decision that I’ve ever made”. By itself, the picture was amusing. The audio pushed it into the realm of classics.
Random Still Functioning Drunk Chick: “I’ll see if we can get the pool cue back later, but just be glad that your ear stopped bleeding!”
Now imagine hearing that in a kiwi accent, and tell me that you don’t want to know what happened. If I hadn’t been afraid of the yelling drunk girl giving me a swift kick to the crotch (she had on a wicked looking pair of stilettos, so my fear was justified), I would have gotten into the cab with them just to find out the context of the aforementioned quote. Alas, I watched longingly as they sped off into the night, probably to go steal a tiger from Mike Tyson or something. I can only hope to have an adventure equal to theirs in obscurity and scope.
My eyes are open and constantly searching for the next story in my ongoing collection of scenes from Wellington. In a couple of days I’ll be heading off to Christchurch to embark on a truly epic tour of the South Island, so tales of my adventures and my musings will be in abundance. And as long I have readers, my pen will be at the ready.
P.S. – If anybody has any requests or ideas for things for me to do and write about here in New Zealand, please leave a comment. I’m open to ideas, and I would also be more than willing to cover new topics in my posts if it would make my readership happy.
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