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.

Academics, Ass Kicking, and Other Assorted Adventures

Despite whispered rumors of my death, I’m still very much alive and active. I realize that a new blog post has been long overdue, but I have two reasons for waiting. One, I had my first test and my first assignment back-to-back this past weekend, so priority number one went to studying. Shocking, I know, but more on that later. My second reason for delaying writing a new post is that I’ve been trying to accumulate enough experiences that I deem “blogworthy”. And now since I’m back in Maxtion (a portmanteau of my roommate’s devising) and wielding my pen, it goes without saying that I’ve successfully achieved both of my objectives.

My first adventure takes place last week at the very start of the month. My destination? The Weta Cave. No, I didn’t venture back into glowworm territory, I went to the world-renowned Wellington based movie studio. The Weta Cave is the only portion of Weta Workshop available to the public. The Weta Workshop covers every aspect of filmmaking from costume design, prop making, animation, and almost everything in between. They’ve been responsible for such films as King Kong, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia films, and more. Look them up, you’ll see. The studio itself is located on the other side of the bay, so after a lengthy car ride I was dropped off in the middle of a suburb. Confused, I paid the driver and turned the corner. Bam! Right in the middle of suburbia was a full-scale movie studio. As I later found out, virtually all Weta Workshop employees live around the studio effectively forming a small city within a city.

As I stepped through the front doors of the Weta Cave (yes, it is shaped like a cave), I was transported to nerd heaven. I was immediately confronted by the life-size model of Lurtz, the gnarly looking Uruk-hai (bigass orc man) that killed Sean Bean in the first Lord of the Rings movie. Behind him was a wall jam-packed with the weapons used from all three movies. There were bows, axes, swords, shields, armor, and everything. I’d never been so tempted to shoplift in all my life. The only thing that I found disappointing about the Weta Cave was its size. All told, they only had three rooms available for show. Keeping in mind that Weta Workshop is about the size of a military base, you can understand my dismay. Regardless, I enjoyed the film presented to us about the history of the studio and its current projects. It also helped that the manager of the Weta Cave was a dwarf. He may have been a little tall, but I swear that I saw him at the Council of Elrond. Satisfied with my tour of the Weta Cave and encounter with one of the races of Middle Earth, I retired back to Landcross Street.

With my grand adventure for the weekend complete, I settled into a passive, more domestic (read laundry and cooking) until class on Tuesday. And when they resumed, I came to realize something. Despite the numerous failings of the American educational system, I’m remarkably well prepared for New Zealand academics. Maybe it is just Rice that has conditioned me to expect the worst when it comes to exams and to therefore prepare to a degree that some would find absurd, but my first test (Abnormal Psychology) was trivial, almost childishly simplistic. Over this past weekend, my conscience nagged me and convinced me that my hubris was getting the best of me. I love it when I’m wrong. Out of a class numbering around 200, I was one of less than ten that scored a perfect 100%. I write about this partly out of pride, but mainly out of relief. I had no idea what to expect academics-wise when I showed up in the Land of the Long White Cloud, so now I can rest a little easier knowing that I can hang with the best of them.

When I’m not classifying types of schizophrenia for Abnormal Psychology, profiling serial killers and analyzing crime statistics (I know it’s lame, but I feel like an FBI agent when I do), and writing for the non-Asian Joy Luck Club, I’ve poured my time into a new hobby: boxing. That’s right, in a series of attempts to do things very un-Max like, I’ve decided to take up the time-honored tradition of boxing. I recently took out a membership at the local VUW affiliated boxing gym, and have jumped headfirst into training. The gym itself is a little rundown, like the ones in boxing movies, and it’s above an Asian supermarket, so you know it’s legitimate. My trainer is a short, but stout little woman named Jo. She can be as kind as a grandmother, but barks out commands like a drill sergeant when we jump rope. I haven’t had to fight anybody yet, and I doubt I will, but I am satisfied with and very much enjoying learning the technique behind the sport. I’m 90% sure that I’m the only American in the gym and 100% sure that everyone else there can tell I’m a foreigner. Nobody is mean or anything like that, but I think they expect me to pull out a handgun, shotgun a beer, shit a bald eagle, or something equally patriotic. Unfortunately for them, I go solely for the purpose of learning and getting a good workout. If I do manage to KO somebody, whether purposefully or accidentally, I’ll be sure to write about it.

This most recent weekend, after finishing a paper about the particularly ghastly crimes of American serial killer Edmund Kemper, I decided that I’d had enough violence and death for one weekend. So to clear my head, I went for a walk through Wellington’s Botanical Gardens. Despite being winter, they really were quite nice, and I’m sure they are even more beautiful in the summer. The weather was cold, but the sun was shining and there were no clouds in sight as I strolled by exotic ferns and trees with unpronounceable Maori names. I saw a sign pointing out the path to Parliament, and on a whim I took it. Finally I was free of psychopaths, dismemberment, and corpses. Seeing as I worked in a morgue before I left, even I found the last item ironic. And then the irony swelled to ridiculous proportions as I rounded a corner and found myself in a cemetery. In order to get through to Parliament, I had to walk through not one, not two, but three cemeteries. My journey through the land of dead was brief thankfully, and I found myself in front of the large beehive shaped structure the kiwis call Parliament. I’d meant to take a tour of the place, but turned away when I saw the list of prohibited items on tours that included backpacks and cameras. I had already smuggled alcohol into a sporting event, so I decided not to take my chances again. Plus, if I do go to Parliament and smuggle something, you can safely bet that it’s going to be beer. In my opinion, political decision making, unlike driving, is best done intoxicated. I’m pretty sure Winston Churchill would agree with me.

My last stop of the day, because of a particularly persistent and persuasive influence in my life, was the trolley car. Wellington is often compared to San Francisco, and one of the many similarities they share is a cable car system. As luck would have it, the trolley car has a stop right outside of Parliament, and I really didn’t feel like walking uphill and through more dead people. I got on behind an Asian family so decked out in stereotypical tourist gear (maps, fanny packs, the whole package) that they made me feel like a local. The ride itself was uneventful. Nobody hijacked it and forced it to keep over a speed of 55 mph or anything like that, so I was able to take it easy.

I’ve been to The Library (the cocktail lounge, not the university building) several times now, and have been exploring new bars weekly. I have to say, J.J. Murphy’s (my flatmate Hanah’s workplace) and The Library are still my favorites. Still, my search for the Holy Grail of bars goes on.

I know that I promised photos in the last post, and they will show up eventually, but bear in mind that I am a writer (or at least I like to think of myself as one) first, and a photographer second. Until then, I’ve got a mid-semester break (two weeks away!) to plan, so more stories should be coming in soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep watch over Wellington, its watchful protector, its silent guardian. Because I’m not the hero it needs, I’m the one it probably shouldn’t have given a visa to.