Housekeeping

This blog is going to be an amalgam of random thoughts that I've had in the past 2 days, some of which pertain to being in New Zealand and others are just a product of the dust bunnies in my head.

Remember how I take baths because the shower is broken? I came up with an old school solution. I use an empty ice cream tub to create a whole makeshift shower and take the bath element out of bathing. I fill it up with hot and cold water and then I pour it on my head. It is crude, but effective. The ice cream was delicious, but it feels even nicer to be clean. My personal cleanliness meter sometimes points to slightly obsessive compulsive. I think there are worse things to feel a compulsion for and until my desire to be clean impedes my normal life, to me clean means keen.

A Sumner note, the wind was really cold on that day at the beach. It was so chilly that Gordon and I were both in physical pain from the wind whipping into the ear that was exposed to the offshore wind as we walked parallel to the shore. It's a stinging inner ear pain that I hadn't felt before on any beach or mountain. Next time I go to the beach, I'm bringing my winter hat. I just thought it was odd that it wasn't the sand or the water, but the wind that hurt my ear.

There are convenience stores all around Christchurch and most likely all of New Zealand and they are called Dairies or the singular form Dairy. They sell the same stuff as most gas stations in the states, like soda, chips and candy. They also sell cheap pies of the meat variety. These pies only cost NZ$1 a piece. It's a delicious deal. I can safely declare that I have found love in New Zealand and it is with these pies. While they tantalize my taste buds, I'm fairly certain they go in the category of foods that will probably kill me in less than a fortnight if I don't exercise moderation. In this equation, taste and health are inversely proportional to each other. The better this pie tastes the more I am certain that this pie has the same caloric and fat content as 3 big macs. This might have been an exaggeration, but individually wrapped pies that sit under a heat lamp all day at a Dairy cannot be good for someone's health.

What is with Zed? The Kiwis pronounce "Z" phonetically as "zzz-ed." Most NZ websites end in .co.nz so they say dot co dot "en zed". I was going to rant about how we say "zee" even though it sounds like "c", "v", "e", but as I was typing my rant I realized that we don't use "z" nearly as often as they do. Most of our websites end in dot com, dot net, dot org or dot gov, but most of their sites end in dot nz. We, Americans, hardly use "z" in our daily lingo. If we used it as often as the Kiwis do, we would probably also use another sound for the letter "z." Rant self denied!

Speaking of keen, we say "keen" here. I like it. I also like the word neat. They don't say it, but I do.

I think I look up at the sky a lot more than I used to at home. I'm not sure why. I feel like the sky is some how bigger or the clouds are some how much interesting. It's hard to say, but I can climb a hill and see for miles. I think it is simply because I can see so much of the sky that I notice it more. I wish I could capture the feeling of expansiveness that the sky gives off because it makes me pause every time.

Today, I was lying in the grass of the neighborhood park and reading "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The sun was out and it was warm with a little bit of a cool breeze. I ended up drifting off to sleep. I succumbed to the moment that everyone is familiar with while reading outside. You're in the sun, reading and suddenly your eyes start to get heavy. You begin to struggle with the your focus on your book, but then you realize that you don't have to fight it and you can just give into the nap. So you rest the book on your chest and close your eyes. Yes, I took a nap in the warm sun and yes, I woke up to a ladybug crawling on my arm. I named the ladybug, George. It's a wonderful thing when you can have a nap in the sun and just go with it.

My super spidey sense has been off since I got here and so I've been slightly spider paranoid. I had been told that there were only two spiders in New Zealand. I heard one will bite you and it will be painful, but the other will bite you and death will ensue. One is the white-tailed spider and the other remains unnamed, but mainly because I forgot the name. I went to the bathroom the third day after I had gotten to the house and freaked out because there was a spider on the back of the door so I ran out and told everyone. They called in spider expert or rather just all clustered in the bathroom, only to find out that it was a daddy long legs. In my defense their daddy long legs look different from ours. Then I saw a spider on my bed, freaked out and spent the next 20 minutes googling the white-tailed spider. Then I realized the white-tailed spider looked nothing like the spider I lost in the bed and that white-tailed spiders aren't really very poisonous and won't kill you. I'm still paranoid, but I'm keeping it a secret from my flat mates because I just end up looking foolish.

This isn't going to make sense to a lot of people, but E.P. I found a place for your brother to live. You may have to click the picture, but it's a beautiful garage.

I just wanted to say that even in New Zealand I am plagued by Nights in Rodanthe.

Indian Sumner

Dec 4: I went to the seaside town of Sumner. It was gorgeous, but extremely windy day. We took a bus from Christchurch all the way to Sumner. Since we were the last folks on the bus, the bus driver turned around and asked us where we were headed. When we mentioned that we were visiting Sumner and didn't have any real plans, our bus driver offered to drop us by the beach, so we readily accepted. She gave us a little tour of the surrounding hills on the way to shore. Once we got to our stop, she directed to the beach by saying "if you walk down this street you'll pass a lovely little chocolate shop and then a little further, you'll reach a clock tower and then practically be on the beach." We had to stop by the chocolate shop and I bought some chocolate covered caramels. They were delicious. There was a quiet old kiwi man sitting inside the shop, making chocolates. He put a complimentary coffee chocolate in the bag.  This is a picture of me inside the clock tower.

There was a surf school having lessons out in the ocean. Everyone was wearing a wetsuit and I think it was mainly to protect them from the wind chill. To surf here I'd need a board and a wetsuit, definitely a wetsuit. The waves were very small and messy. I didn't see any good rides and I've seen better waves in Atlantic beach. There was also a lone surf kayaker. They seemed to be having a good time even though there wasn't much to ride on.

The beach was beautiful. There were huge rock formations to climb on and many cavernous areas. I clambered up to the top of several rocky outcroppings and through a few caves. I thought one of the cave openings looked pretty cool and kind of like a state. In retrospect, it doesn't really look like a state. The sea was nice to visit, but I would like to get into a few more sporty things involving the sea, you know, get out there sea kayaking or surfing.

Walking along the beach, I was almost bowled over by the wind coming from the sea. It was extremely gusty and the air temperature would have been fine if not for the icy wind. So I was somewhat reluctant to test the water, even with my hand because I was already chilly and assumed the water would be just as cold. However, once I worked up the courage and stuck my hand in the water, I was amazed that it was so lovely and warm. The water felt almost like a bath. Then we walked away from the beach towards the little town of Sumner. Nature was nice, but it was time get some food and to explore the shops and restaurants. I also noticed that there was a nice little library.

Gordon decided that he wanted a pie of the meaty variety. So we ended up at a gourmet pie shop with meat pies and dessert pies. It was quite a cool little shop. We sat down so Gord could eat his pie and I could enjoy my delicious Ginger Beer. It had the strangest pull tab top. I was reminded of Asheville because they gave me a mason jar glass. When we sat down, one of the pie shop workers took a seat at an incredibly out of tune piano and started playing a Disney song which I quickly identified as the Lion King. Gordon incorrectly identified it as Aladdin King. Sometimes he says things quicker than his mind can process them, but for the most part it's ridiculously amusing. The guy then asked for requests. I asked for another Disney song and he apologized because he didn't know anymore Disney and proceeded to play "My heart will go on" from the Titanic soundtrack and he even sang a bit of it. We got to talking and found out that he was going to Uni for Mechanical Engineering and Music Composition. He played us a three part composition that he composed in high school and then went on to talk a bit about the rock opera that he was writing. The pie shop guy and the bus driver lady are just two pieces of anecdotal evidence that exemplify how friendly and personable Kiwis are.

Cautionary Tale #3: If you hang your clothes out to dry, be very wary of the weather. In Christchurch, it can go from zero to sixty in about 1 minute, meaning no rain to rain. This is a lesson every person who previously relied on dryers will learn the hard way. On another note, my towels are still fuzzing off on me.



Listen to that wind roar and watch those waves roll.

Towels and baths: A cautionary tale

Nov 3: Doh. I left home and forgot what Douglas Adams called "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have," my towel. So here I was in a foreign country without my towel. I went to a store similar to Walmart and bought two subpar towels because it was convenient and cheap. I knew it wouldn't be great, but I didn't know it would be annoying. My first step was to wash my towel so I could use it. Little did I know it was going to shed about 1/4 of it's fluffy bits onto my brand new jeans. Most of my other clothes were unscathed during the wash incident of NZ09, but the jeans definitely bore the brunt of the attack. The two items, my jeans and my towel, actually came out of the wash tangled together. So I hung up everything to dry and lamented the transmogrification of my jeans. Later, I mounted a calculated counter-attack on the jeans with tape because I didn't have a lint roller on hand. This took care of most of the fluffy pieces, but there were still unfortunate remnants of the towel blitzkrieg. I had foolishly assumed that the pants party in the washer was the going to be the only towel incident. After my bath this morning I was drying myself with the towel and I realized it was attacking me like the jeans. It turns out that I was sloughing off skin and replacing it with blue fluffy towel bits. It was really annoying. So I threw both the towels back in the laundry for another wash, but this time I knew that they shouldn't be washed with any other articles of clothing. I can only hope that two washes is what it took to remove the fuzzies. I'm never skimping on towels ever again, no matter how desperate I get. So cautionary tale # 2: Never leave home without your towel and if you do, buy one quickly, but spend the a respectable amount of time and money picking out a nice towel and spend a tidy sum on it or else your towel will get get offended and slough fuzzy bits onto you and your togs.

When I was younger I used to take baths, but then I grew up and didn't take them anymore. I don't really enjoy sitting around baths or I don't want to waste time lollygagging in a bath. I guess I just feel that showers get you cleaner and take less time. As Chandler said "you just sit there stewing in your own filth." I don't think that phrase bothers me, but it's always been in the back of my mind since I first saw that episode of Friends. Background: Flatmate John fell through the wall of the shower one evening and broke it. So the bathtub is the only place to wash these days. It's annoying because I don't feel clean and there are two faucets, one for cold and one for hot. There is no middle ground, the water will come out of the left faucet and be really cold or the right faucet and be scalding hot. That means I can't wash easily via the stream from the faucet. So I've been bathing reluctantly, but often and throughly, in a bath for the last week. My fingers are crossed for the day when the shower is fixed. Though I suppose it could be worse and we could have no running water and have to bathe in a river behind the house.

Just to clarify a point, I'm living in the house, but I'm not actually renting the Room of Doom. I'm splitting electricity and internet, but I don't technically have a room yet. While flatmate John is off vacationing, I've been given leave to crash in his room. So my faithful sleeping bag and I are now in John's room for awhile. I have decided to name the sleeping bag Tauntaun. It's a good sleeping bag and I thought it ought to have an awesome name. When I'm cold I can get inside my Tauntaun!

Addendum: I just looked up tauntaun and the first Google hit was a sleeping bag that's shaped like a tauntaun called the Tauntaun sleeping bag, complete with a plush light saber zipper. My original thought was apparently not so original.

For those of you lacking the Star Wars background, a tauntaun is a beast that the Rebels use to ride on while stationed on the planet Hoth. Visually they look like a cross between a ram and a t-rex. Han Solo was riding a tauntaun while running patrols and looking for Luke Skywalker. Eventually he finds Luke Skywalker, but his tauntaun dies from the cold. Without the tauntaun, Han can't get back to the base and thus they are both stuck outside in a blizzard. So Han Solo takes Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, slices open the recently dead tauntaun and puts Luke inside the beast so he won't freeze to death.

On another side note, I was listening to my itunes on random while writing this blog and during the Star Wars paragraph, the song "Main Title and Ice Planet Hoth" came on from the Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back Soundtrack. Coincidence? I think not, I think the force is with this blog. It's really late and that's why I feel I can get away with that last statement. I'm leaving before the song ends!

Phrases here are pretty Sweet-as

Dec 2: It's hard to pick up the lingo and distinguish it as New Zealand speak. The flat has 1 New Zealander: Heath, 1 Columbian: Leyla, 1 Aussie: John and 2 Americans: Gord & Me. John's girlfriend, Briony, who frequents the flat is from England. So I'm learning heaps of new phrases and different verbiage, but I have no idea if it's kiwi/aussie/or brit speak. A very kiwi thing is to say sweet-as. It almost sounds like sweet-ass especially with the kiwi accent. It's the equivalent of cool or awesome. They also like to add "as" to other words to emphasize the word. For example, that climb was easy-as or that whale is beached-as. That would be a really easy climb or a really beached whale. They also call sausages, bangers. I have no idea why. Crook means sick. Like Gordon was so crook last night.

Speaking of Gordon, he had too much to drink the 2nd night I was in town and created cautionary tale #1. We were at some random dude's house celebrating someone's visa. I was ferrying him home in a cab and he yammied all over the place. Turns out there is a $300 fee for "soiling" a cab. Later we found out that it can cost upwards of $500 in fees for vomiting in a cab. So word to the wise, do not, under any circumstances, get vomit in a cab. Vomit in your purse, backpack or take the shirt off your back and throw up in that. If you mess up their cab, they have to get it cleaned and can't work that night or the day it's getting cleaned, so you have to pay or they'll call the cops. Are we more lenient in the US or have I just never been in a cab during a regurgitative episode?

Back to kiwi-speak, they also say keen when they're really into something. Instead of sandals, they call them jandals. They call them jandals because they think of them as japanese sandals. I kid you not.

The flatmates have gotten into their heads that I have an odd fondness for broccoli. So much that I have been nicknamed Moccoli. Go figure. Also I think my lactose intolerance may have been all in my head. Yesterday, we demolished some ice cream and then we had an incredibly rich chicken alfredo and I felt fine. Hooray. Also NZ ice cream is a bit different from US ice cream, but the general principles are the same: cold, creamy, sweet and dairy. The taste is a bit different, but it's delicious. I would recommend avoiding the Goody Goody Gum Drop flavor. The vanilla ice cream is great, but the first bite reminded me of a marshmallow. They also call gummy candies, "lollies." There is another strange chewy candy called Pineapple lumps. These have been nicknamed Plumps. They aren't very good, so feel free to not eat these if you visit NZ.

The Room of Doom

Dec 1: So the room that Gord told me about is in reality, scary and now I have the pictures to prove it. First of all there are two ways to get into it. There is a scary half broken door that is padlocked shut or you can go through the garage. Since the back door is padlocked, I'll take you on a tour through the garage. When you open the garage, which I don't think can be locked, you walk into a your typical garage. It's filled with things that haven't been used in years and are just collecting dust. If you strain your eyes, you'll notice a green tarp hanging at the rear of the garage. This is the entrance to the room I laid claim to before I'd laid my eyes on it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect I don't think it was a brilliant thing to call dibs on. Once in the room, I think this is where the bed would go or it's where you would tie up medieval prisoners. I've been complaining the whole time, but it does have it's amenities, it has a window. Though I haven't mentioned New Zealand's complete lack of understanding and use of insulation. I don't think any of the houses have insulation and yet they all have huge windows. They don't seem to have any insulation in the walls or the roof and the huge windows aren't double paned. So when it's cold outside, it's cold inside and when it's hot outside, it's hot inside. This is a picture of the roof and you can see sunlight between the brick at the top and the roof. Visible proof that the ceiling hasn't been sealed properly. So in conclusion, this room is unfit to live in and I'm crashing at Gord's flat in my sleeping bag. My Mountain Hardware sleeping bag was probably one of the smartest things that I brought to NZ.