Year of the Kiwi

 

Kia ora and good evening. I’m still in Dunners at the moment. My hope of finding steady work and saving heaps of money didn’t work out quite as planned. Many promising leads during my first few weeks of job hunting only led me to dead ends. Frustrated and a bit worried, I watched what little was left in my bank account bleed dry… to the point where I wouldn’t even be able to afford the petrol to drive to another city (it’s an absurd $2 per liter now). Oh no! Somewhat stranded… I’ve been doing whatever it takes to survive, and more importantly, make the most out of this chapter of my trip.

 

 

Not for the past 3 weeks anyway… sorry for the delay! There aren’t even many pictures in this post. I’m slacking bad.

 

 

There’s no better way to spend a beautiful afternoon than feeding ducks at the botanical gardens. Well, if had money… I could think of a hundred different things, but that’s not an option right now.

 

 

Even the duck food is free because they don’t want people using bread, which would attract the seagulls.

 

 

If you didn’t already figure out, I love superlatives! So naturally, I had to visit Baldwin Street, the STEEPEST STREET IN THE WORLD.

 

 

No, the house isn’t tilted, the picture is. And soon, you will be too.

 

 

Stunning… absolutely stunning. A few weeks ago, the Highlanders beat the Crusaders in their last game of the season. It didn’t count for much since the Highlanders still finished the season with one of the worst records and the Crusaders still had the best record. But still… for fans of Otago like myself, it was a magical moment.

 

 

As cheap as the Elm Lodge was at $100 a week, I wasn’t going to be able to afford that much longer. The bleeding had to stop. But going back to sleeping in the car isn’t an option in the city… it’s way too cold for that now anyway. Luckily, I’ve been able to start doing something I’ve been wanting to do since coming to New Zealand, clean for accommodation. It’s not glamourous vacuuming and scrubbing toilets, but it’s great having a warm bed everynight, a hot shower every morning, free washing, free internet, and more company than I can bother introducing myself to.

 

 

George, the hostel cat, has the most unfortunate face.

 

 

This is where I spend a lot of my free time, the TV lounge. During the week it’s nice and quiet and feels like home… but on the weekends when the tour bus come through (yes, the Elm Lodge is unfortunately on the Magic Bus route [though thank god it's not on the Kiwi Experience... thank...god]) it’s mayhem… full of loud obnoxious English tourists passing through Dunedin for the night, leaving a mess, and having the most painfully mundane conversations about how great the partying was in Queenstown.

 

 

A compartmentalized life.

 

 

There are plenty of guests who aren’t part of the tour bus crowd though, and they’re alright. A few are in my situation; sticking around and trying to find work, like Bob and Wytse here who joined me on my pub poker adventures in town.

 

 

Hundreds of people packed the Regent Theatre for the annual 24 hour book sale; picking through old books while a guy was singing opera in the background background.

 

 

Whatever it takes… even stocking supermarket shelves overnight. I picked up this job through a temping agency doing night fill work at Countdown from 9pm til 6am. Of all the jobs I’ve had here, this was by far the lamest one. Thank god it was only for 2 nights! The craziest part was that was still cleaning at the hostel. So after the first night of work, I came home, sort of napped for 2 hours (impossible really with people coming in and out of the room), wake up and clean, stay awake for the whole day, go back to work, then do it all again. Ended up only having 4 hours of sleep in a 72 hour period. It as trippin’.

 

 

I’m playing copious amounts of pub poker… COPIOUS, about 4 nights a week. The regulars here are really tough though. I’ve only made the final table once and got a nifty NPPL beer can holder for it, but hope to have a breakthrough victory before I leave here.

 

 

Dave, you would’ve been proud.

 

 

My fingertips started peeling once I began staying at the hostel. It seems the calloused hardships of the past few months were shedding away.

 

 

An beautiful ride on the Taieri Gorge Railway. I would’ve never been able to afford the trip, but my mate Paul works on the train, so he hooked me up with a complimentary ticket!

 

 

Then how do you cross from one carriage to another? How???

 

 

We were let off the the train for a scenic stop and crossed the bridge by foot.

 

 

…and watch the train go by (will be an excellent moment when I edit my Year of the Kiwi video together eventually).

 

 

The end of the line, time to turn back.

 

 

Paul is very passionate about trains and was happy to show me what his job was all about.

 

 

The best part was having the opportunity to ride in the cab and seeing how the train is controlled. Something you would never be able to do in the States with all the security on public transport. Hopefully no one ruins things here by doing something foolish.

 

 

It’s test rugby season again, and there’s one more game I MUST see here, All Blacks vs. Springbok. How I’ll get tickets for this game I don’t know… but I’ll do whatever it takes.

 

 

Near disaster! I had left my headlights on one afternon and the car was dead when I got back to the car. No worries, I just hailed down a passing car and they pulled over to help me jumpstart the car. It wouldn’t start though… seems like the battery was too fried. Uh oh. But that didn’t worry me either. I just got a biggerm, beefier vehicle to pull over; this time an SUV. It still wouldn’t start at first, but the guy doubled up my jumper leads with his jumper leads (didn’t know you can do that), and the car finally started up. So where was the near disaster? It seems while I was leaning over the car, my camera turned on in my pocket and the lens extended and jammed. I turned it on and off, on and off, but it wouldn’t correct itself and retract and extend all the way. Oh NO! It’s weird how during the whole car issue, I didn’t break a single sweat, didn’t even begin to feel slightly concerned about my predicament. But with the camera, I was frantic. Had scenarios running through my head, will I have to get it repaired? Buy a new one? God, not again, I can’t afford this shit now. I cursed my car for having a dead battery. I cursed my jeans for being too fitting. I sat there cradling with my camera in my hands. Okay, time to take drastic measures. I am going to turn the camera off, then turn the camera on… and as the lens starts extending, I’ll yank the hell out of it, hopefully pull it back into place. Either it will work, or my camera will break for good. Okay, here we go, one shot… bzzzzzzz-PULL-zzz-snap-SNAP! Shit… that didn’t sound too good. I opened my eyes to take a look. Lens is fully extended. That’s a good sign. But here’s the real test… I turned the camera off, expecting something horrible to happen - bzzzzzz. Turned it back on - bzzzzzz. Off - bzzzzz. On - bzzzzz. YES! YES! YES!!!

 

 

Urban possum.

 

 

A face only a mother could love.

 

 

View of Central Dunedin from one of the hills surrounding the city.

 

 

A strange halo around the moon.

 

 

The Octagon on a sunny day.

 

 

Telephone booths in the city remind me of a cross between UK telephone booths and Chinese pagodas.

 

 

The Octagon is lined with theatres, bars, cafes, museums, and shops.

 

 

Cadbury factory tour, heard it’s not really that great. Maybe I’ll get around to it if I run out of free things to do.

 

 

Save Mart is an awesome second hand store in town. Just think of something you need… red fleece pullover, and there’s a whole rack of red fleece pullovers to choose from. It’s amazing. I lost by blue ski jacket somewhere a couple weeks ago so will probably buy something to replace it soon. Sort of tragic, I’ve been through so much in that jacket.

 

 

There’s something interesting about the shape of the smoke stack of the Speights brewery. I learned on the brewery tour that it was drawn onto the blueprint as a joke, but the boss liked it so much they kept it as part of the building design.

 

 

A typical Kiwi tavern and host the NPPL poker tournament Saturday afternoons. I’ve done very poorly there.

 

 

My hostel is in a very central location, but it sits atop a hill. Even though it’s only a 5 minute walk into town, I usually end up driving because my lazy ass dreads the climb back home.

 

 

Originally, I was supposed to do the night fill job at Countdown for two weeks, but for some reason, Adecco (the temping agency) lost that contract. Counting on that steady work, as lame as it was, I was pissed off by this unexpected development. Luckily the folks at Adecco have been working hard to find me other work, and it all ended up being a blessing in disguise. One afternoon, I was called down to do a drug test, get fitted for a pair of steel toe boots, and go through the induction process to start work for Fulton Hogan…

 

 

…as a lollypop man for a roadwork crew. Oh my god, YES!!!!!! I’ve actually always wanted to do this and wondered how people got this job… and here I was.

 

 

The roads of New Zealand, the roads that have, in themselves, become part of my Kiwi experience… it was such a privilage play a part (a very small part) in their development.

 

 

Charles says go.

 

 

Jason is the other half of the traffic control team, so I spend about 7 hours on the radio communicating about oncoming traffic with him, but since it’s not a particularly busy road, we spent most of our time talking about the most random bullshit (had find some way to make the time pass). The best part of the job was that the work site was over a one hour drive into Central Otago, so I spent a couple hours of my workday napping or enjoying the passing scenery in the van and getting paid for it!

 

 

This is Martin, my German friend at the hostel who cleans for accommodation.

 

 

Hmm… what game could this possibly be?

 

 

I usually avoid tours, but this is Speights. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.

 

 

… and this was the time. Went with a few guys from the hostel who were travelling together.

 

 

The tourguide gave an informative and entertaining look into the history and making of Speights, but one thing that seemed strange to me was how he kept on mentioning Steinlager Pure during the tour. Steinlager is another New Zealand beer, and the guide obviously liked it, so he made no reservations about comparing the two brews. Leave it to a Kiwi bloke to be perfectly honest.

 

 

The Speights Gold Medal Ale is called so because of gold medals it has won in beer tasting competitions. And here they are.

 

 

Beautiful copper brew kettles.

 

 

The line of Speights’ brews.

 

 

At the end of the tour, we were given over half an hour to pour ourselves as much beer as we wanted. I knew sampling part of the tour, but this was like Christmas!

 

 

Cheers!

 

 

Just a couple weeks after rooting against the Crusaders, we were cheering them on as they beat the Waratahs, a team out of Sydney, in the Super 14 Rugby finals. Kick Aussie ass!

 

 

A disturbing exhibit at the Otago Settlers Museum.

 

 

Ray and Lewis hard at work.

 

 

You would think waking up at 6am and standing out in the freezing cold and rain all day would put a damper on my spirit. But the only thing sad about that day was that my week of traffic controlling was over. Oh well, new opportunies are just around the corner.