Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Home?

After a good couple of months exploring Melbourne (and with a working visa for Canada finally secured) , it felt like the right time to head back over the ditch and buy into the whole "being a real person" thing again for a while.

I spent a few days catching up with people and couch-crashing between my brother and my girlfriend before finding my own flat on the same side of town as I've always lived but a little closer to the city (just can't seem to stray from the eastern suburbs).

After a couple of weeks, a couple of hundred applications and a handful of interviews I managed to secure myself full time work back at the airport but this time working as a barista/ front of house for Mojo, a fairly reputable coffee place. As I write this several months after the fact, I'm still working there and enjoying it for the most part. I don't think anyone can ever really say they love getting up at 3 in the morning for work but outside of the early starts it's all good.

I have an interesting relationship with Wellington these days having both spent more time here than any other one place in my life so far and venturing far from it for extended periods of time over the last few years. Upon arrival I fall in love with the place all over again for about 2 months. I think a lot of people feel similar things about their respective hometowns. It's nice to be back in a familiar place, to get coffee from long-time favourite cafes, drink at preferred bars, participate in communities that don't induce huge amounts of anxiety. This city is definitely home to me and I'd proudly call it my city to anyone.

That said, since my first adventure off to the U.S. as an exchange student (and perhaps even further back than that) I have been very aware that my status here at any given point in time is merely that of a visitor. My time in this city is limited and every time I return it is with the mindset that I will shortly be off exploring again. I'm not sure if I'll ever find a place with the power to capture me permanently but Wellington is my home and the thing about home is it's a wonderful place to return to fleetingly. In order to properly return to a place, however, one must first leave that place for long enough to miss it.

I've been back now since May, and I'll be back until March which at the moment (just after Christmas) feels both too far away and incredibly close. This visit has been a good one, and I am ultimately glad to have had major travel plans delayed. At the same time, the moment I get to touch down on North American soil again cannot come quickly enough.

My next post here will be about one of the coolest performance opportunities I've yet had the pleasure of involving myself with.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Laughing in Australia

My visit to the great city of Melbourne happened to occur at the same time as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and so as well as experiencing the usual quirks the city has to offer, I also got to see some pretty amazing comedians in their element.

The first show I saw was a spontaneous affair. I was sitting at the hostel chatting with a couple of people I'd just met when we decided we'd go out for a drink. The Canadian girl in our group suggested that we get tickets to a show as well and go check out some of the festival so we looked through the schedule and settled upon the London-based Canadian Catherine Ryan.

We got ourselves some food and a couple of drinks in town before heading up to one of the smaller rooms set up within the town hall complex where Catherine's show was hosted. She was vaguely familiar to me having appeared on some English panel shows I've seen but I'd never seen her do stand-up so I was going in mostly blind.

She was hilarious. From telling us about her room-mate (5 year old daughter) to the most accurate Beyonce impression you'll ever see from a white woman, her show came to an end far too soon. I think it ran for an hour but I would have happily watched her for double that.

The second, third and fourth shows I saw were a bit of a marathon affair. Looking for something to do one day I decided to check out the cheap tickets office where they sell off tickets to shows that day at a cheaper price to try and sell as many as possible to shows that haven't managed to sell out.

Arj Barker who I was familiar with through Flight of the Conchords and his various appearances at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival was one of the shows on sale so I got a ticket to his show. I realised while getting my ticket to that show that with the time it was on, I could probably swing getting to a show before and after his performance. I ended up buying a ticket to James Acaster who I'd seen on tv in New Zealand before and who I rate pretty highly as well as one to see the combined show of Guy Montgomery (NZ comedy's 2nd favourite Guy) and Rose Matafeo in an effort to support the kiwis at the festival.

Arj's show was as expected a flawlessly crafted hour of comedy genius culminating in the most shameless sales effort I've ever seen in a show that I paid to see in the first place. To some extent it worked because I did end up buying one of his dvd's, although mostly so I could get him to sign it and say hi to him, which I did!

I went into the Rose and Guy show without really knowing what to expect and was treated to a very New Zealand experience. An audience member got a phone call in the middle of Guy's half of the show and as he tried to call her out on it, she yelled back that it was from his cousin which was both hilarious and probably true. Rose was on form with her unique brand of awkward comedy featuring cringe-worthy stories from her life with a little bit of observational comedy and her famous attack on the creepy coffee club ads. All in all I underpaid heavily for the show these guys put on (I think it cost me 15 bucks).

James Acaster was someone I REALLY wanted to see at this festival so I was stoked to be attending his show. He is the master of awkward white boy humour and was in the best form I've ever seen him in (having seen him do a lot of stand-up via online videos). From talking about his thug-life days in the SW-4 (I think) street gang to his hatred for Lucas, whom he served on a jury with and eventually gained respect for after a series of harsh realisations, his set was all over the place in the most fantastic of ways. I can't decide who was funnier between James and Catherine but it was close.

I really appreciated the non-headline shows because they were in such wonderfully intimate settings and I feel like that's the best way to experience any performer. I'd take pub performances over crowded stadiums any day. Those sorts of shows make it feel like you're just hanging out over a beer with the performer rather than someone who has paid for the privilege of being in the same vicinity as a superstar.

The shows that I went to see in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival were all amazing and I will definitely be back for the festival in the future to see more great comedy.

My next post here will about my return to Wellington.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Melbourne

In Mid-March, I got sick of not travelling and booked a ticket to Melbourne without anything much in the way of a plan. I stored all the stuff I couldn't take with me with family, emptied out everything from the flat as we were all moving out and the landlord wanted everything gone (furniture, dishes etc...). While it wasn't a whole lot of fun leaving Clem, it did feel really good to be getting on a plane bound for somewhere I hadn't yet seen.

I'm not really sure what all to write about my time in Melbourne but I'll brush over a few of the more memorable things and hopefully this post wont be too all over the place to follow.

Accomodation-wise, I booked myelf into a backpackers in central Melbourne before I left and decided if I liked it I'd just stay there the whole time. I ended up working there as a cleaner to pay for my accomodation and becoming a part of the staff culture which was an ecclectic mix of travellers from all walks of life. We had a bar downstairs that had something social going on pretty much every night and I spent a lot my time in my first couple of weeks down there meeting new people only to have them leave a couple of days later. It was a quick walk or free tram ride to pretty much everywhere you'd want to see in the central area from where I was staying so it had that going for it as well.

I spent a bit of time busking in the downtown area and loved that. The streets are wide and the foot traffic heavy which is pretty much a buskers dream. It was a bit more of an intense process getting a busking permit there than in Wellington but I guess that can be expected from a city of 4 million odd people trying to keep everyone in line.

The two most interesting people I came across were an utterly insane Englishman who became one of my best friends in the hostel, and an equally ecclectic guy from small town Victoria who I ended up taking a weekend camping trip round the Grampians with and who showed me some of the most beautiful parts of the state (cheers Ben).

My favourite hang-out spot in town was the ACMI (Australian centre for the moving image) at Federation Square where I spent a lot of time wandering through the free exhibitions and watching random collections of animations and short films from their archives.

I got incredibly sunburnt in the Cricket World Cup fan zone down by the river where I sat and watched with great commitment as New Zealand were embarrassed by Australia in the final along with an English cricket fan named Freddy who was equally distressed at our poor showing against the Aussies and two Scandinavians who probably had very little idea of what was going on.

I drank a lot of terrible beer at various different places across town, went to a poetry night at Ferdydurkes where I was too intimidated to read anything of my own, probably my only regret from the whole trip and was shown some cool bars around the central area which I could never find on purpose again.

I got to catch up with a guy that was hosted a couple of years after me by the same host dad as I was in the states. We went and got lunch and it was nice to chat with him about Fort and reminisce about things back there.

Ultimately, I went to Melbourne to get away from the familiar for a bit and achieved that. I can't wait to go back again some day, hopefully on a more permanent basis rather than a 2 month taster. I think my favourite thing about Melbourne is that it has a very ecclectic artsy feel to it (much like Wellington) but on an absolutely massive scale which appeals to me. I like that there is so much to discover there and that I could never find anything until I wasn't looking for it at which point it would appear seemingly out of thin air. Melbourne is definitely a city for the explorer, and there is so much there to be explored.

My next post here will be about my experiences with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which co-incided happily with my visit.

Shakey Graves

Upon returning to Wellington after the fun of New Year's I returned to work as a construction labourer, something I was fairly confident I would be able to do full time without having to commit to anything more than a casual contract.

This was important because of my plan to escape to Melbourne in March to satiate my wanderlust briefly whilst waiting for the U.S. government to provide me with a copy of my non-existent criminal record so that my Canadian work visa could be approved...but I digress.

I signed up with a recruitment company who called me up the next day to send me to a site I would end up working on 40-50 hours a week for the next two months. Sorted.

During my time on this job two important things happened, the cricket world cup began with Australia and New Zealand co-hosting and one of my favourite lesser known musicians (though not for long) announced a New Zealand date on his tour.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the incredible alt-bluesy sound of Shakey Graves, get to googling that name. I highly recommend "Dearly Departed", "Late July" and "Roll the Bones" as songs to get you hooked on him. He hails from the famous musical city of Austin, Texas and is the type of artist (in terms of fan-base size) that would normally ignore NZ altogether (I'm looking at you Watsky!) on the logic that a couple of Australian dates covers all that needs to be covered in the South Pacific region of the globe.

When the announcement came through that he'd be stopping off for one New Zealand show at The Tuning Fork (A really cool bar type venue setup next to vector to cater to smaller scale gigs), I did some number crunching and booked my tickets as soon as they became available, electing to head up and back by bus over the working weekend, spending one night in Auckland.

I had a hell of a time booking accomodation because the night of the gig also happened to be the day that Eden Park was hosting a cricket world cup pool match between Australia and New Zealand (the first of two clashes we'd have with them in the cup as it turned out) but eventually managed to find a bed in a backpackers not far from Queen Street for a reasonable price.

On friday I finished up work, jumped a bus up to Auckland and arrived mid-morning saturday. After wandering around for a bit I came across a fan area set up with a big screen and seating for people to come and watch the cricket. Figuring that would be a nice way to kill time before the concert, I dropped my stuff off at my accomodation, stopped by a supermarket for game-watching snacks and water (it was a ridiculously warm day) and settled in a good spot within the grandstand to avoid the heat as much as possible.

The cricket played out pretty spectacularly with both sides dropping wickets like crazy, New Zealand eventually getting the better of our tasman counterparts very narrowly in what should have been a more convincing win given the bowling effort. The game wrapped up with just enough time for me to walk down to The Tuning Fork as doors opened so I got the best of both worlds really.

As expected the gig was fucking phenomenal. There was a New Zealand solo act named Will Wood https://www.facebook.com/WillWoodnz?fref=ts who was very high energy for one man with a guitar and is worth checking out. He played a few original songs and a few covers of classic country/blues type songs whilst rocking around stage in a cowboy hat. After Will's set, Shakey came out with his touring drummer and played a hell of a set. He ripped through all his staples (Roll the Bones, Dearly Departed, Late July) played some impeccable mouth trumpet and even called random fans up to stage throughout the night to help him sing some of his songs.

It was an incredible show and I'm grateful that Shakey decided to make the NZ stop on his tour. I hope he'll be back on NZ soil again soon or that I'll get to see him over in the USA or Canada next year when I'm travelling. Definitely worth the 24 hour return bus trip to get up there to see him and definitely good use of a weekend on my part.

My next post here will be about my Melbourne excursion and things I discovered in that crazy town across the ditch.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Discovering Auckland

In December 2014, I resigned from my much-loved position as a humble donut baker and waved goodbye to the horror of 2am shift starts. This conveniently left me with an entirely open Summer ahead of me and no obligations to anyone through the Christmas and New Year period with the minor inconvenience of having no income.

With Christmas and New Year's Eve well celebrated Clem and I had a day to ourselves in central Auckland before she was booked to fly home after which I'd arranged for another couple of days in the city for the sake of urban explorations in a place I'd not yet spent a lot of time alone in.

We booked ourselves into a backpackers just off the lower part of Queen Street, right in the heart of the city who charged us a fairly reasonable rate for a room to ourselves in such a convenient location.

For those unfamiliar with Auckland City culture, the December/ January summer period is the time of year where the city's population is at its lowest, with most of its workers taking off out of the city to enjoy the sun. This being the case, we had the golden opportunity to explore the city without the hordes of people that usually occupy the space.

A thorough K road excursion was of course, a mandatory item on the agenda after fuelling up at The Strand Arcade Cafe (best coffee I've yet had in Auckland). We wandered from end to ecclectic end stopping in anywhere that took our interest. I searched in vain for a second hand guitar shop I'd stumbled across on an earlier trip eventually realising that the arcade it was in had closed up for the New Year period.

We got brunch and more coffee (well, alright, iced chocolates...) from a place in the St Kevin's Arcade complex which a quick google search tells me is called Alleluya. I highly recommend the food and the iced chocolate there. I had a big breakfast which was phenomenal and everything else I saw going to other tables while we were there looked incredible too.

After brunch we headed back to explore more of Queen Street via the Myers Park walkway which is my favourite part of central Auckland. It's this absolutely stunning park and walkway that starts at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to St Kevins arcade and finishes up by a really cool looking old kindergarten on Queen Street. There's a couple of quirky statues on the way and a kids playground that looks like it could be a post-modern sculpture installation. I make a point of walking through it about 5 times a day whenever I'm anywhere near that part of the city.

We made a stop at Real Groovy (again mandatory Central Auckland culture) and spent a bit of time fossicking through their novelty section and books before succumbing to tired feet and heading back to our accomodation to rest up a bit.

It was nice being able to explore central Auckland with Clem a bit, both to show her my favourite parts of it and to do a bit of discovering together. I started writing a poem about the central city that trip which I ended up finishing a little ways after and performing at one of the Poetry In Motion (Wellington poetry group whose events I perform at quite often) open mics. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to perform it at an Auckland venue and get some footage of it up on youtube. When that happens I'll stick it here for you all to see, I feel that it captures my experience of Auckland pretty perfectly.

The next post here will be about returning to work, the start of the cricket world cup and most importantly seeing Shakey Graves live at The Tuning Fork.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Island Hopping

After a thoroughly enjoyable few days on the Barrier with Clem, we made our way back to Auckland by way of a flight and a bus from the airport to Queen Street ready to set off towards our New Year's plans on Waiheke Island.

A flatmate of my best friend Charlie had offered to host a group of us at her dad's place out there so we decided we'd all have a backyard campout in true kiwi style to see in 2015.

Clem and I organised our tickets for the ferry over and killed time shopping for last minute camping supplies before we were supposed to meet up with Charlie and board. He ended up running slightly later than planned so we weren't sure for a while whether we'd make the boat we were hoping for or if we'd have to wait on the next one. He ended up getting there right on time for us to all board together which was helpful for navigation purposes once we got to the other side.

With a conspicuous and uncomfortable amount of gear with us, we found ourselves a few seats on the boat to spread across and settled in. Charlie and I got set up with a couple of beers from the bar/tuck shop thing because there's nothing better than drinking on a boat in the midst of a glorious summer day.

He had a bit to talk about, having just spent a significant amount of time with his other half's family, who I'm pretty sure he'd only just met. She's an Aucklander so I guess he figured the Waiheke plan was a good excuse to tie in spending some time in Auckland and meeting her folks.

On the other side, we offloaded ourselves and our stuff, eventually finding our way to the correct bus stop to get us where we needed to be. This is where having Charlie there came in handy. I had very little idea of where we were supposed to be going or how best to get there. He at least had a vague idea and knew what bus we needed to be on.

Fortunately for us the bus stop we needed was right at the end of the line so there wasn't a lot of real effort involved in finding our way there. We arrived to find the other handful of our people chilling out in a giant marquee which fit a couple of couches, a food table, an air mattress and all of our gear with ample room to move about.

We spent what was left of the day which wasn't a huge expanse of time chatting, drinking and setting up sleeping arrangements (tent in the back yard). Charlie and I took a bit of a walk later on after it got dark which gave me a better idea of the geography around us and ended up down on the beach chatting for a while which was nice. 

The next day was December 31st and absolutely stunning weather-wise. We decided we'd do something with the day and catch the bus into the town-y part of the island where most of the shops and cafes seemed to be to get lunch and spend some time at the beach. 

We wandered around a bit before finally all agreeing to duck into a very busy restaurant where if memory serves correctly Charlie met up with us, having left to collect his other half Lucy who'd just arrived across from auckland on the ferry.

It was a nice spot to sit for a while, with a lovely outdoor area which had a table capable of seating us all (I think there were 8 of us all up) and allowed for a good amount of people watching. We sat and chatted for a bit over a light lunch and a few drinks before clearing out and heading down to the beach not far from there.

There was a bit of a breeze coming through at this point but a few of us were still game to go swimming. I didn't stay in long but it was nice to get some time in the ocean, having grown up spending significant portions of my Summer in and around it. In recent years I've been doing less and less ocean swimming in the Summer months and I definitely miss the feel of salt water on my skin when I've not been in for a good while.

After our swim, we got dried off and headed back over to the house. We organised a troupe to take part in an excursion the the local liquor store and service station to stock up for the night by way of several of us crammed into a four seater car.

With ample supplies acquired we set ourselves up back in our marquee with good music run through a halfway decent speaker and settled in to our intimate celebration of the New Year. 

As the night rolled on and we arrived at the all important moment of truth that is the countdown, I found myself flat on my back in the dewy grass outside the marquee in the most wonderful state of inebriation imaginable. I was with it enough to participate in the countdown and share a New Year's kiss with the woman I love but out of it enough to fully appreciate the magic of the moment, to feel the joy of new beginnings as they should be felt whenever the December 31st clock strikes midnight and rings in January 1st.

Clem, Charlie, Lucy and I all left the next day once everyone had fully woken up and we'd organised our things enough to pack the tent. We'd had a great couple of days on the island but having constantly been in close quarters with other people for the past week or so, I was looking forward to having some decent one on one hangout time with Clem.

We said our goodbyes to the rest of the group, the four of us took the same boat back to Auckland and we all got lunch together at Mad Mex before going our separate ways. It was a nice end to one of the best New Year's celebrations I've yet experienced and it was nice to spend a bit more time with Charlie and Lucy getting to know them as a couple as well.

Our celebration on Waiheke was one I will remember and tell stories of for many year's yet. It was the perfect way to see in 2015 and the group of people that were there are an awesome bunch of humans. I hope next New Year's is at least half as cool as this one was.

The next post here will be about my explorations in Auckland in the early days of January 2015.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

A Very Barrier Christmas

For most of my life, I have alternated Christmases every year between Dad's side of the family and Mum's. I spent Christmas 2013 in Tauranga with Dad's side of the family so 2014 was Mum's turn. Usually my grandparents on that side of the family are the ones who host Christmas but this year Mum decided that she wanted to host everyone at her place on Great Barrier Island.

I flew up to Auckland and over to The Barrier a couple of days before Christmas with the plan of staying until a few days after Christmas. Clem was having Christmas with her family but was joining me on the island for a couple of days afterwards.

When I arrived, Mum's parents who I call Marshy (Mum's mum) and Darshy (Mum's dad) were already there. Campbell, Linda and Mum's youngest sister Nicole were also there for Christmas but arrived after me.

It was a lot of fun getting to experience the island in the height of its Summer boom. There were a lot of people around compared to my last visit. A lot of the holiday home owners were enjoying their Summer paradise spots and there were quite a few travellers over for the quality surfing as well.

We did a lot of stuff together, most of which was walking around and seeing places that I hadn't yet seen so that was fun. We also did a lot of eating and drinking in the true spirit of family Christmas. For a few years now, food has been my favourite part of the holiday season, not just the traditional Chrismas lunch but all of the good food before, during and after December 25th itself.

When Campbell arrived we went out and did some fun stuff together which was awesome because we don't get to hang out and do brother stuff all that often any more with having to co-ordinate schedules and such to do so. We took the Kayaks out a couple of times and tried fishing off them albeit unsuccessfully.

Christmas day itself was pretty quiet. It suited the location. We all just chilled out, opened gifts, ate when we felt like it, drank all day. The Barrier has a chill feel to it that sort of inherently impacts everyone in the place. It's a pretty hard place to stress out about anything and the perfect place to relax.

After Christmas, when Clem arrived, I had a couple of things planned to show her. We didn't have a lot of time to do stuff before we were back to Auckland and on to New Year's plans but it was enough to get around some of the cooler stuff on the island.

The main thing we did while she was there was visit the hot spring. We went for a drive across the island in a combined sight-seeing and filling up the car at a cheaper petrol spot adventure and headed to the spring after that. I assumed I'd be able to find the track fairly easily having been there before but I managed to get horrifically lost.

Where I thought the track started was actually the start of a different track. It ended us up in the same place but instead of an easy 15 - 20 minute walk each way we had an hour and a half's walk through rough, storm - damaged track to the spring.

We had a nice relaxing time down at the hot spring after the massive trek we took to get there and on the way out we linked up with the track we were supposed to take so we had an easy walk out. The only problem was that with taking the correct track out, we were about a 15 minute walk downhill from where we'd parked the car.

Being the gentleman that I am and being ever conscious of how far I'd made Clem walk unnecessarily already, I convinced her to sit and wait in a grassy area by the side of the road for me to go up and get the car. After a long uphill trudge on a very hot day whilst horribly thirsty I got to the car, drove down to pick Clem up and we headed home. It was a cool adventure even though it didn't go exactly to plan. Clem probably wanted to murder me by the end of it all, which is fair.

The other notable experience we had was attending an evening of food and music at the Barrier's Thai restaurant. There was a buffet of various Thai dishes and a local band (named Beatz Workin, google them) played a set of classic rock songs from the 60s,70s and 80s. The food was good as was the music and the weather. It was nice to chill out with family and to be able to enjoy everything from a seat at the back with a drink in hand.

The Christmas and Post Christmas festivities on the Barrier were a fun and relaxing time with family and I hope to be able to get back to the Barrier again at some point next summer. It was great to have Clem come over and to be able to show her some of my favourite things that I've experienced on the island so far. I couldn't really have hoped for a more relaxing Christmas.

The next post here will be about New Year's and our trip out to Waiheke Island.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Slam Season 2014

I've been into writing poetry since I could first write in functional sentences as a child. I've been into performing since the first time I had the opportunity to take a stage. When I first discovered that my home city had a performance poetry scene after getting back from exchange in the latter part of 2012 I was beyond excited to get amongst it.

Back then, I got into it by way of signing up for a slam event which acted as a qualifying heat for the Wellington Regional Poetry Slam which in itself acted as a qualifier for the New Zealand National Poetry Slam. I had one piece which I'd barely memorised and a friend along with me for support.

By some miracle I came third in that heat and qualified for regionals. I did a little more writing and brought another piece with me to that event where I didn't end up placing, but I had fun and learned a lot. At this point I was really just feeling out the scene and I was still so nervous on stage that mental blanks were regular.

Fast forward past my 2013 trip to the US. On my return to Wellington I decided to get back involved in the scene. The events I'd competed in before had been put together by a group that now had themselves the name of Poetry In Motion. They met once a month which sounded managable at a bar in town which I'd never heard of at that time having formerly held their events at a rather small pizza place in town.

I decided to once again test my nerves on the slam stage and went along equipped with some new pieces, this time having actually taken the time to write and memorise before the event. Something felt different this time though. When I first slammed the sound of my voice coming at me from the back of the room made me uncomfortable and I felt like a scared little kid on the stage. This time the words were coming out the way I wanted them to, the audience reactions were what I wanted them to be and I felt like I was meant to be on that stage.

The scores I was getting through the night were reflective of a far higher level than anything I'd done prior and I was pretty stoked with myself on that. I was pretty sure that I'd made it into the top 3 again but there were a lot of other really strong performances that night and slam scores can be odd sometimes so nothing's ever a given.

As the third place name was read out, my heart sank a little, I figured that was probably my spot and when it wasn't me called I thought I was done. Second place got called out and the name belonging to it was who I thought would have been the winner but as I said before, slam scores are a little odd sometimes. At this point I was getting ready to congratulate whoever it was that had slotted into first place for the night, waiting for the name to be called.

I damn near cried. This was my third time in a slam poetry event and by some miracle I took first place. There was a cash prize that went along with it but honestly just the sense of belonging and empowerment I got out of that night was more than I ever could've asked for.

This of course meant that I qualified for the regional event later in the year so in my downtime I kept churning out loose lines that eventually got crafted into pieces from which I put together new performance material. I tried out some new stuff on whatever open mics I could get stuff organised for and kept churning through lines in my head trying to get stuff together that felt like it was of a high enough calibre to put out at regionals. I intended on doing the same pieces I'd done in the heat but I also wanted to try and write something in the mean time that could top that.

In the middle of the year, a slam event was organised in celebration of Matariki, essentially the Maori new year. After a little bit of procrastinating and inner debate, I decided to go ahead and sign myself up for it, promising myself that with the deadline of that looming, I'd actually get a new piece finished.

That goal was achieved and so I performed a brand new piece at the Matariki slam. The stage there was awesome. It was set up as part of Te Papa museums official Matarki celebrations so we had the privilege of using their Marae for the event. The place was packed out and there would have easily been a couple of hundred people there.

Unfortunately I didn't make the cut after the first round. I felt that I performed really well, and I got a relatively good reaction so I was feeling slightly hard done by if I'm totally honest. Slam scores don't always make sense though and I had performed the best that I could so I was at least happy with myself for that.

I got a few compliments from people I respect within the community on that particular piece so I shook the overall result of that one off and got working towards the regional final.

At the regional event I broke out a brand new piece which I was nervous about but I felt it would go over well with the audience. I performed better than I ever had before and in an amazingly strong competition, I had the honour of claiming third place. I couldn't believe it! In only my second slam season I'd managed to qualify for the National Poetry Slam finals.

The National Slam was hosted in Wellington on the Poetry In Motion home stage at Meow Bar. It was nice to have the comfort of a home stage in such utterly terrifying circumstances. I was more nervous before the National Slam than I think I've ever been before in my life. I had to down a good couple of beers to stop myself from shaking.

I did the same pieces at Nationals as I did at Regionals but switched up the order a bit because I thought the new one I tried out at Regionals was the strongest one I had and I really wanted to make sure I made the first cut, which eliminated half of the poets.

Again I had the good fortune of some of my strongest performances and the small edits and developments I'd made in pieces since the last slam seemed to go over well. This resulted in me making the first cut which I think left us with a top 7 competing in the second round.

I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to make top 3 although it would've been incredible to have done so. After making the first cut I was just hoping that one of our three Wellingtonian poets would win the night and that the other two might make the top trio.

In the end a Wellingtonian by the name of Ben Stokes took the title of National Slam Champion and as I predicted, I didn't make the top three cut but was more than happy with how my slam season had turned out.

I never even dreamed that I could write and perform well enough to make top 3 in a Wellington regional slam but somehow I managed to back myself enough to pull it off. The 2014 slam season was definitely a huge learning curve for me and gave me a massive boost of confidence towards future performances.

I could not have asked for a better set of results or a higher sense of self satisfaction than what I got out of performance poetry and slamming in 2014. I'm excited to hit the slam stage again this year and see what I can bring to the table. I'm sure I'll find a way to once again surprise myself and exceed my own expectations.

The next post here will be about Christmas 2014 which I spent on Great Barrier Island at mum's house.


Friday, April 24, 2015

My Second 21st Birthday

On Saturday, October 11, 2014, I celebrated my 21st birthday with my closest friends in the city that I grew up in. This was the second of 2 celebrations organised for the occasion and this one was timed to end on my actual birthday which was the day after.

It all started with a group dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town called Red Hill. I'd organised for a group of around 20 of us, including myself, Clemmie, Campbell, Linda and 16 of my friends to meet up there for food and some drinks before unleashing upon the city bars.

Our venue decision was based largely on the central location, cheap dinner prices and B.Y.O. nature of the restaurant and it turned out to be the perfect place to start our night.

Clemmie and I coincidentally ran into Campbell and Linda on the bus into town and the four of us were the first ones to arrive at the restaurant. The place had an interesting looking cocktail list so we sat and ordered some drinks while we waited for other people to get there.

As the others began to arrive, we all just sat around chatting over drinks until all of the seats at the table were filled. Once everyone had arrived we ordered food and ate. I think I ordered the Kung Pao chicken which was delicious. Most of the others brought wine with them so I had a couple of glasses of wine over dinner.

My rough plan for the night was to cruise through a few of the bars in town and end up at The Fringe bar for karaoke to cap it all off. After dinner someone suggested we go up to a park near town and drink up there for a bit. I hadn't done the park party thing since I was in high school and it felt like a good way to get the night going so we convinced the group that it'd be fun.

We stopped at the supermarket on the way to pick up booze and some snack food, I should probably mention that at this point I was dressed in a lion onesie that Clemmie bought me for my birthday which I put on in the restaurant after dinner and continued to wear for the entire night. A friend of mine who works at a pizza place in town stopped there to make some pizzas to bring up to the park as well which was awesome.

Up at the park we had spotify going through someone's phone blasting out of a little speaker thing so we had good music to accompany our juvenile festivities. We managed to get through about half of our supermarket provisions before everyone decided that they'd had enough and that it was a good time to go down and do the karaoke thing so what was left of our group stumbled down toward town to do that.

On the way to town, I checked the time and noticed that it had ticked over onto October 12. It was officially my real birthday!

I don't remember all of the karaoke but I do remember my first song. I did "Forgot About Dre" and absolutely nailed it. People kept coming up to me and telling me how good it was. I'd like to remind you all at this point that I was still dressed in a lion onesie so just let that sink in for a bit.

We had about 6 of our group left with us this late in the night and we all cranked through a couple of songs each. I got talking to a guy outside and told him it was my 21st so he bought me a beer which was nice of him. When we'd all had enough if drunkenly singing in front of strangers we decided to call it a night, so I said my thank - yous and goodbyes to everyone and hopped a bus back home with Clemmie.

The next morning I used the last little bit of money from the party fund to take Clemmie out for a much needed hangover curing breakfast and coffee date at one of my favourite Wellington Cafe's "Sweet Mother's Kitchen." I highly recommend their breakfast burrito, it's absolutely glorious, particularly the morning after a big night.

True to my usual style, I did my 21st in a slightly unconventional way. It was great to be able to celebrate with my family and people who have known me my entire life and I think it worked well holding that as a separate event. It was also fantastic hitting town in the city I've always known as home with the amazing people I've been blessed to have as my close friends.

As is typical of birthdays for me, I feel hardly any different at 21 than I felt at 20. The only thing I can guarantee is that on October 12th 2015, there will be a lot of Taylor Swift playing at my party and I will definitely be feeling 22.

The next post here will be about the excitement of my 2014 slam season and the New Zealand National Poetry Slam.




Thursday, April 23, 2015

My First 21st Birthday

On October 12th 2014 I turned 21. All year I'd been thinking about what I wanted to do to celebrate seeing as 21 is an age at which one is obligated to make a relatively big fuss. I decided that I wanted to have two separate parties, one for all of my close friends and one for all of my family.

While that might seem like an obvious avoidance tactic, it was more because the only appropriate venue I could think of for a massive group of people was my grandparents house which is about 2 and a half hours drive out of Wellington.

It seemed to make sense to host the larger family event there and to have a group dinner followed by a night in town with all of my friends for the sake of an optimal invited guest to attending guest ratio.

The first of these two events was the family one which took place the week before my birthday so that it fitted in with Mum's school holidays. Pretty much my entire family was invited along with a few close family friends who I consider to be my family. I also invited Clemmie along because I thought it would be fun to subject my new girlfriend to the terror of meeting my entire extended family a month into our relationship.

I had work the day of the party and caught a ride with my big brother Campbell and his fiancee Linda after my shift. We arrived a few hours before the scheduled start time which gave me a few hours to get some much needed sleep before I had to be presentable and lively.

When we arrived Mum and the grandparents whose house we were borrowing for the evening were busy finishing off decorations and organising food prep. I said a quick hi to them all before I disappeared upstairs to crash out.

Clemmie was one of the first to arrive which was nice for the both of us. It gave her time with not that many people around to slowly be introduced to everyone rather than having to walk in and meet a hundred strangers all at once. It also meant I didn't have to worry about her getting lost trying to find the place for very long.

The place filled up pretty quickly and it was good chatting with everyone and revisiting my entire life through photos over a few drinks. Mum did a really good job of organising everything over the course of the evening and we had a constant stream of good food circling around the house.

About halfway through the evening, after dinner had been served, everyone was rounded up for the whole presents and speeches thing. I've always found it hard to pay much attention to compliments so having several important people in my life all make speeches about how proud of me they are was hard to sit through without bursting into tears but I think I did alright. It was really nice having both of my parents there particularly during this part of the night too. I haven't had a huge amount of significant life events where both of them have been around so that was cool.

I got a lot of really cool presents as well, from stuff that will prove exceptionally useful in future travel, to things with meaning that actually did make me cry, I even got the laptop that I'm typing this blog post on (thanks mum).

My family 21st was a great night and I'm glad I had so many people that were able to come along and celebrate it with me. I had an awesome time, ate great food, got exceptionally drunk, all the things that should be done at a good party. It was the perfect way to celebrate 21 years of life with a group of people who have known me for most if not all of those 21 years.

My next post here will be about the celebration I had with my friends for my 21st birthday.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The Particularly Good Christmas Party

In December 2013, after recently returning from the U.S. (rather begrudgingly) I made the snap decision to attend a Christmas themed party at my friend Floyd's house. Fitting with the theme which asked us to wear either green or red coloured clothing I was dressed in sneakers, grey jeans and an Aaron Rodgers jersey which for those of you who know nothing of American Football is a dark green colour, Rodgers being the quarterback for Wisconsin's NFL team the Green Bay Packers.

Said party was the first social occasion I had attended since returning to the country after an 8 month absence. This was the chief influence on my decision to go and I expected nothing more than a night of light drinking and catching up with good friends I hadn't seen in a while.

A few minutes after arriving I was introduced to a rather attractive girl with bright red hair who was in a gorgeous dress and instantly made me question my fashion choices. This seemingly inconsequential meeting lead to further conversation later in the evening regarding cats and over-analysis of popular music which also seemed to be and at the time was completely innocuous.

Throughout the evening I had many other interactions with old friends and other people I'd just been introduced to and went home thinking not a whole lot more about it all. At some point one of us added the other on facebook and we liked each other's music pages and I was happy to have made a new friend.

Then she went off to England to study abroad for a year and I more or less forgot about her and carried on with my day to day existence.

A few months later, a movie came out called The Fault In Our Stars. Based off of the book of the same title by my favourite Young Adult author John Green, I saw the movie about 7 times over the course of its cinema run. After my third viewing, Floyd from the earlier paragraph about the Christmas party, organised a group of us to go and see it together.

One of our friends in this group extended the invite to none other than the girl from earlier, who I should probably mention does actually have a name, which is Clemmie. She was back from her adventures in the U.K. and apparently also quite the fan of John Green.

She came along and brought her best friend Chloe with her. I again conversed with her briefly, thought not much of it except that she was an okay human being to converse with and went on with my life.

As time went on, she became a regular feature on our thursday night quiz team, which resulted in me talking to her more and more. We got along reasonably well and after a bit, we started to miss questions in quiz due to being so wrapped up in conversation.

One week after quiz, we all went out to celebrate my friend Nathan's 22nd birthday. We hit a few bars, had a bit to drink and capped off the evening with karaoke at The Fringe bar. I think I did a rendition of Outkast's "Miss Jackson" that night. Karaoke is one of my favourite things to do on a night out, and rap is my favourite genre to do at karaoke given how incredibly white I am.

At the end of the evening, Clemmie offered to drive me home, I accepted and so began a tradition that would last for the next 3 weeks which involved her driving 15 minutes in the opposite direction of her house to drop me off at mine, me completely missing the point and thinking it was very generous of her to do so and both of us wondering what was going on.

On a Sunday night, our friend group usually does movie night at Floyd's house. After about 3 weeks of Clemmie driving me home every time we hung out with the group and us basically conversing with only each other in said group situations, nothing much had changed. Well, apart from the fact that I had now realised that I was crazily into her, everyone else was relentlessly giving me shit about it and I was starting to think that maybe there was an ulterior motive to driving me home. Halfway through this particular movie night, we were all gathered in the kitchen making dessert pizza when Clemmie said she was cold.

Given that I'd been sitting next to her all night debating whether or not I should try to put my arm around her, I took the opportunity I saw in front of me. I went to the lounge, got us a blanket and draped it around us both, using one of my arms to hold my end of the blanket around me and putting the other around her. She seemed to be into it.

When we returned to the couch, we put the blanket over the both of us and I put my arm back around her. The rest of the movie played out with the two of us cuddled up adorably and I felt like things were going pretty well.

At the end of the night, she drove me home, we talked for the entire trip and when we arrived... I said "thanks for the ride" , probably followed by "I'll see you at quiz."

I then spent the better part of the next few days kicking myself for being far too anxious to actually address the situation. I guess I just wanted to let Sunday be a good day in itself rather than ruining the evening by chancing rejection.

On Thursday, I was determined to put the whole thing to rest one way or the other. As per usual we talked pretty much only to each other all night, at the end of the night it was a given that she'd give me a ride home (at this point there wasn't even a verbal exchange about it any more) and so it went.

The entire car ride I felt physically ill and my heart was beating at an unhealthily rapid rate as I went over and over the speech I'd been rehearsing since I'd left her car the previous Sunday. I was struggling to keep my end of the conversation going as a million different panicked thoughts drifted in and out of my head.

When she pulled up outside my house, I very nearly said thanks and left the same way I had every previous time but I managed to mentally slap myself and force out what I felt needed to be said. I took a deep breath and uttered something to the effect of "Although I enjoy the flirtatious friendship we have going on, I would very much like to be your boyfriend." To which she responded positively with a look on her face which seemed to say a combination of "I'm so glad this is happening" and "It's about time you said something, you oblivious dick!"

And that pretty much sums up the story of how I, by some miracle, got together with the most wonderfully intelligent, beautiful and absolutely hilarious woman I have ever met. As I write this I have had the truly blessed experience of sharing my life with her for almost 8 months and have every intention of adding to that number infinitely.

So I guess if there's anything to take away from this story it's this: Never turn down a Christmas party invite.

The next post here will be about the first of 2 magnificent parties I had to celebrate the grand life achievement that is turning 21.






Monday, April 13, 2015

The Comedy of Errors

The last piece of Wellington culture I chose to introduce Hannah too was a happy coincidence. A friend of mine was in a production of Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors"for the theatre programme (Whitireia Stage and Screen Arts) he was studying in at the time which just so happened to be running at the same time Hannah was there.

This was perfect for two reasons. The first is that Wellington is a very artsy city and it's theatre culture is something very much worth experiencing. The second is that Hannah majors in theatre in college. She actually ran our show when I was in the Spring play in Fort (best stage manager ever) and when I helped out on crew for the musical there.

The way that the director had chosen to approach this particular production put an interesting spin on things which is always nice when it comes to doing Shakespeare. They set the entire production inside of a 1930's era jazz club complete with bartender and period - accurate dancing before the show and at interval from the cast. They even enlisted some of the students from their music programme to form a live jazz quartet who played throughout the evening at appropriate times.

This approach made for a very interesting rendition of an extremely funny play which neither Hannah or myself had seen before.

My friend played the part of Dromio of Ephesus, and was hilariously matched up with a woman who played his twin Dromio of Syracuse. The role is a male role and most of the play's humour relies on the fact that the two different characters are supposed to look exactly the same. Somehow cross - casting one of them actually stood to make the whole thing funnier.

Similarly the parts of Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse were played by a student of European descent and a student of African descent which once again seemed to work for the better of the play due to the casts utter commitment. By the end of the performance you almost believed along with the characters involved that each of the Antipholus' and each of the Dromios is identical to the other.

It was an absolute riot of a performance and at the end of it all my stomach hurt form laughing so much. Hannah seemed to really enjoy it as well and said it was really interesting to see how another school in a different country approached theatre.

I think seeing a show was a good way to end my time hosting Hannah and showing off Wellington city yet again.

I was glad to be back to being able to sleep during the day again when Hannah took off for Dunedin (I, of course, went to see her off) but it was also sad going back to a quiet house again and knowing it would probably be a good while before I got to hang out with her again.

The next post here will be about some amazing things that happened in my life circa August 2014.

Friday, April 10, 2015

A Day at The Zoo

Like most of the days I had hanging out with Hannah, this one started with questionable weather and a bus ride. It was grey outside and a little chilly but it didn't seem like it was going to rain much and the forecast said we were good so it seemed like the opportune time to visit the zoo.

Wellington Zoo is one of my favourite places in the whole city. I've probably visited it about 30 times in my life dating back to when I first moved to Wellington as a five year old. I absolutely love seeing the animals and they've done some awesome re - designing over the last few years to make the place a lot easier to get around and a lot more interesting in general.

The re - design has the zoo and it's animals divided up into continents so that largely all of the animals from Africa are in the same place, all of the ones from Asia are in the same place and all of the ones from Australia are in the same place. Each area is decorated up to suit it's geographical theme and there's a lot of interactive zones that fit in with the theme as well.

My favourite approach to looking around the zoo as an adult is to follow the talk schedule around and listen to the presentations by keepers about as many animals as possible. We got to the zoo just before 11 in the morning which left about 5 talks for us to catch.

We started with the chimps, my favourite animal at the zoo and always the most entertaining talk. They basically feed them and chat a bit about the group of chimps they have there and the hierarchy of them. It's always fun watching them catch the fruit being thrown into them by the keeper and watching the impatient ones clapping their hands to try and coerce the keeper into throwing more for them.

From there we had the giraffe talk, another favourite of mine. I've always loved the ridiculous nature of giraffes. They're so gangly and silly looking and their tongues are intriguing. The best part of the giraffe talk is that they give you some branches with leaves on them to try and feed the giraffes with. I have been able to feed them in the past but on this particular day they weren't having any of our nonsense.

At this point it started to rain on us a little bit so we found cover and decided it was probably an okay time for lunch. We hadn't brought food with us this time so made use of the zoo cafe. I bought myself a coffee and some chips while Hannah indulged in traditional NZ fare in the form of a meat pie.

After lunch we decided to take a look around the Australia area of the zoo, figuring that if we took our time there it would tie in well and have us in the right place for the Tasmanian Devil talk. 

The Australia exhibit is in my opinion the most well set up area of the zoo. You walk in through half of a house and come out the other side with a fence separating the two areas to highlight the whole neighbours thing between NZ and Australia. 

All throughout the area there are kangaroos, wallabies and several kinds of bird wandering free around the path and garden areas as you walk between enclosures. They have a relatively recent Tasmanian Devil enclosure with (I think) two of them currently living there and a Dingo enclosure further round.

This area of the zoo also has the coolest interactive stuff. Continuing with the neighbours theme there are letterboxes dotted around the place with information about the animals there, a couple of staged washing lines set up, a trampoline for kids to use and a sandpit next to the Dingoes that invited children to "dig like a Dingo." 

Once the Tasmanian Devil talk was done we decided to wander around the zoo for a while on our own schedule. We stopped by the meerkat enclosure for a while and watched some people having a Meerkat experience tour feed them and hang out with them inside of their habitat for a bit. We also made stops by the spider monkey enclosure near the zoo entrance and the tiger enclosure. We tried earlier to see the lions but they were sensibly avoiding the cold weather inside their den which you can't see into.

When we'd seen everything we were interested in seeing we checked on the talk schedule again to see if there was anything interesting left. The Sun Bear talk was yet to come so we went over to the Asian area to check that out. 

That talk was really cool because in their new enclosure there is a gate where the keeper can lure one of the bears down to be fed and get him to stretch out on the gate so that you can see all of his underbelly and claws from about 2 metres away. It was the closest I've ever been to a real bear and quite the intimidating experience.

We were both pretty tired at that point and ready to call it a day. We headed back over towards the entrance/ exit area and checked in with the Otters on the way out to see what they were up to. We tried to see the Little Blue Penguins next to the Otters as well but they were hiding from us.

It was an awesome day checking out the zoo and I'm glad the weather held up enough for us to make an enjoyable time out of it. Wellington Zoo is a great place to spend the day and is in my humble and unbiased opinion, the best zoo in New Zealand.

The next post here will be about a friends play that Hannah and I went to see before she left to go down to Otago for school.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

A Midwinter Picnic

The weather for Hannah's second day was scheduled to largely behave itself so it seemed the best day we had to venture up to the botanic gardens. I'm not quite sure why I always prioritise the gardens so much whenever I have visitors to show around but I think it's largely because I don't often make a point of going there or venture near them in my day to day life and secondarily because the cable car goes up there and is such an icon of the city within itself.

Once again making use of Wellington's brilliant bus system, we made our way into town and got of at a supermarket in the CBD. We had packed with us a blanket, plates and other generally useful picnic items; all we were missing was the food.

Although the weather was behaving itself in that it wasn't raining on us and the wind was relatively calm, it was rather cool given the time of year so we were both dressed accordingly. I'm sure there aren't many countries where winter time picnics are a feasible or reasonable option, point for New Zealand right there.

We walked up towards cable car lane and travelled up to the gardens, that being the only acceptable means of transportation up there. There is of course pedestrian and vehicle access around the place but the cable car is way cooler and I love taking any opportunity I get to ride on it.

At the top we wandered around parts of the garden I had looked at with Beckett several months before, as well as parts that Beckett and I hadn't bothered to see. There's an old Scout Hall (I'm not sure if it's still actively used or not) that we walked past which Hannah was particularly interested. Her brother at home had been involved in Scouts so their family by default had been heavily involved with his Scout unit.

After an hour or so, we found a nice spot near the sound - shell to lay down our blanket and have something to eat. We'd organised ourself some sandwich stuff, muesli bars and some orange juice; all classic picnic fare. Fortunately the grass was dry enough so as not to soak us or the blanket we had with us.

During the summer the sound - shell hosts a series of free musical events crossing a range of styles and appealing to a variety of different audiences. In my teen years I'd often go along with Mum to a couple of them and we'd sit around the same spot Hannah and I were sat at for our picnic. Usually we took some fish and chips with us or easy to eat picnic type food with a few beers. It was nice being able to revisit that spot with a friend and introduce them to such a cool little place.

We spent some more time wandering the gardens after lunch, stopping by one of the information centre / observation deck spots to learn about the various enormous trees dotted around the gardens. There are all sorts of interesting plants there from around the world and it's great being able to read about them all and their various history's and uses.

In total we probably chilled around the gardens for a good four or five hours which was enough to give them a good go. We took the cable car back down and had a much more peaceful trip than I'd had with Beckett, completely free of unfortunate incidents with children.

My next post here will be about our trip over to Wellington Zoo, the coolest little zoo there is.


Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Playing Host Again

A couple of months after Beckett's visit to Wellington, another one of my good friends from Wisconsin came all the way across the world to see me.

Hannah, who was my prom date in high school at Fort, decided to do a semester on exchange down at Otago University in Dunedin, after much convincing from me that New Zealand was a much better exchange option than going to England (take that so called motherland!).

She arrived a couple of weeks before the start of the New Zealand second semester in Auckland and made her way down country, spending time with friends along the way near Tauranga and seeing a bit of the New Zealand landscape before arriving to spend about 3 days with me in Wellington.

The closest her bus got to my house was Wellington airport (15 minute walk) so I walked down to meet her and hear tales of her adventures thus far.

Unfortunately with the time of year she arrived at, the weather was disinclined to behave in a particularly accommodating manner, so my loose list of options for things to do was entirely weather dependant. It sounded like she'd experienced okay weather in her travels prior to Wellington which was lucky.

Also unfortunately, I had to work the time that she was there so I was dead - tired with starting at 2 AM and then going out and doing things all day but it was a small sacrifice to make for the sake of showing a good friend all of the cool stuff in my hometown.

On her first day in town, it rained torrentially for about 8 hours. I'd already decided that the weather was looking sketchy so the best plan was to visit Te Papa, the National Museum.

We were lucky enough to make it to the bus stop, into town and inside of the building before the real rain started but when that set in we were pretty well restricted to spending the whole day there. Thankfully there's about 3 full days worth of interesting stuff to check out inside the museum.

I was determined to get to Te Papa with Hannah as I didn't quite manage to find time with Beckett and it would have been an absolute crime to have hosted two visitors in Wellington without paying it a visit.

Hannah seemed to really enjoy the areas of the museum pertaining to New Zealand history and Maori culture which was cool to see. I made sure we got in on a showing of Golden Days as well, a must - do for all visitors. I think she found that pretty interesting as well, I know I always get a good laugh out of it even with having seen it about 50 times.

It surprised me actually how much it all interested her. She spent a long time reading through everything while I found ways to keep my short attention span continuously occupied.

We stopped for a lunch and coffee break at the cafe after a couple of hours. I had one of the better coffees I've had in the city and a piece of cheesecake because sometimes it's fun to eat cheesecake for lunch.

After lunch we went back to perusing the museum and stopped in at the art gallery there. I don't generally connect well with visual art, mostly because I know nothing about it and I need explanations of what the thought or context is behind pieces for them to hold my interest. I do enjoy taking wild guesses whilst walking through galleries though and the Te Papa gallery is rather fantastic. At the time they also had a magnetic poetry board set up in there so naturally I left a brief composition on that.

In the sculpture section we got talking to one of the volunteers, an older guy who LOVED to talk. I think he probably would have kept going all day if we hadn't cut him short after about half an hour of him telling us all sorts of stories about his half Chinese grand - daughter and his time at the museum.

When we finally managed to break out of conversation with him, we finished wandering that part of the museum, looked around for another couple of hours, essentially visiting every part of the museum (including the earthquake house) until we were both sufficiently exhausted.

Fortunately by the time we left the rain had softened a bit and we didn't get terribly wet trying to make our way to the bus stop. We must have been in good favour somehow with the weather gods to have not gotten soaked at some point through the day.

We hopped a bus back to Miramar, organised dinner, set up sleeping arrangements (I gave up my bed and slept on a mattress on the floor instead) and I crashed out early, ready to be up at 1 AM to get going for work.

The next post here will be about our adventure on the second day through the Wellington Botanical Gardens.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Beckett's Last Day

With an intense week of travel and activity behind us, Beckett's last day in Wellington was a truly New Zealand day in that it was very laid back. We were both tired and neither of us was too interested in doing much in the way of sight - seeing.

I would have liked to have shown him around Te Papa, the national museum in the middle of the city, but when you don't have the energy it's a big ask to wander around a museum for hours. Instead we slept in late and settled into some quiet drinking couple with general R & R.

We went into town and played pool along some of the iconic Cuba Street bars which is always a good way to spend a chilled out day. Beckett's flight the next day was an early one so we didn't have too big a night or anything but it definitely wasn't a day wasted.

I think it was a good way to reflect on the trip we'd had and share some quality stress - free hang time before we said goodbye for an indefinite length of time once again. It's not very often you find friends that are willing to fly halfway across the world to see you for just a week and if I've learned anything in life so far, it's that those are the people who stick around in your life for a long time. In saying that they're also the genuine kind of people that you want to be in your life for a very long time.

I realise now that writing this, I have seen Beckett every year since my exchange, except for 2015 but with a trip to North America planned later in the year I'm sure we'll make it happen. That's a pretty cool claim to be able to make for friends that live on opposite sides of the world from each other.

To cap off the series of blog posts that have been written about our adventure across the North Island of New Zealand and Wellington City, I woke up at about 4 AM to drive Beckett to the airport the next morning. As is always the case at that time of day, we were both exhausted, it was dark and it felt like the middle of the night. I dropped him off there with his bags, said a quick goodbye and left him to his own devices to check in and such as I drove back toward home.

Naturally, when I got back to the house (thankfully I live about 3 minutes drive from the airport) I went straight to sleep. The accumulative lack of sleep over the trip seemed to catch up with me in one hit and I slept until about 2 PM. I woke up still feeling a little groggy, made myself a cup of black instant coffee and stared out my kitchen window as I often do mindlessly during the wake - up routine.

As I looked out to the neighbours yard with the sun shining in on it, the surreal nature of the previous week dawned upon me. If there hadn't been a half bottle of Duty Free tequila in my cupboard, I'm not sure I would've believed it and so having just woken up in the middle of the afternoon, I poured myself a tequila shot and drank to the raw power of friendship.


Photo by CMDR Shane on Unsplash

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Showing Off My City

On day 1 of the 2 days left at our disposal, Wellington put on an absolute stunner. The decision as to what to do was pretty much made for us so we caught a bus to the CBD and set off on a cable car adventure.

The iconic Wellington cable car is a must see for anyone with a bit of spare time in the city and it leads to another one of the city's must see sites, the Botanical Gardens. I hadn't taken the cable car for a good few years so it was a novel experience for me as well as Beckett.

We bought our tickets from the old school ticketing booth, proceeded through the gates into the dingy tunnel at the bottom of the track and waited for one of the cars to make its way down. I imagine the novelty of the experience wears off for those that take the cable car often from the top of hill down to work around Lambton Quay area but I feel like it'd be awesome to commute via cable car on a daily basis.

Unfortunately we picked a time and day to make the trip that lined up with the time and day that a local high school had decided to take a French class on an outing so we were stuck in an enclosed space with about 30 teenage girls giggling and speaking in broken French. We were pretty glad to not have to listen to that racket any more when we hit the top.

At the top we wandered around the gardens for a bit, although I am not particularly interested in any form of Botany it's still nice to wander around nature for a bit when the weather is good. We weren't there particularly long before we decided we'd had enough of strolling amongst the trees and decided to head back towards town.

On the ride back down there were also quite a few people joining us so the car was quite loud but at least it was loud English, the girls earlier had given me a headache. There were hardly any seats free and the one Beckett was on was not particularly wide. At the start of our trip a small child (Beckett's least favourite form of human) sat right next to him and was half on his lap the entire trip. Half way through the trip, the kid re - adjusted and actually did end up on Beckett's lap which I found hilarious. I think he was somewhere between yelling at the top of his lungs and throwing the kid out of the window judging by his expression at the time.

When we did make it down to the bottom I figured we were on this side of town so might as well visit parliament. Beckett didn't seem too keen but I managed to talk him into it and we arrived just in time for one of their free guided tours. I hadn't had a tour of parliament since I was 14, when Helen Clarke was Prime Minister of New Zealand and we visited with my Social Studies class to watch question time.

Beckett seemed to gain interest as the tour went on and in the end I think we both enjoyed the experience quite a bit. As they take you around the various rooms and areas of parliament they talk a bit about how New Zealand politics works and where certain offices are, where foreign dignitaries are received and things of the like which fascinates me.

After the tour, it was heading into late afternoon and the weather was still holding up so I decided that a nice way to cap off the day might be to go for a quick walk around the waterfront area. We walked pretty much end to end along the wharf area, starting down near the events centre end. Personally I think the waterfront area is the most beautiful spot in the whole city so I wasn't going to pass up the chance to show that off.

We spent a beautiful Wellington day exploring some of the most Wellington - esque Wellington things you can do on a fine day. In hindsight I can't think of a better way to have spent the day.

In the next post here I'll cover the last day we had in Wellington and what we got up to during that, including how I justified skipping out on one of the most iconic visitor spots in the city.


Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

Home Again

For the first time all trip, we had no real time restraints on us. The goal was to be in Wellington by the end of the day but whether that came at 4 in the afternoon or midnight was of no consequence. That being the case, we had the luxury of sleeping in and lazing around camp until we felt like moving on.

When we did eventually polish off our liquor, clear our rubbish out and pack the car again, we drove off in the direction of Huka Falls, approximately 5 minutes up the road from the camp.

The Huka Falls are a series of waterfalls that drain Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand by surface area (616 square km), into the longest river in the country, the Waikato (425 km). The Falls thunder an immense volume of water through a narrow canyon approximately 15 metres in width before the river opens out to around 100 metres wide. The water from the Huka Falls at times flows at a volume of 220,000 litres per second which some loose internet pseudo research tells me would fill an Olympic swimming pool in 11 seconds. 

We arrived at the viewing area and ran into a German guy we'd met briefly at the camp ground who had apparently hitched a ride there for a look around. After a quick chat with him we wandered around and watched the foaming white water coming down from the falls and rampaging down under the bridge we were standing on.

Being a North Islander (albeit from the very south of the north) who has had his fair share of cross country road trips, I had visited the falls several times prior, the first time as a very small child. I always seem to end up on the same train of thought with the tremendous sight of the water rushing through and the overpowering sound of it in my ears. 

I always wonder first what it must have been like for the first Maori people coming down the Waikato in their waka to come across this spectacle. I wonder if the first people to come across it recognised the power of it as insurmountable or if there were attempts made to traverse it. Even the first British settlers must have been astonished by it as they floated their way down the Waikato, exploring the land. I'd hate to think what that volume and speed of rapid could do to the most robust of vessels let alone an old - time wooden craft. I imagine it'd go from boat to splinters in the space of a minute or so.

I think Beckett was also pretty taken with the sheer power of the water and the beautiful colouring of it between the clear blue of the water and the bright white of the foam as it struck the rocks around it. It was definitely a spot I wasn't going to miss out on sharing with him, an iconic feature of New Zealand geography at the meeting point between the two water giants Taupo and Waikato. It really is little wonder that the Maori have such great spiritual connection to these places when you witness the profound dominance over humanity that they exhibit.

We spent a good half hour or so at the falls before hitting the road back towards Wellington. We split the driving between us which made the trip a lot easier to do without copious amounts of rest time along the way.

Apart from a few gas station food stops which as you all know are a staple of every road trip, the drive home went smoothly with nothing particularly notable occurring. We had some great music, courtesy if Beckett's i - phone blasting through the sound system, a reliable and easy to drive vehicle courtesy of my mother (cheers Mum) and a fantastic set of scenery along the drive courtesy of New Zealand.

We arrived back at my place not too late into the evening, unpacked the car as much as we could be bothered and settled in for the night. We had 2 days at or disposal for me to finish showing off Wellington and so I had the usual suspects scheduled (cable car, te papa,waterfront area, cuba street shopping, drinking on courtenay place) with the weather being the deciding factor in which ones we did at which time.

In the next post I'll talk about our last couple of days in Wellington and the remainder of our shenanigans before I eventually agreed to let Beckett go back to Wisconsin.


Photo by Matt Power on Unsplash

Monday, March 30, 2015

On the Road

As was beginning to become a theme for the trip we were up relatively early in the morning to pack up and hit the road out of Orewa. This time we had the luxury of not having to be up before the sun and it was about 8.30 AM before we were fed, packed and ready to go.

The goal for the day was to get to Taupo where there was a free camp ground I'd heard about. I'd had the thought that it would be fun to spend the day in Rotorua before ending up in Taupo to set the tent up before sunset so that was the loose plan going into the day.

On the road I had the thought of getting in touch with my grandparents in Tauranga to see if they were free for a catch up. I knew we didn't have time to stop off in Tauranga if we were going to do anything worthwhile in Rotorua but I thought if they were free they might like to meet us there as a good halfway point considering it's not often I get the opportunity to see them.

They got back and said they'd love to catch up so we co - ordinated to meet them for lunch in Rotorua. With a little bit of directing over the phone and the good luck the orienteering gods blessed us with our entire trip, we found our way to our meeting point; the Rotorua Pizza Hutt.

It was awesome catching up with Grandma and Grandad, and we had a pretty good feed for lunch taking advantage of an "All You Can Eat" type deal. Even with our relatively hectic schedule spurred on by Beckett's late arrival and needing to be back in Wellington in time to fly home, we managed to get an hour or so of catch up time before heading off which was nice.

Our next stop from there was to the Rotorua Luge by way of their gondolas up to the track. We each bought five rides and we started out on the intermediate level track. With neither of us having much regard for our personal safety we had some great races and terrific near misses down that track before deciding to upgrade to the advanced route.

Along the advanced track I lost count of how many times I skidded round corners with only one wheel touching the ground or almost rolled out entirely. Beckett's trouble with the turning mechanism almost sent him head into a head - on collision with one of the track dividers until he managed to make an extremely sharp turn at the absolute last second to avoid it. We had a lot of fun.

I found it funny to see how fast Beckett hurtled down the tracks without fear but almost shook with anxiety on the chairlift back to the top.

After a good day of luging and the obligatory sniff around the jelly bean shop at the top, we went back towards Rotorua to have a look at the hot pools because leaving those out would have been an unforgivable sin as a local playing host to a foreigner. 

We had a quick walk around a park in town that has a few thermal mud pools around it and dipped our toes in the naturally heated pools they have set up around the place for that purpose before calling it a day and venturing off towards our accommodation for the night.

Again, we were blessed in our ability to find our camp site just outside of Taupo, largely helped by pre - printed directions from google maps. We arrived in good time, beating out the setting sun by at least a couple of hours which was nice. We set up the tent when we got there and decided to drive into Taupo for dinner.

At Taupo, we ate and had a brief scout around of the area, including a quick look at the lake area. There wasn't really anything that I could think of that we absolutely had to do in Taupo itself so we decided that the next day we'd continue on our journey towards Wellington. I did, however, feel obligated to take Beckett by the Huka falls to check out the sheer force of nature on display there, so we planned that stop for the next morning.

To cap off an action - packed day, we set up the camping chairs we'd borrowed from mum outside our tent, and relaxed in those with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a large bottle of coke to mix. I've definitely had worse days.

My next post here will briefly touch on our visit to the Huka falls and the rest of our commute down to Wellington which went off without too much trouble.


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Saturday, March 28, 2015

Out of Auckland

Once again we were up before the sun to beat traffic out of Papakura into Auckland but this time we had to get ourselves around so lacked the luxury of being able to sleep through the car trip. I decided that it would be fun to briefly go North of Auckland and if the weather was god perhaps find a nice beach.

When we arrived in Central Auckland we found a place to park up and slept for a couple of hours while we waited for places to open. Beckett needed to get some more NZ cash and we both needed a quick breakfast.

After stopping by a money exchange and my favourite coffee shop in all of Auckland for food (The Strand Arcade Cafe off lower Queen Street) we hit the road and headed up towards Warkworth since I knew how to get there and figured it was close to some nice beaches if we still wanted to do that with our day.

We found our way up to Warkworth and after walking around for a bit, stopped for lunch at Pizza Co (which I recommend to anyone ever passing by Warkworth area) to plan out the day. We were both still relatively tired and neither of us was particularly keen on swimming or anything so we decided in the end to give the beach a miss.

Over lunch I had the thought to get in touch with my step - mother who lives in Wellsford, only a 20 minute drive from where we were to see if she was free for us to visit and see my little brother. She got back to us pretty quick and said she'd love for us to stop by so we decided that would be a fun thing to do. We were booked in that night at a campground in Orewa so our timing worked out for us to spend a few hours in Wellsford and then head over there for the evening.

When we got to Wellsford, Tania (step-mum) suggested we bail Levi out of kindy a couple of hours early and get some decent hang time with him. He was absolutely stoked to see me, something that doesn't happen to often with us living so far apart from each other. I got to have a look around his school and see some of the stuff he'd made there which he was pretty proud to show me.

We took him down to the park near the library and had a run around with him that wore us out more than him. Being a typical 5 year old kid, he kept going at about 100 miles an hour the whole time we were with him. He showed us around the library a little bit and took me to where all of the childrens books are which was pretty cool.

Tania invited us around for an early dinner after Levi sufficiently tuckered us all out and I figured it'd be cool to maximise our time there so we accepted. I sat and read books with Levi on the couch until dinner was ready and he picked out his favourite ones for me. It was awesome being able to spend some quality time with the kid.

After dinner, it was time for us to get back on the road and head out to our accommodation at Red Beach, Orewa. It was a relatively good day weather - wise so we had no problems on the road and generally made good time.

When we were all set up with the tent pitched on our site, we went for a quick drive down to the beach which was about a 5 minute drive from the campground. We had arrived around 6.30 PM so we still had a couple of daylight hours to enjoy the beach before sundown. We took a couple of beers and a rugby ball with us and enjoyed the last bit of our day in good old fashioned kiwi style, which capped it all off perfectly.

As the sun began to drop and the heat consequently began to back off with it, we settled back at the campground, ate some of the food we'd been given by Aida (leftover meat and salads from a barbecue we had the night before) and knocked back a couple more beers (for the record, we were drinking Speight's; the best New Zealand has to offer) and hit the hay in preparation for the next leg of our trip, cruising from Orewa down to Taupo.

In the next post I will be covering our journey to the free campsite just outside of Taupo and what we got up to when we were down there.


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