it's halloween?

After two weekends of getting out and seeing something of the area (last week we headed North to Napier; the weekend before that Kirsten and I headed out to the east side of Wellington bay for an afternoon hike) this weekend was spent almost entirely indoors.
Friday night became the night to celebrate the quiz night win, by spending the quiz night bar tab. Saturday was spent recovering, as well as preparing for a Halloween party Kirsten was determined to throw, to teach the Kiwis about Halloween, a holiday they don't really celebrate, although a few people here do use it as an excuse to get dressed up.

Along with all that, the flat went through a major upheaveal this week. We had been sharing a three-bedroom apartment with a couple - Swedish guy and Australian girl - and a Kiwi student. The couple was traveling and left Saturday, and last week the student announced she was moving out as well, to go to a cheaper flat.
So now we have a whole new set of flatmates. One German couple, and another couple of Australian guy/English girl. Everyone and everything seems like it will work out well, but it took some time this past week to sort everything out.

The party, and the weekend, were a success. Kirsten went through some trouble to dress up as Velma from Scooby-Doo, and I went to less trouble to look marginally like Shaggy. There were schoolgirls, a sheep, and, thanks to some $2.50 "chest hair" from the local all-in-one store, Magnum P.I.

The Australian/English couple moved to Wellington from the South Island Friday night, had taken a room in our flat Saturday around noon, and were at the party Saturday night. At one point, the girl remarked: "I had hoped we'd find a flat soon in Wellington, and I'd thought about eventually meeting people and having house parties - I haven't been here a full day, and we've got a flat, and thrown a party."

sixth time's the charm...

My life goal has now been realized. Wednesday we came out with a relatively easy victory in the quiz, and also won a bonus round, making for a $200 cash prize and $100 toward a future bar tab, split seven ways. Tonight, we reap the benefits of the bar tab.

I haven't had a chance to update much or add photos lately, but some more should be coming by the weekend...

labour day, not labor day

New Zealand celebrated its Labour Day this weekend, which nicely coincided with a friend's ability to borrow a car, meaning we got out of Wellington and headed up to Napier, about four hours north.

The weekend was supposed to be entirely sunny, but it rained on us during the drive up Friday afternoon, then again Saturday morning - though it cleared off a bit as I drove the three girls around the celebrated area wineries (and found a brewery for myself). Sunday the weather was beautiful, and they went for a hike to see a bird colony, although I decided to stay behind and take the only opportunity I've had since I've been here to watch baseball, the first game of the World Series.

In between there was time to sit on the beach and watch the waves; walk around Napier, which claims to have more Art Deco architecture than anywhere outside of Miami; and hang out with fellow travelers in our hostel, which happened to be a 130-year-old stone prison that had been closed in 1993 and re-utilized. We slept in a narrow stone cell with narrower bunkbeds, complete with iron doors which had huge deadbolts on the outside. It wasn't the nicest place I've ever slept, but it wasn't the worst, either, and at least I could leave the cell when I wanted.
The venue made for some interesting showers, as well. They simply took the old shower block and put in a few stalls with curtains. It was still fairly open, and there was just one big room of showers for the entire hostel.

Monday meant a drive back to Wellington, and more rain. I picked up some temporary work (in an office, but at least its only for a few weeks) so today meant back to work. I liked it a lot better when every day was a work holiday for me.

i'm a not-quite-as-lazy American

Since we arrived in New Zealand, I've lost about 20 pounds. I'm
certainly not working out or doing any more organized excercising
than I was back in the States, so apparently not having a car and
actually walking distances of more than two blocks really does help
things.
(So, too, does having less money, at least less money to blow on
going out eating and drinking).

the city

Wellington is not a large city, by most standards; it contains about
400,000 people. But it has the atmosphere of a larger city. It is New
Zealand's capital, and so houses the headquarters of several of the
nation's businesses, or at least a significant presence. It boasts of
being the cultural capital as well, both for the high-brow arts such
as theatre and the bohemian cafe-and-nightlife scene.
Perhaps because it does such a passable impression of a much larger
city, or perhaps because it is forced to squeeze all of the central
city onto the flat coastal area or land taken from the bay, distance
is not what it seems in Wellington.
There are many places in town that offer a glimpse of almost the
entire city, or at least the entire central city. From the hills
ringing Wellington or a downtown office building you can see all the
way across, and "all the way across" seems like it should take some
time. But from our apartment, which is just past the southern edge of
what is considered Wellington proper, to the northern reaches of
downtown, marked by the train station, is only a 30-minute walk.
Even smaller distances are somehow deciving in their appearances. I
live perhaps 300 meters from the nation's War Memorial, which is
marked by a 50-meter-tall carrillion. Walking home, the tower looks
to be away off in the distance even from a few blocks away; then I
pass it, and almost immediately, it appears to be away off in the
distance behind me.
It's an odd sensation, although one Kirsten is tired of hearing me
talk about. It is also an interested facet of Wellington, one that
contributes to its pedestrian-friendly nature.

another week, another quiz night...

Another second-place finish.

days like today

It's hard to overstate how much better Wellington looks on a warm day with the sun out and no wind.

the Ultimate afternoon

Thanks to Amber, another American in Wellington, we headed out Sunday to try and find a pick-up game of Ultimate Frisbee.
Arriving at the designated park, we found a few other players gathered for the frisbee (including yet another American, in town for student teaching, trying, as we were, to meet people through the game). Unfortunately, a larger group of Cricket players had already taken over the field.
Not all was lost - a van showed up, and the decision was made to transport all of us poor saps who arrived on public transportation to a beach on the other side of Wellington. Since Sunday was the first day of really good temperatures and sunlight without much wind, the idea was roundly applauded.
The beach also helped me out. Since the last time I played Ultimate (as the practicioners of the sport refer to it) was somewhere around eight years ago. I was certainly still in school.
Even when I was a freshman in college, when I was playing basketball regularly and in the best shape I've ever been in, a game of Ultimate was taxing. Now, as an occasional smoker and less-occasional exerciser, I was worried about the game killing me.
Thankfully, the beach was narrow and the field was short. There were also 11 people gathered for our five-on-five game. This meant I didn't have to run as far as usual, could be subbed out occasionally, and on the beach, no one can run fast.
Still, when all was done, I was less worried about my performance and more worried about my ability to continue breathing. My body was running dangerously low on the oxygen supply it so desperately wanted. I held my own, though. Perhaps a few more sessions will teach my lungs a lesson about holding their own.

Quiz night update

Fourth time around, and the worst result yet - about 10 points behind, somewhere around 7th place.

I'm going to win this damn quiz.

spring is here, not there

A few weekends back, Kirsten and I managed to get a glimpse of the Botanic Gardens Spring Festival, which nicely coincided with (or, rather, was planned to be at the same time as) the blooming of the garden's tulips, a rather colorful display.




As part of the festival, the garden's observatory cut admission. Unfortunately, we weren't in time to catch a show detailing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere (there's no big dipper here!) but we were in time to check out the observatory's antique telescope, which was built in the 1800s.
The telescope was aimed at the sun - not the main lens, but two smaller lenses were filtered to give a look. One filter revealed simply a large white disk. The other filter turned the sun's rays red, and after a brief interval for my eyes to adjust, I could see flares off the main body, as well as a pair of sun spots. (There's a subtle irony in there somewhere, as the sun has been obscured by clouds during about 90 percent of the daylight hours since I've been in Wellington .)

a missed opportunity

This weekend my knowledge of New Zealand's obscure sports (obscure to me) was vastly broadened.
Friday, I somehow got into a conversation about cricket and it's nuances, and asked questions until the Kiwi I was talking to probably would have rather talked about something else. But (I think) at least I know what some of the numbers up on the screen during cricket telecasts mean, and I'm very close to figuring out what an "over" is. I just haven't figured out why they have them.
(Fun fact - apparently, a cricket game is only supposed to use one ball. If a ball is lost, by a long hit or otherwise, the umpire goes to a batch of pre-worn balls, to find one in the same condition as the lost ball).
(Fun fact No. 2 - I had this conversation in the wee hours of the morning after consuming some beer. Therefore, the entire first fun fact may be wildly inaccurate).

A Saturday barbecue at a friend-of-a-friend's house (with a crowd made up of friends-of-a-friend-of-a-friend) ended in an invitation for me to play netball on Sunday. Even though I don't own the proper attire I decided to go. Problem was, when Sunday rolled around, all I knew was I was supposed to be meeting people at the Newtown Sports Centre at 12:45 p.m., and I vaguely remembered some directions that were, at best, vague to begin with.
(Netball, by the way, is essentially the same "women's basketball" my grandmother played in high school. Players can't move past half-court and no one can move with the ball. It ends up with a lot of passing, and my best comparison is playing Ultimate Frisbee with a basketball, and shooting at a backboard-less goal).
A quick Internet check revealed that there is no Newtown Sports Centre. Or at least that there are a number of places which could broadly be said to be called by that name. Armed with the shaky memory of the shaky directions, Kirsten and I arrived at a decision on where to go.
Of course, we were taking a bus, and we were running late. When we arrived at our best guess of location at about 12:40 p.m., it became obvious we'd guessed wrong. After asking directions and consulting a borrowed street index, we realized the directions (go to the end of Riddiford Street) were meant to start from the other direction. Therefore, we were at the wrong end of the street.
The day was beautiful, but there was no netball. There was a slightly frustrating walk across town, complete with several other wrong turns and is-this-the-street-I-don't-know-I-don't either exchanges. The only thing keeping tempers under control was the sun, out for the first time in weeks.
We arrived at the sports centre (officially named Wellington Indoor Sports) exactly at the moment the netball game ended. However, we did spend the rest of the afternoon at another barbecue in the sun, with the netball players. Not a complete waste; but one of these days, I'll get some first-hand experience with these obscure New Zealand sports.

the best deal in Wellington

Is at a hotel bar on Wednesday nights. For NZ$7 (US$4.89 as I write this, according to an online currency converter) you get A) a quart of beer. This is a deal in and of itself - most bars around here charge between $5-7 for a normal glass. You also get B) a free barbecue. Including lamb chops, chicken wings, sausages and fixin's. Easily the best deal around.

Not only that, but afterward there's a pub quiz. Bars in the States do something like this as well, but there's at least one pub quiz every night here somewhere. Find a team, write down answers to questions asked, turn them in, match your score against other teams in the bar.
The key for us is to find some Kiwis who need extra people, because I know nothing about the history of New Zealand rugby, cricket, politics or pop culture. Surprisingly, this matters less than you'd think, but definitely enough to make native New Zealanders a necessity.
So far we've lucked out. Out of three trips, three times we've joined in with some Kiwis looking for extras. The first two weeks, it was the same people. They didn't show this week, so we found some other lonely Kiwis.
The first week, we came in fourth out of 16 teams, a chunk of points behind. The second week, the team finished second of 16 teams - 1 f'in point back. Yesterday, we tied for third of 19 teams - 3 points back.
The winning team gets $200 cash. The second-place team, and the other teams, get nothing. Four points from $400. One of these days, I'm winning that damn quiz.

differences

New Zealand doesn't require a lot of adjustment for Americans. Other than the really long flight to get here and the fact I needed a passport, in a lot of ways I may as well be visiting an unfamiliar state. The language is the same, except for a new accent, and that takes away of lot of the strangeness of a new country. Not to mention a lot of the brand names are the same. Almost all the movies, music and TV are the same, although a few month behind. I'm certainly not dealing with the things my friends in South Korea or Kazakhstan are.

There are a few differences, however. Little things that strike you just when you'd forgotten you were in a far-away land.

The Kiwis don't use a penny. They still price things to 99 cents, but if you're paying in cash, the grocery stores automatically round up or down to the nearest 5 cents.
They drive on the wrong side of the road. This also means cars are still going the wrong way in relation to me as I walk around.
The newspapers are an inch or so wider than American broadsheets. (This detail may be more important to me than it would be to others).
They speak, as I've said before, in a funny accent. This doesn't usually present problems, but three times now I've been watching the news and had absolutely no idea what one of the interview subjects said. Of course, this also happened to me from time to time when I lived in Mississippi.

I still find myself making conversions in my head, as well. Most of these are easy. Kilograms to pounds - 2.2. Kilometers to miles - 0.6. Kiwi dollar to U.S. dollar - .70.
Shopping is the first area it gets tricky. Produce and meat is priced in dollars per kilo, so I do two conversions: divide the price by 2.2 to get price per pound. Then try to calculate 70 percent of the number, to get the U.S. dollar equivalent.
Even then, I still don't really have a number that means anything, because I'm comparison shopping with stores in the U.S. rather than other shops in New Zealand, where I could actually use an alternative. But it makes me feel better to know just how much more I'm paying for green peppers here than I did in the States.
With temperature, though, I'm lost. Not only is the conversion a whole formula (algorithm?) rather than a simple ratio, it's not a formula I know, or can keep in my head. And temperatures given in Celsius mean nothing to me. I have no concept of what 17 feels like as opposed to 13, or 27, or 2. Not like I just know the difference between 55 and 65, or 30, or 88, or 47. So even when I see a weather forecast, what the day feels like surprises me.

The other big difference is one only roughly half the traveling population would have to deal with. The urinals here took some getting used to. No. 1, because you can't flush them. Every urinal I've seen has no flushing mechanism, not even an automatic sensor after each use. They are simply hooked up to a pipe that either continuously runs water into them, or, most often, flushes them on a standard time interval. I don't know if they are usually flushed every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, every hour, every week - I've never spent enough time in any one public bathroom to know. But it was a little odd the first time I walked into a bathroom and suddenly every urinal started to flush.
For No. 2, as often as not the urinal will simply be a large metal trough, flush against the wall from about floor to chest height. Then in front will be a small platform to stand on. Occasionally, it's simply a grate of sorts, and the drain is actually beneath your feet.
The Kiwis build urinals you have to walk into to pee. That's a difference.

a weekend Wellington walk

Before it finished, my feet hurt. Up until then, however, it was a good idea.

We actually got out of the house this weekend, and even out of the city. Kirsten and I, along with our friend Amy, decided to take advantage of Wellington's proximity to the sea and walk to Sinclair Head, a point south of the city known for a fur seal colony.
To get there, we took the bus to the end of the line. Then walked to the end of the road. Then walked some more, to the end of the trail (where the seals were). Then reversed our steps, and walked back, since that was the only option.
In all, we walked 13 kilometers (about 8 miles), which was about 2 kilometers too many, especially since I'm still in American mode, which means I'm used to driving anywhere further than a block away.
Looking at Wellington on a map, one of the striking features about the city is its location near the bottom of the north island, therefore near the sea, and the mostly wild, mountainous landscape keeping the city penned in.
Living in Wellington, it's easy to forget the sea and bush are just over the hills. In just a few weeks, I've gotten used to walking between our house and downtown, and finding some of the urban nooks and crannies. Without a car, though, it's hard to escape the gravitational pull of all the buildings.
For a few hours, we did. The walk was level and really not too bad, especially when we were rewarded at the end with seals close enough to touch (although that seemed like a bad idea after one growled at me). It also didn't rain on us, which was a bonus, considering the increasingly dark hue of the sky.
Today, I picked up maps of other walks around Wellington, many of them longer, and including actually elevation changes. The idea is nice, but perhaps I'll invest in some new shoes first (or magically get in shape).