A happy-go-lucky English rambler dude goes to New Zealand for a year. Here he interfaces with some of those he left behind and details his nefarious activities. Or summat.
Recently clicked on MP3s - 7th June 2005 The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners
Jens Lekman - When i said i wanted to be your dog
The Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting
Teenage Fanclub - Man Made
Laura Veirs - Carbon Glacier
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Eels - Blinking Lights
Thursday, January 31, 2002
Been working v. long hours this week, hence the lack of posts (The idea of more pooter based activity after a 12hour+ shifts of hacking apart other peoples' code is less than appealing).
I've been keeping up with a few of the latest trends from home this week though, namely:
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, they seem to be a 'hot' new pop combo, according to the nme, so i downloaded a few of their mp3's at work, and sure enough, they are pretty good (Especially 'Whatever happened to my Rock'n'Roll' & 'Red eyes and tears').
But still not quite as good as the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Creedence mp3's i've also been grooving too at work
Also, listened to the Realplayer broadcast of Liverpool Vs Leicester, and came away fairly depressed. Not just because we lost, but because of how resigned to relegation the commentators sounded. Articles like this in the Guardian don't really help either.
1:24 pm Monday, January 28, 2002
Despite feeling slightly fried from a tough week's ASP'ing, the weekend was a full-on outdoor fest.
Saturday found Keith & i driving across the Canterbury Plains toward the Torlesse range, at the crack of 1pm. This is one of the many mountain ranges in the south island i'd not even set foot on as yet, but after driving through it via Porter's Pass, and ogling it many times, i thought that a closer inspection was in order.
Incredibly the weather was looking pretty good, but as we neared our chosen mountains, Foggy Peak (1741m), Castle Hill Peak (1998m) and Mount Plenty(1459m), it became obvious that they had a large dollop of cloud on top of them all :o( But, being the hardened tramping types we are, this didn't discourage us (much), and a course was set direct for the heart of the cloud (Foggy peak, unsurprisingly). Soon enough we were in the middle of some depressingly thick cloud, and the possibility of heading back down after doing Foggy peak was mentioned, as Keith's knees "Ached a bit", and I "Had stuff to do back in town".
The moaning soon stopped though, when after about half an hour of nil visibility, we emerged above the clouds to an incredible sight. On one side of us endless valleys and mountain ranges stretched off as far as the eye could see, and on the other side of the ridge a huge cloud sea was spread across the Canterbury Plains - wow,wow,wow!
A definite spring returned to our steps, and the rest of the walk was possibly one of the best hikes i've ever had, which was totally appropriate as Castle Hill Peak was also the highest mountain either of us had ever been up. Irritatingly it was 2m below the 2000m barrier, but we both climbed the trig pillar, so I reckon that almost counts as 2k?
Due to our lazy arse attitude when setting off from Christchurch, the last few k's along the road, to the car were completed in darkness, and some of it was done at a jog - due to Keith being a psychopath - until the wheezing noises I was making became too annoying ;o)
Sunday, mainly consisted of slobbing round the house reading 'Bluebeard' by Kurt Vonnegut (Excellent), and foraging for uneaten packets of 50cent noodles at the back of the cupboard (Is NZ life glamorous or what!). However my personal motivation / fitness coach, Keith, turned up again and suggested a bike ride up to the Dyers pass (A 400m climb). Somehow noodle power got me up to the top, and the downhill section took care of itself as usual :oD (Keith's on-bike pooter said we got up to 68kph - ROCK!)
8:09 am Friday, January 25, 2002
Ooh! I've also scanned some photos of Mum & Dad's visit, as well as rounding up various old pictures and put them onto my PhotoIsland site, click here to login in (Password = 'MountCook') or on the usual link on left hand side.
9:12 am
Been a fairly quiet week, interspersed with a few high quality videos, and another climbing session, this time with Greg from work (A highly experienced ninja style climber). But, as i'm currently skint, and saving money to move on to other bits of NZ soon(ish), as well as Sanjay's visit (With the Cricket Internationals too :oD) , this was ideal.
Climbing with Greg was useful as he pointed out numerous things I was doing wrong whilst attempting to haul my ass up the climbing wall, but slightly demoralising too, watching him scamper up climbs that i had just convinced myself were physically impossible.
By the way, have any of you ever been bothered by suspicious cults, living in the flat underneath you? Well Greg and Andriko from work, who live in the same appartment block as me, have been, and told me about a pretty hilarious way of pissing them off that they discovered last week.
During a storm, their windows started leaking heavily, and their flat rapidly began turning into a lake. What would the average person do? Mop it up probably, but the instead the lads saw it as a opportunity to give the cult a gift from the heavens, and began drilling numerous holes in the floor, so the gallons of rain pouring into their appartment soon found their way down to the cult below!
I haven't had any personal experiences with the Sri Chinmoy cult involved, but Carlos Santana said this of them,
"This shit is not for me--I don't care how enlightening it is."
So that's good enough for me ;o) Andriko and his Brother Theo, also claim to have infiltrated them briefly, and seen a "Love Money" box that members are encouraged to donate to as much as possible, which also sounds a tad fishy if you ask me.
9:01 am Tuesday, January 22, 2002
I'm all on my own now - Alison's done, gone an' left me :o( Waved her off at the airport on sunday, then went home and moped for about an hour, until an unexpected visit from the Keith-meister cheered me right up.
He'd just bought a bitching new mountain bike (A Kona Cinder Cone), and insisted i came round to his house to gawp at it, and then bez up and down the street, seeing who could get the fastest speed up (Calculated using the snazzy on-board computer he got with it too!). Which, as you can imagine, was a whole lotta fun. And combined with the sun coming out over Christchurch for the first time in living memory, led to me cheering right up. (Sorry Alison, the brother / sister bond clearly isn't as deep as the satisfaction gained from arsing around on bikes ;o)
I had a go at yet another new hobby on Monday night - Ultimate. If you can imagine, it's basically a cross between, US Football, Netball and Basketball, only played with a frisbee - simple huh?
I always considered myself to be fairly proficient at the art of frisbee, but having to combine this with running around like a lunatic, as well as having a team of people doing their best to stop you passing to anyone, does tend to make the whole thing a lot harder. Nevertheless it was great fun, despite the other team quickly realising i was the weakest link in the opposition, and exploiting this to the full :os
5:49 am Well you can all stop worrying now, I'm back posting again and not in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the YMCA climbing wall. In fact i'm sat at home tapping away on Michaels' laptop, nodding along to the "supa-phat" sounds of 'The Document' by Andy Smith.
I was truly suprised by my experience on the YMCA climbing wall, not by how good i was, as i wasn't, but by just how much fun the whole thing was. I'd never really seen the the attraction of climbing before, but getting to the top of even the smaller climbs was v. satisfying indeed and brought back childhood memories of climbing trees down at 'The pits', though without having drunk a bottle of Merrydown cider first :os
We started off on the easiest possible climbs, to get warmed up and to learn to trust our lives to the rope, harness and the person belaying us. Once we were happy with our figure of 8 knots etc, and merrily falling off all over the place attempting ever more tricky ascents, we decided to go for the 'biggy'. It was quite an easy route compared to some we had been doing, but it lead 50ft up to the ceiling of the YMCA, erk. I belayed Keith & Michael as they scampered up to the top with relative ease, but this gave me a bit too much time to get nervous about the whole thing. As it turned out the route was a doddle, the first 44ft of it at least, but the devious mofo's who set the route out, had left a rather tricky bit near the top. Not any harder than some of the stuff i'd been doing lower down, but at that height some kind of powerful, primeval survival instinct took over and prevented me making a leap for the next tiny handhold, and instead forced me cringe down at Michael, on belay duty, then gingerly lean back into my harness and wait to be lowered back down to something easier to hold onto.
Despite not quite getting to the top of the big'un, I retired to the Dux de Lux afterwards with Keith and Michael, scoffed some well earned nachos and booze, and discussed just how amazingly proud of ourselves we all felt! Sadly the feeling has dissipated slightly during the week, but at the time I honestly felt like, "How can anything else in life ever really be a problem? I've just climbed 40ft up a bloody great wall!". Unsurprisingly, we're going again next week :o)
Having said all that, other stuff in life has been a problem this week. Specifically, the worst part of travelling - having to say endless goodbyes to all the people you meet along the way.
Not sure if they count as people i've met along the way, but Mum & Dad left Christchurch to continue their world tour on Thursday. I don't think they were quite as emotional as they were when I wandered off through the terminal at Heathrow, but it was pretty hard saying goodbye to them all over again. Though I think they've convinced themselves that NZ is a suitable country for their ickle lad to be hanging around in, which made things a bit easier.
The next night brought another farewell, this time it was the clown prince of West brom supporters and all round good-egg, Mark, heading off to Perth the next day. Despite the large number of goodbyes i've had to go through on my travels, i've still not yet mastered the art of coming up with a snappy, yet meaningful goodbye speech. I did attempt one for Mark, but was hampered by the fact i'd been necking Monteith's Original all night, and so blathered something about him being a "Bootiful 'uman being" or summat, and then staggered off into the night. Naturally, this statement will be fully retracted if the Baggies fluke a victory against the all conquering Leicester City in the FA cup 4th round.
They keep on coming too, as this Sunday my little (but fat arsed :op ) sister ships out of Christchurch for the final time. I'd imagine this will be about as harrowing as they come, as she's leaving a bunch of mates she's built up over 6 months, as well as Sarah who she met in Heathrow when they were flying out to NZ a year ago!
For me too - fat arsed as she may be, Alison's been my personal guide to NZ (Bars), a shoulder to whinge on whenever i felt like it, top frisbee partner and basically a high quality sister.
Watched Bad Boy Bubby on video tonight - what a great film! It answers an important question that i'm sure many people have wondered about for years, "What would a guy turn out like if he'd spent the first 35 years of his life locked in a bedsit with his cat and mother?".
The answer - a cross between Nick Cave and Vic Reeves. I for one will be sleeping sounder tonight for that knowledge.
5:32 am Tuesday, January 15, 2002
I've got another date with EXTREME sports action tonight, as Keith has booked a climbing lesson, at the YMCA climbing wall :os
I must admit to being slightly nervous about the whole thing, despite certain, more experienced climbing types last night claiming that "Indoor walls are for wusses". Humph, have they been Paragliding though? No! :op
Michael and I reclaimed our good reputation at Alice in Videoland last night by renting a particularly high quality bunch of films. He chose The man with the Golden arm and Bad Boy Bubby, and i went for The Idiots and The Girl on the Bridge. Both of which i've seen before, but you can never have too much Vanessa Paradis in your life....
5:41 am Monday, January 14, 2002 Well, i'm back in rainy Christchurch after 4 days of being on the road with 'The family unit' (That's my parents and sister, rather than a little known NZ Jazz/Funk combo)
We arranged to meet up in Kaikoura, soon after arriving Alison and I spotted Mum & Dad walking down the street towards us. Worringly, our first instinct was to scream "Shit! It's Mum & Dad!", and then hide behind a nearby wall, giggling. But, after 5 mins of spying on them, and commenting on how they looked slightly fatter and greyer, we sprang from our hiding place, pursued them down the street and then pounced on them with delight when they were in range.
It was great to see the old duffers again, and they haven't changed a bit, which is both good and bad - at times leaving Alison and me feeling like 10 year olds on a family holiday again, scowling and rolling our eyes, while Mum and Dad went about creating yet another scene.
Sadly the itinerary was messed up a little by the currently crap NZ weather. All whale watching, and Dolphin swimming boats in Kaikoura were cancelled because of rough seas, so we left early to go to north to Nelson, the sunniest place in NZ. It lived up to it's reputation for a while, but irritatingly it seemed we had brought the weather with us, and that night a massive thunder storm unloaded on Motueka. Our motel started springing leaks all over the place, so we abandoned it in favour of the highly groovy "Hot Mama's Cafe", for a slap up feed, and Mac's gold all round - hurrah!
Things looked a bit brighter the next day though, and we caught the aqua taxi from the idyllic Marahau beach, round to the even idyllic-er Anchorage beach, on the Abel Tasman coastal track. A leisurely 5 hour wander through the rainforest-like bush took us back to Marahau, naturally via as many beaches as possible, in absolutely gorgeous weather.
The next day we were on the road again, driving down the west coast to the rather dull sounding Greymouth. But there was more than enough good stuff along the way, starting with the Buller Gorge. NZ's biggest swingbridge goes across it, and I thought this would be more than exciting enough for everybody, but bizarrely Mum insisted on doing the 'Superman' wire slide across the gorge. To keep face I persuaded Alison that we should do the tandem wire slide, but to be honest this was far wussier than Mum's. If I remember nothing else about their visit, the mental image of my mother, in a full body harness and red helemt flying across the Buller gorge is one that will remain with me for some time.
The next stop was the 'Pancake rocks', at Punakaiki. These, as you may have guessed are some rocks that are shaped almost exactly like, yawn - Pancakes. Sounds dull, but they're not at all, honestly. For starters, they face west, so by the time we arrived there the sun was starting to set into the Tasman sea, sihillouetted dolphins were jumping around in the sea in front of the rocks, all sorts of exotic birds & insects were making all sorts of noises in the bush and the rocks themselves, were well, extremely pancake shaped :oD
After a night in Greymouth and a quick visit to Hokatika on Sunday, I left Mum, Dad and Alison, as i had a new job starting today.
BREAKING NEWS... Text's from received from Alison today reveal that Mum has been bitten by the EXTREME sports bug in Queenstown (The home of EXTREME), and irritatingly is planning to do a paraglide jump. So to keep any EXTREME cred I had after my paraglide, i'll now have to up the ante, and go more EXTREME than my mother - damn! Hmm, I think doing a nude paraglide, whilst drinking Pepsi Max should do the trick, although may lead to my arrest upon landing.....
6:42 am Monday, January 07, 2002
Seeing my parents for the first time in 4 months later this week, who are over for a 2 week holiday in NZ, visiting Alison (My sister) & me, before heading to Sydney (Nice timing) and then off to LA & Vegas Baby, Vegas!
Not sure what we'll all be doing yet, but it'll be nice to have the whole family back together again, for a short while. Though after Mum & Dad leave, it's only a few days till Alison is also deserting NZ, leaving little ol' me stranded alone on the wrong side of the world - eek!
Fear not though, as yet more visitors from the UK are arriving in February - Sanjay! My old Birstall / School chum, who is doing a whirlwind tour of the planet earth, like most people seem to be doing these days.
At this rate, i doubt i'll spend any time abroad without friends from home to keep me company, but there a couple of empty spots left in my itinerary that are left unaccounted for: March - June/July in NZ, then 2 weeks in Aussie, 1 week in Fiji, 1 week in Hawaii and 4 weeks in Canada. Tickets for the "Ted World Tour" are selling fast, so if you want to accompany me on any of the available sections of my trip, please apply now :op
2:15 am Sunday, January 06, 2002
Zzzzzzzz It's been pissing it down in Christchurch for the past few days, which has left me moping around the Loft style appartment, reading Lord of the Rings a lot.
Bored Bored Bored. The videos we ended up getting out last night (From the world's best video store), resulted from the brainless mood of of lethargy and tedium that had been hanging over us all day - Predator 2 and Bad Taste. What can i say, i just fancied watching sheep getting bazooka-ed, and Voodoo drug lords getting beheaded by a great big alien.
I was wondering last night, why on earth has Predator 3 never been made? Surely it just couldn't go wrong. My initial idea for it was to have Phillip Seymour Hoffman starring as a hapless Duck hunter, thrown into a life or death conflict when he bags a duck the predator had his eye on.
Maybe the whole Predator franchise could be brought more up to date, by crossing it over with a reality TV show - Survivor: The Predator Chronicles, or maybe a Big Brother type affair? Who would dare nominate the Predator? And would you feel safe having a shower, never knowing whether or not the Predator was ogling you from his cloaked state? Also, spines being ripped from bodies, and the little red triangle gun causing peoples chests to explode, would have to be an improvement over watching arguments over who's done the least washing up, or who's turn it is to feed the chickens.
Hmmm, the sun has now come out, and I feel it's time I reaquainted myself with the outside world ;o)
4:51 am Thursday, January 03, 2002 Exciting new photographic opportunity!
Yes! Now you can enjoy photography good-ness at any time of the day and night, simply by logging onto the photo-webpage-thing i've set up on www.photoisland.com. At the minute there's only the one gallery, featuring the pictures i've just had printed from my recent trip to Mount Cook village.
The password is 'MountCook', and once you're in, click on the gallery name on the left.
3:14 am
