ZEALANTICS LIVE! episode the second

The water seemed to leap up like a land-borne wave as the transport truck shot by the malfunctioning hydrant at the edge of Greymouth’s southern suburbs, and, after a brief but unsuccessful bout with gravity, it came crashing down over my newly-laundered clothes. Normally this would be a source of consternation, but I wasn’t that bothered as I had already done about 6-7 km of unsuccessful hitching on this day and it was strikingly hot. The New Zealand sun hits you with a force entirely unlike anything I’ve experienced before visiting: the locals say it’s because of a deficit in the ozone layer over New Zealand (possibly caused by livestock.. emissions), and don’t seem to be bothered by it in the way pansy North Americans like me can be. Whatever the cause of the sun’s angriness it is a real thing, which is why my catching an inadvertent wave beside a highway wasn’t as bad as it could have been – though it was a little grimier than your average tsunami.

At long last a small pickup truck pulled over and I cheerily hopped in, with the goal of making it to the greenstone (pounamu, a local variety of jade) carving capital of Hokitika. The guy was willing to drop me there on his way south to Pukekura, an outpost I knew only from kitschy advertisements on tourist map corners, where he managed the inn/hostel and the nearby pub. After a glance at a map revealed this to be some 50 kilometers further south than Hokitika – with my goal being to hitch down the entire coast to Queenstown – I asked if I could set up a tent on the grounds for some nominal fee, and a short call to his girl later it was agreed upon. I was going to stay the night in Pukekura.

Now Pukekura is famous for two things: having a permanent population of 2 (two), and having a rather distinct hate for possums (and Aucklanders, for that matter). We chatted about the area as he drove, which led me to ask about the local fishing prospects (I had been carrying my fly fishing gear this whole time); this was a fortunate question as it immediately led to me being invited to join him and his friend that evening on a surfcasting trip. As there is only one real answer to such things I immediately agreed, and a short turnaround/setting up of camp later we were bound for the coast.

The lines went out into the waves (in roughly the direction of Tasmania, I was cheerily informed) and, with the aid of some beers he produced from the back of the truck we three set to chatting. Fresh off my backwoodsy experience (I suppose fresh is a relative term, but my clothes were mostly clean) I asked them about the area’s approach to possum extirpation – which turned out to be a hot-button topic. It seems that the government, which usually makes a lot of noise about protecting indigenous species (especially songbirds), thinks the best way to kill possums is by dropping an aerial poison, referred to locally as ‘1080’. The problem, my hosts explained between checking lines, is that 1080 tends to kill absolutely everything else as well, leading to a woodsy walk a week or so after an aerial drop being littered with bird, deer, and all manner of other corpses (families are directed to keep children inside during and immediately after a drop). This is all in the name of protecting the local dairy industry (the significant taxpayer) from the terrors of bovine tuberculosis, a disease possums can carry which manifests in sores all over the possums rather than the expected cough, which neither guy (both lifelong possum profiteers) had never seen on a single possum. Predictably, Pukekura is rather against the government’s plans:

In the end we caught nothing (no elephant fish! I was so disappointed after hearing there was such a thing) but the attention of a marauding swarm of local sandflies, and so eventually retired to the Puke pub for snacks and more chat before bed. It was here that I saw the most grizzled old man imaginable trading tips for maximizing profits from possum fur sales (such as those he had with him in a stack on the wooden bartop) – apparently a savvy move is to float them in a tub of water for some time so the felt side gains moisture weight and can be stretched – with the conspicuously attractive bartender, a girl who drives in nightly to relieve the pregnant girlfriend of my host in her time of need. As the semi-knockout knowingly swapped secrets with the octogenarian in battered gumboots (sounds like the worst pub snack ever), I couldn’t help but privately marvel at the differences between this and my urbane, if shabby, existence in Wellington. That being said, both residents of Pukekura were marvellously generous (a theme among West Coasters) and also surprisingly politically aware. Alas for them that their part of the country, which comprises 9% of the total land area, only contains 1% of the population; it’s not surprising that the farce of 1080 aerial dropping can be put over on them against their will.

Turning again to the road the next day, I wasn’t more than 2 or 3 kilometers out of ‘town’ before a car mercifully pulled over to take me south. The driver brokenly said that he was headed for Franz Josef, my goal for the day, and I happily hopped in for the ride. After a brief grace period in which I chatted to another passenger (a Canadian who had also been hitching) we fell silent, before being treated to the driver’s music as we climbed the hills – King Crimson’s ‘Hall of the Crimson King’ in true epic ear shattering style – en route to the small village near the foot of the world-famous glacier. From the back seat I hadn’t even yet discovered the generous driver’s name before the other Canadian jumped out towards a local hostel and I was able to move to the front, but I wanted to see the eponymous glacier, just as the driver did, and so we kept traveling. It turned out he was named Jonathan (or Yonatan, as I later discovered), and he was an Israeli maybe 2 years older than I. I immediately took a liking to his adventurous spirit, his humour, and his halting way of speech: my real South Island travel supergroup (apologies to my murderous Murchison pal) was born.

We took the much more manly (and sweaty) 5 hour round trip walking route to see the glacier, eschewing the little ants far below as they easily crawled up the riverbanks towards the wonderful view that awaited us all. After a very long-seeming hike replete with endless p.u.d.’s (pointless up and downs) we arrived at the wooden viewing platform, and were met only with a picnic table and this view: ladies and gentlemen, I give you Zealantics live #2.

Of possums, profits, and posterity

Hitch-hiking can sometimes be an effortless experience in which you are flung along your chosen road, ride after ride bringing you swiftly to your goal location. It can also be the most demoralising thing imaginable, as you watch dozens of likely rides fly by full of empty seats and are cheerily waved at by the drivers as they plunge on at about thirty times your current speed. By length of description you can infer which I experienced when leaving Nelson: from the outskirts of the suburb of Richmond I walked approximately 16 kilometers to the village of Wakefield, all the while doing constant pointless pirouettes with a fixed smile and jovial Canadiattitude turned up to maximum. As I prepared to leave Wakefield along the same seemingly pointless highway I had been following, however, I happened to see a car pull up some 50 metres behind me and expel a 20-something young man with a backpack, some serious workboots, and an average-sized rifle in a transparent carrying case: I waited for him to catch up, and discovered that he was Thomas “call me Tom, mate” Murphy – recently resident in a local logging camp. Thus it was that I formed my first South Island travel supergroup.

It took us some time longer to find a ride, which we passed in conversation about local activities and proclivities, but soon we were southern bound at breakneck speed in a series of decreasingly excellent automobiles, the last of which driven by a man who (alarmingly) had recently given up the “bad drugs” and lived for a month in silence at the local Buddhist/hippie retreat and was eager to talk. So it was that Thomas and I found ourselves pulling into the town of Murchison (Tom’s hometown) as evening began to make the likelihood of me getting further towards the coast seem less and less likely. We went to the local, ordered a welcome beer after our day’s travels/travails, and set to chatting as we cooled down from the road.

To say that Murchison is a different kind of place would be an understatement. It’s where hostels spring up in basements (replete with owners that scream at their dogs for being “cunts” when they come inside smelling of awful), sandals are referred to as “Samoan safety boots”, and “horse pooh” can be bought from smiling children for $2.50 a large sack – or $1.00 a grocery bag, if you please. The hostel manager, a sweet-seeming young woman about my age, was happy to have my business but was sure to warn me to hide any contraband (my word), as the police were due to come by later as part of some probation agreement she’d agreed to; this was a town where getting arrested “attempting” (my favourite part of the story) to urinate on a cop car’s windshield was something to slap knees over, rather than manacles onto wrists. It’s also where I agreed, after several games of pool and a few beers gifted by locals (all profoundly heterosexual men, oddly enough), to join in with Tom and his friend on some ‘possuming’ the next night.

Possuming is pretty much what you would think it was, given a moment’s thought about the status of possums in New Zealand (invasive species, threat to birds and dairy industry, etc.). After lunch and a collection of .22 shells being done from friends at the hostel (who mostly obliged) and some at the bar (who had them in their trucks), we were off to the hills south of Murchison to attempt to profitably denude the forest of the malevolent marsupials. As I hadn’t fired a gun since boy scouts, my role in this enterprise was to direct a spotlight, hastily roped to the top of the pickup, towards the bush as Tom’s friend drove along a remote logging road in the hills. Tom, standing beside me rifle at the ready, was to shoot at the possums as the light glinted off of their eyes, before merrily jumping off of the slow-moving 4x4 to go and quickly dispossess the dispatched possum of its skin. Remember, now, that the possum is ruining large tracts of NZ forest from an ecological perspective, and that (perhaps most importantly) buyers will pay ten dollars or more per skin in order to make attractive coats, socks, and a remarkable range of apparel (possum thong, anyone?): ‘possuming’ can be big business if done efficiently.

While somewhat grisly from a cargo perspective, the possum pelts were undeniably fine – as such things go – and a few remarkably short-feeling hours later we returned to camp out of bullets (if not good cheer in a manic backwoods-y kind of way) and took stock of the night’s produce. In all Tom had collected 31 skins (thus making the job worth about $100 dollars per hour), and offered to pay me $50 dollars for my part once he took them to Greymouth to meet with the fur agent. While I love NZ songbirds, fear the evils of bovine tuberculosis, and support rustic business as much as the next guy, I didn’t feel quite right taking payment for my small part in the hunt; instead I opted to accept a ride to Greymouth without having to pay a share in the gas money, and to have another free beer before retiring to my tent. As I lay down, reflecting on the odd circumstances that led to my sleeping in the wilderness outside Murchison, I heard the (presumably grateful) calls of the local Morepork owls – so named because of its call which sounds unerringly like an owl saying “MOrePOrk!!”. All was once again right in that stretch of woods.

A quick breakfast and a 3 hour drive in the back of a 4x4 pickup truck – with almost 3 dozen fairly fresh possum pelts for company – later, I found myself happily bidding adieu to Thomas and his friend, and hello to a rather serious washing-up in a gas station bathroom. A reorganising of my bag, a stocking-up on dry goods, and a short yet profound mental reel later, I pointed my boots south along highway 6 – otherwise known as the only road heading south. Through an improbable series of events beginning outside the hamlet of Wakefield I found myself on the wild West Coast of the south island and, to be honest, I couldn’t have been more pleased. The sun beat down as I watched the waves to my right, and I restarted my ungainly pirouettes.

ZEALANTICS LIVE! episode the first

After a vaguely nauseating ride from windy Welly’s harbour to the hamlet of Picton, I stepped off of the ferry full of purpose – if short on concrete plans (a theme of my New Zealand venture). Soon I was off towards the town of Nelson via a series of hitched rides – the most baffling being a ride from some Germans who were going “to a marina”, which was quickly revealed to be the very nearby village of Tuamarina (another in a series of ‘damnit New Zealand’ moments) – and happily booked into a hostel as my jumping-off point for my only pre-planned adventure in the south island: the Abel Tasman Coast Track.

After a wallet-draining bus ride I started my hike in full sunshine and with full weight in my bag – including the sizable laptop on which I now type, among other things. This being a sub-migration, however, I happily shouldered a few pounds of pointless technology for the later good; so it was that I trundled around golden-sanded bays and lush ferny forests with a stamina-challenging 42 pound bag. Abel Tasman Track is one of those places to which pictures actually do justice, so I will refer you to my facebook for those.

During the 3 nights I spent in the park there were two notable incidents to speak to, as a narrative about sweating up and down hills seems onerous even to this self-indulgent writer. The latter – the sandfly apocalypse at Waiharakeke beach campsite – is covered by the inaugural edition of Zealantics live, but the former deserves special attention as an almost perfect example of an inability on my part to just ‘be cool’: allow me to explain.

Usually when hiking your main interactions with people are with those going the opposite direction, to which a friendly hello (or my personal version: ‘ehya’) and a nod satisfies the requirements of good form: after all both parties are under some physical duress and have places they want to be. Once in a while, however, you may find yourself catching up to and passing someone going your way, which usually merits some kind of mumbled thanks as they make way for you to ‘play through’, as it were, and some upgraded version of the ‘ehya’, with a remark on the weather thrown in for congeniality’s sake. On this occasion I was the one doing the passing, and I mentally preloaded my niceties as I closed distance on what were admittedly some remarkable looking legs over the course of ten minutes or so; when the moment came I was ready to pass with dignity and gratitude… or at least I was until I saw the person to be passed.

Now those who have known me for some time have surely noted my occasional (alright, perpetual) awkwardness in forced social situations, and especially those involving attractive women: this… was one of those situations. Turning with impressive grace for one with such an unwieldy pack was a stunning redhead – something on the order of a Shirley Manson with a bit of Gwyneth Paltrow thrown in for good measure – who, to my complete astonishment, heartily addressed me first and quickly fell into step both literally and conversationally. A pronounced yet easily comprehensible Irish accent bewitched me as we walked two abreast (sometimes I love the English language) throughout the day, taking in the sights with the immediate familiarity one ascribes to suddenly inserted single-serving friends. I absolutely loved it, and walked as though on air as my South Island trip began to look like one of my all-time greatest ideas ever: not even a remarkable forward-facing fall down a hill while we walked single file (happily she was not behind me to witness the event) could dampen my spirits on this sunny day of beaches and brogue.

At last, alas, the moment of necessity came. From early on in our companionship it was revealed that we were bound for different campsites, and as we descended to the strip of glory that is Bark Bay beach I sighed inwardly. I could only be so upset, however, as I had experienced a perfect adventurous day with a preposterously enticing redhead. All I had to do was take my leave with adventurous decorum – perhaps even whatever debonair aplomb I could manage while sweating and wearing wool socks with shorts – and victory was mine. Those who know me, alas, know that this is never the case.

As we stood, a touch more than companionably close, and surveyed the area maps posted by the park wardens, I began to build up the courage needed to ask a series of potentially embarrassing (or incredibly rewarding) questions of the sylvan apparition from the Emerald Isle; there remained every possibility of meeting anew further down the trail, or indeed on the road down the wild west coast of the South Island. At this crucial instant a harrier jet-sized bumblebee shot from the undergrowth directly towards my right eye, which brought out an instinctive lash of my right hand; the sound of the connection was clearly audible as I sent it spinning into the wooden sign in front of us, and down to the sand at our feet.

I felt my chance for romance begin to slip away as she declared her inability to watch the insect writhe out its death throes, which was a reasonable assumption if you had heard the force with which I instinctively swatted this bee. Thinking on my feet (perhaps not the thing to do if you’ve been out in the sun all day), I muttered a comment about an honourable burial and launched a wave of sand with my boot in order to cover it and reduce the element of visual trauma in my potential moment. With a gasp she reached down and, with the aid of a folding map, excavated the bee which, to my absolute amazement, took a moment to aright and clean itself and then promptly flew away. My crest fell deeper than the bee’s burial had been as I stammered through polite remarks and took my leave to the strident screams of a series of local birds (a sign further down the beach explained that the birds were nesting and not to be disturbed, inconveniently enough); in the end I never even got her name, to say nothing of contact information or knowledge of inconspicuous birthmarks. These things happen sometimes.

This isn’t to say that I let the bee incident dampen my enjoyment of the trip as a whole, though, as it was a very worthwhile exploration of an area – and a biome – I had never experienced outside of photos or travel films. The trip concluded as the rains came, and I made my way back to Nelson to prepare for my trip to the west coast. After a turnaround day full of fattening foods I stepped out onto the road south with my thumb held aloft and my chin nearly as high. In Aotearoa, there is always more to come.

Goddamn bird.

Of enervation, ennui, and the end (of Wellington)

In the end I made my peace with Dave (decent guy for all his faults), as no cloud is truly without a silver lining when it comes to flatmates… or so conventional wisdom would have you believe. As it turns out there ended up being one flatmate that I never saw eye to eye with, but given the circumstances this was hardly a huge mystery.

When you live in a house with a dozen or so people, you tend to meet them in one of two places: in the kitchen, or in front of the television. This inevitably leads to random chitchat, the occasional shared drink, and a laugh or two as you bemoan the fate you concurrently hold – which in this case was continued residence in Upoko Manor. The house had never been particularly clean or inviting in my first couple of months there, but with the advent of American tenants who were fond of the bottle (or the makeshift still, as noted before) it began to deteriorate in lots of noticeable ways.

Every few feet, it seemed, marked a new stain from a spill of some kind or other. To this add a kitchen perpetually askew (it turns out that an erstwhile resident Kiwi had been taking care of the house’s kitchen messes – I remained out of the equation by cleaning as I cooked and escaping with my nice cookware at the end) and an interesting layer of semi-crushed beer cans over the living/television room carpet, amongst usual wear and tear. It wasn’t the partying Americans, however, that brought the house to a social and/or tidiness halt, however.

From the time of my first tour around the house I was told tales of a terrible creature that inhabited the deeps of the basement. It was the kind of thing (person, I suppose, is the proper term) that would send people fleeing from a room en masse whenever it entered – despite being outnumbered by a remarkable amount in most cases. Wherever it went it dropped long silvery black hairs in its wake as it stared continuously into a small netbook laptop; if it were only a question of hair, though, few would have had a problem with it.

No, the thing that sent entire roomfuls of people fleeing as quickly as their legs could carry them was the stench. Few could describe exactly what it was that our nostrils were being forced to deal with on a daily basis: some said it was extreme body odour, others perpetually un-cleaned clothes (and room in general) that had absorbed a panoply of food spills. All agreed that it was nothing to be trifled with, and retreated at the first snippet of the ghoulish laugh that the creature (also known as Voldemort, Stenchomort, or simply ‘THE BEAST’) would emit, on average, about every 3-4 minutes when absorbed by the chatroom it perpetually tapped away at on the laptop. To be caught early in a cooking process by the creature as it came up to burn its dominantly meat-based diet was the deepest-held fear of all in the house, and would frequently lead to otherwise productive people abandoning doing dishes – or making tea/food/etc. – for hours at a time until the creature oozed back downstairs and windows could be breathlessly opened.

I found myself celebrating my last weeks of tenancy with a slew of attempts at cookery in the kitchen; after all I had a lot of odds and ends in my pantry to use up, and damned if I was going to abandon a vast amount of precious foodstuffs in my semi poverty-stricken state. So it was that one day I set about making a layer cake filled with custard, for the enjoyment of all of my household friends as well as myself. The cake turned out a bit flat/unleavened, but this was not going to dissuade me from making an acceptable treat – bringing the ingredients together exactly to specifications, I began to heat up the custard filling mixture on the stovetop. Alas - something quickly went amiss… to my great sadness and frustration.

The unearthly laugh of the creature from the abyss sounded at the bottom of the stairwell, but I held out some hope: not every mindless cackle immediately led to kitchen occupation. I hoped against hope that I would be able to finish my confection in peace (custard, as you know, being something that requires near-constant attention to pull off correctly) as the moments went on. Suddenly I heard a 240 pound (one estimate) footfall at the bottom of the stairs, and I knew that my blissful kitchen time was at an end.

I considered pouring the entire mixture out into the waiting sink in order to get out of the room before it became malodourously occupied, but decided that my failure of a cake simply needed something else to make it worth presenting to my good friends. So it was that I found myself stirring my pot while the creature filed in, blasting bad punk rock from its laptop and completely oblivious to anyone else’s presence (or sense of hygiene, obviously). As my custard mixture reached the crucial boil I dipped the temperature just as I had done many times before in order to simmer it to a desired thickness, all the while trying to escape my olfactory reality. I found myself disassociating, much like in police reports for victims of violent crimes, from my harsh existence as the creature worked beside me, arms held aloft to reach in and out of cupboards again and again… I tried as hard as I could to seamlessly blend all of my being into a clumsily played live guitar solo as my eyes watered. Previously opened windows were, alarmingly, shut by the creature to snuff out the ever-present (but never so incredibly welcome) winds of Wellington, and I found myself praying for the completion of my culinary attempt to rescue the lamentable cake.

Something, however, was amiss. In the time I had been floating next to my body in guitar solo-ghost mode I had stopped looking at my custard (staring out the window like a lookout on a tall ship) my custard had gone off the bubble. The heat was still on at the usual rate, and I had done nothing unusual: it was simply another case of the occasional power dips that plagued the house from time to time. Turning up the mixture led to increased sadness as it began to stick and ruin itself. My custard, and accompanying layer cake, was simply not to be on this day. I carried the pot out of the kitchen like a wounded bird (to be cleaned later, obviously) and stripped myself of all outside-facing clothing in order to remove the smells that had permeated them during my kitchen time. Donning new duds and rinsing out my hair and nose, I returned to the upstairs carpet of cans a failure from a treat-making perspective.

It was in this instant that I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I had to leave this scent-forsaken house. I had accomplished all the relevant paper working I needed to do in order to work at a school in the upcoming season, and had seen a pathetically small amount of my adoptive country. In a couple of weeks my extraneous possessions were put into storage, my last food supplies had been consumed, and I found myself on a boat heading across the Cook Strait. The wind blew in my face, and for this I was grateful: irrational though I know such a thought was, I knew that no iota of the stench of the creature, and of the complacent decay inherent in life at Upoko Manor over the last month, could reach me. I had an entire other island to explore, and a bag on my back once more.



OH NO THE BEAST! sucks to your ass-mar

Of trout, tripping, and trauma.

Sometimes, people will give you the oddest looks. The middle-aged Maori woman was proving this potentiality as I came to realise quite what had happened when I had dislodged my fly-rod’s tip from the overhanging branch; while I’m sure the time will come when I appreciate New Zealand’s acceptance of barbed hooks, however, it certainly wasn’t on this day. Perhaps some opening explanation is in order.

Dave was making moonshine at the house, which struck me as odd but was apparently quite the normal practice at the university he had attended back home in the USA. Through a combination of supplies he had stolen from various conference halls and event centres while on assignment for the temp labour company, along with a series of two litre pop bottles and an antiquated pressure cooker he’d found in the basement, he had been creating liquor of unknown strength for some time. Distillation expertise aside, Dave was not my favourite roommate atop the hill.

While Dave was racist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, and miserly, he was also an alcoholic and a perpetual smoker: when not actually puffing away in the corner of the living room (next to an open window but naturally blowing towards the television, as though he couldn’t turn away for an instant), he could predictably be found rolling another cigarette while enjoying a mountain dew. This isn’t to say that he lacked any redeeming qualities, however. He liked to work as many hours as possible temping (all the better to loot), and was thus away for most of the time. I suppose that was just one quality, after all, but I am sure there are others. But why would I describe one of my dozen or so roommates, especially in relation to a Maori woman’s concerned gaze? Let’s go another step further back, shall we?

The All Blacks were busy celebrating their very recent Rugby World Cup victory over the villainous French when I swept into the pub where my roommates were quaffing with impunity – my having arrived somewhat late initially having doomed me to watching the game down the street at a less popular venue before my repair to their location. High spirits were the order of the day as we celebrated the AB’s win and we talked as a group for some time, until a yawn from me brought a certain degree of derision my way. After some good-natured ribbing I reminded my compatriots that I had planned on an early start for my inaugural New Zealand fly fishing trip and began to beg my leave from their increasingly blurry festivities, only to be stopped by a challenge from Dave, the bootlegging anti-intellectual. It seemed that there was no way I was going to catch anything anyways, and that I was being rather a huge bitch by leaving early (at 2AM). This struck me as an odd challenge from someone who described his fishing experience as “getting drunk all morning with my family, having lunch, then getting drunk all afternoon before going out to the clubs!!”, but I took it in stride as I made my way back to the top of Mt. Victoria to sleep some celebration off.

Though feeling a bit delicate the next day, I nonetheless roused myself somewhat early and made my way down to the train station in order to get out into the country. A couple of small towns later I was at the river, which was unsurprisingly bereft of any other fishermen due to the previous night’s celebrations. As it had been years since I last did any fly-casting I was not surprised to find myself rather terrible at it, but at least there were no observers to my terrible attempts on the path across the river at this early hour; at any rate my ineptitude was short-lived and by lunchtime I was rolling my line out with a passable degree of skill, though without any fishy success to show for it.

After a sandwich I decided to try my luck just below an overarching pedestrian foot bridge, as I liked the look of a pool in the river there and felt that I could stand to be seen now that I had brought my casting skills up to an acceptable level. I switched my fly from a dun-coloured nymph to a flashy baitfish imitator and made my way under the bridge to find a position to cast from. Suddenly, upon standing up after crouching under the bridge, I found that I had accidentally pushed my rod tip up into an overhanging branch – thus seriously tangling my line. This became an object of mirth for passers-by, as the tangle was about 11 feet off of the ground and seemingly worsening as I tried to work my fly out of the foliage. Finally I resolved to simply tug it loose from the leaves and, after warning the Maori woman out on a stroll to watch out for flying fish hooks, gave it a pull.

My footwear betrayed me in this instant, as my right foot slid forward in the mud in time with my pull on the line; this resulted in me almost losing my balance – which would have been mortifying in light of my spectator – but I managed to regain my footing with a semi-intentional flourish and turn towards the footbridge. Instead of an approving smile for my catlike reflexes, however, the woman seemed to be rather perturbed by something. What it was did not remain a mystery to me for long, as I turned my head back to look for my inch-long, tinsel-striped fly.

As the adrenaline surge from my remarkable balance move began to ebb I immediately began to notice a pinch in the loose skin directly behind my right earlobe. My first thought was a mild wave of relief – as I hadn’t even had a chance to use the fly yet and would have rued losing it outright – followed by the more jarring realization that I had no readily available way to unhook myself. After assuring the concerned pedestrian that I was, in fact, fine, I sat down a distance away from the bridge (with my left side facing the increasingly-frequented path) and considered my options. Though it was a simple thing to clip the line to the fly it became rather obvious that I was going to have to de-barb the hook before it would come out with any degree of comfort. As the wind had begun to pick up to unfishable levels anyways (and because I had forgotten my pliers at home) I decided to head for home.

It was on the train back that I realized the real problem: that even if I managed to sneak into the house without Dave seeing my stylish faux-baitfish neck accessory, I still had no fish to back up my claim of competency. Seeing no other option I did what any reasonable person would do, and stepped into the fish market on the way back. After finding a locally-caught brown trout at a reasonable price I proceeded to the checkout area as stealthily as I could. While handing over the money I inadvertently turned my head to the left as a car backfired outside, thus exposing my tinsel-clad passenger. To the cashier’s credit he didn’t ask me how I came to have hooked myself; I like to believe he knew. All he did was hand me back me change, and give me the oddest look.

This goat has nothing to do with this post. But man, look at them ears!

Of wind, wine, and why????

My life in New Zealand’s ‘windy city’ became an exercise in patience as I waited for accreditation and subsequent ability to leave my cup-stacking job for the somewhat different paced world of professional education. Though the need to inspect possible candidates before admitting them to your county’s magisterial ranks is inarguable, the reality can be somewhat enervating. As I waited for various agencies to look over my vanguard of paperwork, this all became very apparent. To this ticking clock add in an ever-decreasing amount of money available for luxuries like food and shelter, and you have a tricky recipe.

My primary goal became the avoidance of spending money at all costs. This manifested in a huge increase in my rice-related knowledge – as suddenly leftover rice became an ingredient for confections and further meals alike rather than garbage can fodder – and a continued shrinking/refining process of my body as a whole. It didn’t end with rice, either: skim milk was forged from higher test varieties via dilution, the day-old rack at the Taiwanese ‘hot bread shop’ became my new mistress, and the less beautiful produce at the already cut-rate Chinese Sunday street market became the reason to walk the 5 kilometer round trip. In was thus, in good health but ill spirits, that I watched the first of the spring rains leak in through my ill-sealed windows, and awaited sunnier times.

It wasn’t all doom, gloom, and cancerous-looking tomatoes, however. Merry times were often had amongst the dozen or so residents of the semi-decaying mountaintop fastness. As expensive as food can be, the wine – in particular – can be quite reasonably priced; any bargains encountered by one on a shopping trip would usually be shared in advance of a weekend night’s Dionysian worship. On one memorable occasion a five dollar bottle (roughly half the price of the cheapest non-fortified/hobo wine one typically buys from whence I came) was gleamingly advertised by a returning American roommate. This being somewhat astounding from a cheap alcohol standpoint my Scottish counterpart and I set off on a quest, like dipsomaniacal homing pigeons, for the mythical bottle.

It is worth noting that this was a duo comprised of two nearly penniless young men by this point famed in the house for penny-wisdom. When we were met, subsequently, by a large empty rack at the distant discount foods store with a garish five dollar tag under it, it quickly became a kind of game to determine the next cheapest potent potable possible. For almost twenty minutes we fenced back and forth the virtues of cider (he had never heard of Dicken’s brand, oddly enough), beer (discounted, but discounted again as neither wanted to carry the case of bottles back), and admitting economically sensible defeat (not really an option), before settling on the somewhat dubious prospect of boxed wine. Then it became a soul-searching quandary on the relative demerits of inexpensive red vs. equally inexpensive white wine, before a spirited dissertation on which region was likely to offer the least offensive vintage. Settling finally on a cube that proudly proclaimed provenance in Spain (central Spain, if you please!), we returned to an interestingly coloured, if “grapesy” experience.

Of course I couldn’t keep up this economic self-flagellation for very long: much less so in the face of constant international sporting events being held in town. The Rugby World Cup was in full swing at this time, which led to a delicate plan being hatched. For some time I had put my flirtatious bet on an endearing Kiwi gal who worked at the bank on rent-paying day. Having garnered the knowledge of her love of the national game, along with two tickets to the upcoming in-town match between Canada and the mighty All Blacks, I set upon acquiring myself a date (other than the back-up of my frugal Scottish sommelier).

An unusually hot spring day met me as I went to the bank, tickets (and rent) in hand. Upon arrival, however, I found that I was missing a crucial bit of account information that would allow me to pay the said rent. Back, then, across kilometers of town and steep, sun-bathed mountainside to collect the information, and thence again to the bank: all in the short time before I knew she was to be off for the weekend and thus beyond my inquisitorial reach. Finally I returned with minutes to spare before closing (and a subsequent question regarding my not having paid rent that week by my slumlord), and posed my question after having handed over my weekly stipend and some small talk.

The answer was no – as she was out of town that weekend visiting friends – with an accompanying subtext of no – as experience has taught me to realise with some ease. Somewhat crestfallen at the failure of my economic brashness, I nonetheless sat with mild self-deprecation and a smile while awaiting my crucial receipt. Time, as is its wont, passed; I found a new breed of cold anxiety sweat introducing itself to the hotter mountain-bred variety on my spine as the wait stretched out an unusual minute, and then another. The announcement that her computer had seized up in some intractable way strained my affability, though by no means prevented some suitable chat as the moment stretched like not enough spandex. Her neighbour teller seemingly saved the day as she quickly re-ran the transaction on her machine, though by this point the talk had turned to the upcoming playoff matches of the World Cup tournament. As the neighbour asked me cheerily if I was going to see any games this weekend (having been out of earshot for my earlier shoot-down) I managed an equally cheery affirmative, all the while hearing manic “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE”-style exclamations echo through my brain’s desire circuits. The spandex seemed taut to breaking.

I found myself laughing – perhaps in an attempt not to begin sobbing or self-combusting – as the transaction’s success was finally announced via a happy hum from the receipt printer. As is natural with unexpected mirth the neighbour teller asked what, in fact, was so funny. The only answer that presented itself was an amiably stammered “m..my life” as I collected my glorious slip of paper and fled the bank, back in the direction of the land of the cheap.