A Real Update

I have a confession to make to you, my faithful readers. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit to an act of simple deception. Remember the carnival and fireworks from the last post? They weren't in celebration of Obama's victory. They were for Guy Fawkes Day, an incredibly insane holiday where people shoot fireworks off and party. It's kinda' like the Fourth of July, except we know why we celebrate the Fourth of July--it's the day our forefathers declared independence from England and set off down the path to becoming a great nation.

Guy Fawkes Day, on the other hand, is the day a man by the name of Guy Fawkes tried (and failed) to blow up parliament in London. It's also celebrated in the UK, and I think they have it in Australia and Canada as well. But why do they celebrate the day some dude tried to symbolically destroy the English government? No one's been able to give me a solid answer, but I suspect it's just an excuse to get drunk and blow shit up.

That works for me, I guess.

Anyway, even though the celebration wasn't in Obama's honor, the Kiwis are quite happy about his election. Literally every person I talk to who recognizes my American accent asks me if I'm happy about Obama winning, and then proceeds to tell me how happy about it they are too.

And that works for me as well.

Life has been fairly quiet since my last real update. Last Sunday, Alexa and I did see a street performer who combined silly tricks with fire juggling, sword swallowing, and escape artistry with strange and crude jokes to create a pretty amazing show. We had seen part of his act on Labour Monday, but had to leave early on because we were meeting people for lunch.

Also, as I mentioned last time, I worked a few FIFA games at the stadium, and I discovered that FIFA stands for the "Federation of International Football ANAL RETENTIVES!"

Seriously, they were nuts. Coke is one of their sponsors, so they had all these crazy rules about how nothing could be advertised if it wasn't owned by Coke. Changes ranged from the small, such as having to pour beers into cups since we couldn't give the fans labeled bottles, to the large, such as blanketing the gigantic WestPac (bank that sponsors the stadium) sign on the outside of the stadium, to the utterly ridiculous, such as covering up the manufacturer names on our cash registers, the walk-in freezer door, and the various machines that keep food hot. Because, you know, McAllister's Refrigeration INC is a direct competitor to Coca-Cola, and if our fans were to see the teeny label in the back of our kitchen, they would immediately think, "Shit! I was thirsty for some Coke, but now I'm going to leave the game and go buy a giant walk-in fridge for my home instead!"

Thank god for business people.

Also, I've been doing some writing, using the word "writing" very loosely. November is National Novel Writing Month. It's just an online thing where participants try their hardest to write 50,000 words (roughly 200 pages double spaced) in a month. You "win" if you make it to 50,000 by November 30th, but there really aren't any prizes involved in winning. I'm not sure if there's a real point to it, other than to encourage people to produce 50,000-word-long heaps of doo doo. What else can you expect when you're writing so quickly and not editing? It's the method the big bad Woolfe used when writing Mrs. Dalloway, after all, and look how that turned out (oooh, sick burn). At any rate, my heap of doo doo is currently 11,130 words long. Last time I tried, in 2006, I only made it to about 7,000 before I quit. So my doo doo making skills have improved!

When not busy making doo doo, I've been working a lot more. For the past four weeks, I've had over thirty hours every week, which means I've been saving more money for fun things, like...

Whoops! Speaking of work, I had really better be getting ready to go to Domino's. There are hungry Wellingtonians who want pizza to go with their Friday night raging, and I'm the only one who can help them!

All About New Zealand, Part 1

This post is going to be part of a new, on-going feature of my blog called All About New Zealand. As the title implies, these posts are going to focus on all the different aspects of life here in New Zealand, rather than focusing on me and the things I do. As I learn more, more will be added, and by the end of the year we'll all be New Zealand experts... or something.

Before I get into that, though, I feel I should at least touch on my job at the hotel. Right now it involves a little over two hours of work a day, cleaning the public areas and doing "spring cleaning." Public areas include five bathrooms (two male, two female, and one staff), the mirrors in the elevators, vacuuming the lobby, and emptying a few trash bins. Spring cleaning varies. Yesterday I learned all about the joy of "wall skirtings," which are little ledges at the bottom of walls. From what I can tell, they were engineered for the sole purpose of gathering dust, and they do their job quite well. Today I had the pleasure of polishing the elevator. The cleaner I used was some foul-smelling stuff in an aerosol can that said, "USE ONLY IN WELL VENTILATED AREAS." I don't know about you guys, but I can't think of any area more ventilated than a cramped elevator, so that's great!

Fortunately, I haven't encountered any poop-smeared walls or hooker bodies. Phew. But I was treated to a rather gross look at hotel sanitation. The same sponges and towels are used for the following: toilet rims, toilet lids, toilet handles, sinks, faucets, and door handles. Yeeeepppp. If that's not horrifyingly disgusting, I don't know what is. I also went out and bought my own latex gloves today, since my supervisor was kind enough to inform me that they don't have any.

Anyway, on to the feature presentation:

All About New Zealand, Part 1

The Kiwi Accent: At a first listen, the New Zealand accent is similar to a British or Australian accent. As it was once described to be, "It's a cross between British and Australian, but more awesome than both." According to the Kiwis I work with at my various jobs, the main difference is in the way they say their vowels. Bed sounds like bid, when sounds like win, what sounds like wot, etcetera. What's even better are the words that sound the same. Hair, hear, and here all sound the same, as do bear, bare, and beer, and sore and saw. The last thing I've noticed is they say some of their numbers and letters differently than we do, and some of them sound the same. The number eight, and the letters A and E sound incredibly similar, which is awesome when I'm trying to take Domino's orders over the phone. Here's an example:

Phone Person: So that's thirty-ay Wairapapa Street.
Me: Thirty eight?
Phone Person: No, Thirty-ay.
Me: Oh. Thirty A, like the letter A.
Phone Person: No, not the letter ay. The letter ay.
Me: E?
Phone Person: No, ay!

Because whether they're saying E or A, it sounds like "ay." Once that's sorted, I have to tackle the spellings of crazy Maori street names.

Food: Ah, food. Maybe it's because I've never really lived in a city before, but to me the variety of food available is incredible. By my estimation, there's approximately 87 million Asian takeaway restaurants in Wellington alone. Thai, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these... um, yeah. They've got it all is what I'm trying to say. Fish and chips takeaways are also fairly popular. And, of course, American fastfood restaurants are everywhere. Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald's are by far the most widespread, but there's a smattering of KFCs and Burger Kings as well. Their menus don't vary too much from what we see stateside. Subway offers a range of "Kiwi favorites," such as lamb and pork riblet, and McDonald's has family-sized meal deals, something I've never seen in the states, and "The Big Kiwi Breakfast." Also, the McDonald's here are almost always accompanied by a McCafe, a seperate counter featuring upscale hot beverages and baked goods. That's a feature I saw a lot in Europe, but--oh damn, I just wasted four sentences on McDonald's. Moving on.

New Zealand-exclusive chains include Burger Fuel (they make the best fastfood burgers I've ever tasted, with crazy toppings such as avocado, beet root, and mango), Wholly Bagel (opened by a New Yorker disappointed in Wellington's lack of a good bagel shop), and Mr. Bun (a bakery with a twist--they also serve country fried chicken. Actually, the combination of baked goods/coffee and country fried chicken is fairly common at other cafes as well. No idea why).

As a former British colony, New Zealand is fortunate to have the same healthy snacks as Ireland and the UK. And by "healthy snacks," I mean more sugary, delicious types of Cadbury bars than any reasonable person could possibly ask for. Crunchie, Caramello, Picnic, Pinkies, and THREE VARIETIES OF MORO BARS!!! Yes, it's awesome. While we're on the topic of things that rot your teeth and make you fat, let's talk about soda. Coke is easily 75-80% more prevalant than Pepsi. In fact, I haven't even seen a Pepsi product, apart from a Mountain Dew commercial at the movie theater. There's also the New Zealand-exclusive Lemon and Paeroa, more commonly called L&P. It started off in a town called Paeroa. They took water from a natural spring, carbonated it, and added sweetened lemon juice. Now, however, it's owned and distrubuted by Coca Cola. It's still delicious, though, and New Zealand is the only place in the world to buy it (apart from a few Kiwi groceries in Australia).

There are two types of cereal I've gotten into: Weet-Bix (same thing as Ireland's Weet-A-Bix) and muesli. Muesli is composed of rolled oats, raisins, delicious dried fruits, and sometimes weird stick things that look like rabbit food. Weet-Bix is made out of the papery stuff wasps use to make their nests and gets stuck between your teeth worse than you can possibly imagine. If you don't believe me, check out this stunning x-ray image of a wasp nest and some Weet-Bix side by side. Can you tell which is which?

I could probably go on a lot longer about food, but I'll end it here for now. And don't worry, beer is not food and will get its own category later.

Let's see, uh...

Transportation:

Wellington apparently has the best public transportation in New Zealand thanks to an elaborate system of buses and trams. Most of the buses/trams are powered by overhead electric lines, and the buses that run on gas are hybrids! New Zealand's great care for the natural environment will also have its own category later on.

The buses are great, apart from two things: they're expensive. A monthly pass is $99, and without the pass an average rider would probably spend over $150 a month. The other problem is the frequent striking. In the month we've been here, bus services have been disrupted five or six times due to union meetings or strikes. I guess it's a complicated issue. I understand the bus drivers wanting fair wages (currently the starting rate is only a little over minimum wage) and benefits, but going on strike is an asshole way to go about it. They're hurting the customer, the thousands of Wellingtonians that rely on the bus service to commute to and from work each day. What they should do is drive around giving out free bus rides. That'd get the message across to their employer without inconveniencing the passengers. See? I'm a genius!


That's a wrap for this edition of All About New Zealand. If I didn't answer your questions (because so many of you responded to my last post, har har), I'll get to them later.