New Zealand, Letters to Home style

Finally I get around to writing about my New Zeland trip and lo and behold, I'm too tired and bored by the idea of blogging to be spontaneously creative so here is an email I wrote my Mom about the first half of my trip. Don't worry, the email is in more upbeat terms than this sordid introduction:

New Zealand is great and with a great feature on my new camera (only $150 bucks! ) I am compiling some seriously awesome panoramic shots. I'm going to put all of them on Flickr and send out a link at the end of my trip. I'm in Wellington now and am spending one more night here before jumping on the ferry and going down to the south island. My first three days were pretty crazy because my itinerary may as well have been planned by a half retarded monkey, but it got me through the North quickly and that was the goal. I've had no trouble meeting great people at every stop. I got into Auckland my first day at 9 AM and killed time by walking around the wharves, chillin in the public library and eatuing kebabs until my bus left at 8 PM for Rotorua. I got there at twelve, checked in and PASSED out. This was the night of the 12th. I hadn't slept the night of the 11th/morning of the 12th because I had to be at the airport at 4 AM, barely slept on the plane, roamed Auckland like a zombie all day and barely slept on the bus to Rotorua. I rented a bike in Rotorua on my second day and did some mountain biking, though I was hampered a bit by a horrible terrible despicable seat, completely inappropriate attire and a very frustrating sense of direction...to be honest my couran cove expedition was more comfortable. But it was fun. My bus left at 4 PM that day and I was in Taupo by 6. I hung out with my German roomate, drank brewskis and watched Lord Of the Rings, making as many New Zealand quips as I felt the room could bear without turning on me. Day three was in Taupo and I went to a hot springs with German homie and 2 Norwegian girls. We spent the night playing drinking games until 1AM when I picked up all my stuff and stumbled down to my 1:30 AM bus pickup (half retarded monkey). Barely slept on this one but still managed to wrangle a hangover out of the experience. We got into Wellington around 7am, I had breakfast with two guys from Perth and made plans to rent a car together in the south (they've subsequently dissapeared and I have no way to get in touch with the dickheads). Slept on a couch waiting for my check in time, checked in and hit up a museum about Wellington, feeling very Bryson-esque. That night (last night) I went out with my English roomate and two NEW norwegian girls (they're everywhere and apparently love to roam in duos), woke up this morning and had an amazingly authentic Mexican burrito with English homie.



That email was written five days into my trip. 10 days left to go at that point. During that remaining time I bungy jumped from a platform suspended solely by cables in a canyon 134 meters above a river. If 134 meters doesn't sound too impressive, picture free falling for 8 seconds straight. Thats a looooong time in free fall seconds. Video of this madness can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWb-YjSTY9U

I climbed a glacier, caught a two day ride with two Dutch girls, slept in my own car two nights in a row, and celebrated Saint Patty's day with Guiness in hand in lame Christchurch surrounded by bellowing Irish. I took more beautiful pictures than I know what to do with. These can all be seen at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44456612@N03/sets/72157623536320961/

Parrots tried eating my car at one point. I ran into the Perth guys again and made more unsuccessful plans. I slept at the airport. I got back to Melbourne.

Part of me feels guilty about writing a brief post about such an amazing trip but really all you need to do is click on the link above. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Panorama pictures are worth...man.

On and ending note, as I write this I'm sitting in a house to myself, woodfire burning with glass of fine wine in hand, watching over 80 acres of Eucalyptus forest and 3 bed and breakfast cottages fully booked for the next five days, with enough farm projects to keep the entire crew of Grapes of Wrath occupied for a month. I have the indescriminate use of an awesome thing called a moke that resembles a miniature, open air jeep made in the 1960's, stick shift of course. All to myself. I work a few hours a day for food and accomodation and earn in wages whatever I work after that. My next blog post will deal with how I arrived at this fortuitous juncture. But I'll probably take another 3 months to write about that...

Ode to the Amora Porters

I once promised to write a post dedicated to the Amora Hotel Porters. The time has come for me to make good on that promise.

As many of you know, I worked as a porter for four months in Sydney. I am currently in New Zealand, backpacking like a madman and trying to work on my Jesus look (AKA razors and haircutters have not been in my bathroom repetoire for quite some time) while I scour the countryside for glimpses of hobbits, Peter Jacksons and opportunities for absurdly beautiful panorama shots. More of this in future posts.


But back to the Amora porters.


This is Masa.

Before...

and After...

Masa came over from Japan on a student visa 7 years ago after deciding he didn't really like being part of a gang anymore. No joke. I think this realization came somewhere in between beating a guy up whose car he hit and his 37th street brawl. Needless to say he's an excellent wingman when a taxi driver gets particularly unruly. Or when our local Japanese street gang roles up and tries to demand a "protection" fee from our receptionists...Masa's speech mannerisms can only be described as a mix between Marlon Brando's Godfather and Hatori Hanso from Kill Bill and his post-Japan image makeover is of such outstanding magnitude that I suspect he could have qualified for his own lucrative reality TV deal had he landed in LA instead of Sydney.



This is Daniel Faust.




Dan must have been very tan when this was taken, but it has to be him because this was one of his profile photos...As you can see, Dan is kind of like Arnold Scharzeneggar. That is, only if Arnold was Australian, 5' 10", and looked nothing like Arnold Scharzeneggar (or Ronnie Coleman for that matter), than Dan would be like him. What I'm trying to say is Dan likes to go to the gym. And lift weights. Three years ago he was smaller than me and decided he didn't really want to be smaller than me anymore and now he weighs about 35 pounds more than me. He's got an easy laugh and a carefree demeanor. Dan could care less about his job at Amora and still happens to be quite good at it. I would estimate his advice earned me about 15% of my tips. Good on ya, Dan.


This is Nirakar (pronounced Near-a-car).





Nirakar is from Nepal and is cursed with one of the most appropriate first names I have ever come across. Early on in his Amora career Nirakar crashed (scratched) five cars. Surprisingly, management decided to ban him from parking cars. He is now cursed with with the catchphrase "Don't let him near-a-car!" (Drum hit please). Nirakar's eyes go wide at the mention of beer and droop back down to about the half way mark after the consumption of a few. His default porter stance reminds me of how a gangster might stand in a back alley with the knowledge that at any moment there might be a drive by shooting but the comparisons stop with posture; Nirakar is the aggest guy.


This is Will Riley.





Will Riley is what would happen if Dane Cook's approximate sense of humor woke up one day with a hangover and fostered a child with a jolly Australian Woody Harrelson. Anyone? Needless to say Will is a character and a mainstay in the Amora Hotel biosphere. No opportunity for a wisecrack is ever missed and he pretty much operates outside of any sort of hierarchy Amora management attempts to establish. This makes him a hilarious co-worker and a solid drinking buddy. It doesn't hurt that he refuses to share rounds, opting to just buy all the beer, all night, himself. On the few occasions I had the honor to meet Will out on the town he singlehandedly bankrupted Star City Casino, charmed the socks off a number of my female friends and explained to me the ins and outs (and loopholes) of Google's AdWords program at a level even Google's engineers might go blank at. Chance.


This is Sebastian Ricardo Camus Alvarez Conception Hurtado De La Puente*

*His real name is actually Sebastian Ricardo Camus De la Puente

Sebastian has, and uses, so many different names that his 5' 5" frame is pretty much squashed by the weight of them all. He is Chilean and I have a sneaking suspicion he is using his apparently endless surnames to either confuse the taxation department or line up back to back visas, each under a new set of names. His name tag says Sebastian and thats how he introduces himself, but three weeks before I left Amora I asked the concierge, after looking at the roster for the 6th time that day, who the hell this "Ricardo Camus" was and why he was on so many of my shifts without me having met him. Duh. Of course I should have assumed Sebastian was actually Ricardo Camus. On the other hand, its not really apparent to me why it took me over three months to ask this question. Sebastian is a world traveler, an amatuer Tarzan imitator, master Blogger and supposedly an entreprenuer with big plans for when he returns to Chile. I never could get him to tell me exactly what those plans are though, so I expect they either involve international sex trafficking or he's really worried that I'll decide to set up shop in Chile with his ideas before he does. I'm not sure which is more plausible.

This is Riaaz Variawa. He was my boss and is from South Africa and as such he tends to annunciate hard consonants at the end of words with an emphasis only rivalled by the extent to which he rolls his R's. If he doesn't like a CD that he's listening to in his car he throws it out the window. Literally. When he told me this the first thing that came to mind was "what was the shortest time a cd has ever lasted, and of course, who was it" but somehow I never got around to asking this question. His best quality as a boss was his ability to lose all boss like qualities after three and a half sips of a beer. That said, it shouldn't be surpirsing that, despite his 220 pound frame, I drank him under the table on more than one occasion. He'll probably comment on this post below now and regardless of what his retort may be, he knows the truth.

If I had six words to describe Jai Donaldson they would be "when i lived on hamilton island". These six words for Jai replaced the average person's "oh, thats funny, I had a similar experience" or "that reminds me of the time" or "oh yeah? I can do one better" phrases when introducing a story. It seemed like whenever someone told their own story, whether it was funny, tragic, about the weekend, about a dream, or about the time in Bali when they woke up in a ditch without their shoes or wallet, Jai had his own correspending and vastly superior version of the same story starting with "When I lived on hamilton island...". It normally contained more nefarious activities than the entire series of "The Sopranos" and ended with Jai roundhouse kicking both Chuck Norris and Jack Bauer simultaneously. Still, despite the consistent absurdity of so many of his stories, I never actually believed he was lying, which either makes me an idiot or Jai one of the most outrageous people alive.

Unfortunately, my ode must stop here due to time constraints. There were many other admirable and interesting people I worked with at Amora and I apologize I don't have time to pay homage. You can work your way into my blog when we meet again further down the road!