Monday, November 28

Foo Fightin' & Car Trouble

Went to see the mighty FOO FIGHTERS last night. A two hour set in a big tent with a bit of a light show and all their singalong classics? Cracking stuff, marred only by my car finally giving up the ghost a little bit before. There I was, chugging my way down the Great North Road, nearing home, when my engine suddenly becomes a mite confused and starts to splutter. Pulling into the side it finally died and hasn't been heard of since - I am currently getting a bus to work and blagging lifts of people at 4am. Course, it could have been a lot worse, as I had just come off the motorway (no hard shoulders) and also had the great sage Justin Alves in my car, who had just happened to sign up with the nice people at AA (the automobile one) the previous week, thus we were able to call out a man in a yellow truck and get a free tow home.

In addition, an unexpected visitor made her way down here for the Foo's gig - known to the world as Jen Teetahhh, she called me up a few days ago from the airport, completely out of the blue, right when I was nursing a monster hangover. She's still here.

Friday, November 25

Friend of German


That's right, these days I am an authenticated 'Friend of German'. One of my housemates is of the Germanic persuasion, and has her friends over to visit on a regular basis. I figured that when I got to know six of these people I would truly be Friend of German. Gonna make myself a badge and everything. Something extra for the old CV.

Saturday, November 19

Lessons learned in life (Part 1)

Things I've learned since arriving in New Zealand:

1)Contrary to popular belief (mine), Auckland is not the capital of New Zealand (It took me two months before twigging).
2)There's more to Blackjack than reaching 21. Granted, not an awful lot more, but more.
3)Pepe Lopez is a killer.
4)On your first day of work for your first job in over a year, don't be an hour late...
5)Despite your best efforts, you simply can't befirend people when you're taking all their money away from them.
6)Germans are people too.
7)Never, ever, buy a car from Jimmy Wang. I cannot stress this enough.

Friday, November 11

A working life for me

It's not easy settling back into a working way of life after travelling for an entire year without a care in the world. In fact it sucks, and I don't like it at all, but alas and alack, it has to be done....

So, after a brief and boring spell at ASB bank doing some mindless credit control pap, I decided to go in for a drastic pay cut to get a little bit more excitement and learn something new in the process. Thus, I took on my current job as professional Blackjack dealer in Skycity casino, downtown Auckland. Three weeks training is all it took to qualify me as a dealer on three games - BJ, Tai Sai, Money Wheel - and though the excitement level quickly dulled with the many hours of repetitive Blackjack hands, it still beats sitting by a computer and phone for 8 hours a day.

As I've bemoaned to anyone who'd listen, the main problem of this job lies in the atrociously anti-social hours I am to work - 8pm - 4am, with my weekend being Tuesday and Wednesday! And what, pray tell, am I supposed to do with a Tueday and a Wednesday? So basically nowadays I sleep all day, get up when everyone is finishing their working day, and head off to work when ordinary folk are thinking about bed to emerse myself in the deadbeats and filth that choose to be at a casino at 3am on a Monday morning! Oh the humanity!

Thus, my plan is to work on at the casino for a another month or two, enough to let me learn a new game, and then blow that chickenshit outfit, as the man said. But don't tell Skycity that....

My new home

I came to New Zealand almost four months ago, my express intention being to travel around the country and see all there is to see. I got slightly waylaid however, due to a slight lack of funds (travelling through Russia/China/Japan, having a big fine to pay in Japan and not working for a year all contributed to this), so my work/travel New Zealand has for the time being turned into work/live Auckalnd.

Auckland, in my humble esteem, is not a bad place to be for a few months. As far as big cities go, it is a lot cleaner than most, and the huge amount of coastline allows it to 'breathe' better than other places. The people seem friendly, and there is a huge Asian population, which suits me as it means good Chinese food.

So my plan for the time being sees me settling here for a few months at least, maybe as many as 6... and, if nothing else, it's bloody nice to have a bed and a room all to my own for a change - travelling the world and sleeping in the dingiest hotel room, on people's couches, trains, buses etc, takes its toll eventually.

Thursday, November 10

Greetings

Hello to all you gorgeous multitudes who have made it to this page, a page destined to be full of wonderous and amazingly random crap, anything I see fit to squeeze out of my head. Not sure what exactly will appear on it as it'll be made up along the way. Anyway, enjoy.