killing time

Okay people, I hope you've all got a few hours to kill, because I present to you THIS, a hideously addictive 'game' where you just.... mix water sand oil and salt... once you work out different things you'll be hooked. Enjoy.

http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/

Christmas fun

Now that we've had the moping 'poor little peter has to work Christmas' post I'll tell you what I got up to during the festive season. Managed to insert some fun and frolics in between the casino...

Christmas Eve
Since I had today off I decided to immerse myself in tradition and do what the generations of wise Biblical-type folk of yore did during the Christmas period (probably). I got together with some friends and indulged in an all day, winner takes all session of Texas Holdem Poker. Excellent stuff, especially when I was the winner and I did take all! Drinking Wild Turkey all day long, and got home after 12 to have some Christmas drinks with my housemates.

Christmas Day
Seeing as I was the furthest from home I could possibly be on this world, I joined another family for the day. My housemate Jo invited me to spend Christmas day with her family, who live on a farm about an hour south of Auckland (third time out of Auckland in five months!). A veritable feast-o-rama, with dinner making two appearances and a whole pavlova mysteriously disappearing, last seen beside me. A very nice day with some very nice people, marred only by the fact I had to leave early and drive back to Auckland to begin work at 00:05 am boxing day! Nasty nasty casino. I'll have to take Jo's brother in law, Philip, up on his offer to go possum hunting...

Boxing Day
whats to tell? I had to work two shifts because of the day off on Christmas Eve. midnight to 8am, home for a little sleep, then more work at 8pm to 4am. And on a day when I should be nursing a hangover, watching the telly, and eating remains of Christmas Day dinner. Pish.

New Year's Eve and Day
Working again, and the casino was so stuffed it was verging on the stupid. BUT I got to deal in pit 4, where all the expensive tables are, and because of the lack of high rollers, got to talk to random people and watch the cabaret show they put on. Not bad. Promptly went out at 4am and drank till 9 or 10 (not sure), which turned out to be a big mistake seeing I was working again that night. The words "I can't go on" crossed my mind more than once that night I can tell you.

So all in all a very.... different Christmas. Certainly not one of the best, but by the kindness of Jo and her family it was saved from being a total disaster! One thing its made me think about is working at the casino. Its been a lot of fun and definitely a good experience, but perhaps its time to ditch this night work bullshit...

The Christmas season in New Zealand

A very strange festive season this year, almost a non-event. Reason one being that down here in the nether regions of the world summer has arrived so glorious sunshine and a gentle coastal breeze take the place of the dull soggy air and frost of Norn Irun and the knee deep snow of Toyama. I've never counted myself as a stickler for tradition, but I just feel wearing shorts and remarking "my isn't it just a fabulous day" is not an integral part of Christmas!

Reason two for the lack of yuletide enthusiasm comes again from the fact that it's summer - Christmas is part of the holiday, rather than the reason for the holiday, and it all gets a little diluted when the whole summer thing is going on at the same time. Despite the shops closing, little is changed in Auckland on Christmas day, judging by the amount of traffic on the roads. On the other hand, maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the barrage of different holidays coming at the same time, Christmas drinks around a barbeque, carols sung at an outdoor festival ....

The main reasons for the relative quiet this year come with three and four; reason three, pretty self explanatory, I was on the opposite side of the world to my family, which is always a bummer; and reason four, its hard to brim with festive cheer when standing behind a blackjack table dealing with gambling addicts! Yes, I worked most of the holidays in the casino, because save for Christams eve and day (Christmas day is one of only three days in the whole year the 24hour Skycity casino is closed) I was allowed no holidays whatsoever! So, while everyone I knew wined and dined, left Auckland, barbequed, went to the beach and basically celebrated their socks off, poor little Peter was going into work each and every night and dealing cards until the wee hours of the morning. Poor poor, poor Peter. What's that noise I hear....? Why its the sound of lonely, sympathetic violins playing just for me. Well, I'll just have to cut my losses, take my time and a half pay (with days in lieu) and lick my wounds in the corner.

Looks like we got ourselves a reader.....

This season I have been mostly reading:
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Ronan Bennett
- Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
- In Your Dreams by Tom Holt
- Sean O' Casey Plays
- the fabulous Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
- and, as always, continuing my Terry Pratchett addiction

What I want for Christmas

I don't own a playstation 2. I don't have the money for a playstation 2. but if I did, I'd get resident Evil 4 and this.....

/www.chainsawcontroller.com/

Why wasn't this around when I was young and able to coerce my parents into buying me stuff?

The spirit of Christmas is not dead - it's just been severely mauled by a chainsaw....

Awesome.

Headhunted

Got offered a job today, which is nice. It's the same job I was thinking about leaving the casino for in January, but they had another, more urgent space to fill. Turned them down though, seeing as I want to work one more month as International Superstar Blackjack Dealer, and learn one more game before I quit. Its a nice feeling to be able to pick and choose jobs. Shame I don't have any money.

have to go, the Simpsons are on the telly.....

hungover and moody

Teeter.

For those of you not 100% savvy with the entity that is Jennifer Teeter, I say to you now, you don't know how lucky you are. Out we went, into the night of yore (yesterday) and drinks we drank. Merry we made and drunk we got, helped in no small part to the teets using her vocal capabilities to woo a moderatley crowded bar in a Karaoke contest, and once Justonian decided he could face up to the girlfriends wrath and went home, we somehow ended going round to some random guy's house with the express purpose of watching Liverpool v Chelsea and drinkning Absinthe. I woke up on said random's couch this morning with a thumping headache wearing a Liverpool shirt that I'm pretty sure I don't own, only to find a distinct absence of Teeter anywhere.

This in itself would not have been overly alarming save for the fact that she had to catch a plane at some stage in the early afternoon.... so myself and Perry, a guy who Jen had picked up earlier in the week (as she is wont to do), spent a few hours freaking out wondering where the sam hell our girlie had got to. Long story short, it turns out she had woken up, picked my pocket for house keys, and legged it back, getting to the airport on time (I assume). Having been familiar with the teetahhh and her habits in days past I was pretty sure this was what was happened - not so her boy toy Perry. For all intents and purposes, he went a bit mad. I'll not go into too many explicit details, but suffice it to say at one stage, when we were waiting for the bus (no money for a taxi), he 'vented' his angst by a spot of impromptu busking - standing on the side of Aucklands main shopping street and singing in a very loud, very uneven manner. Luckily I was too busy trying to make the world stop whirling to care much...

Teeter, your name does indeed mean trouble in every language under the sun.

But we love you all the same.

Safe home.

Word Hate

The word most hated by me in the entire English language has to be that dispicable, most heinous utterance, 'boyfriend', as in "I have a....". It's just not on. You see a girl, approach girl, waste an alarming amount of chitchat and time on said girl only to eventually ask her out and get the reply "I have a boyfriend". I hereby vote that all cute girls with boyfriends should have it tattooed into their face so the honest, hard working folk like you or I (unless you have a girlfriend) know not to waste precious time chatting them up. And girls, boyfriend or not, I think you owe it to yourselves to give Pete a chance.....

Mo' Car Blues

There were a few reasons why I bought the car I now affectionatlety refer to as 'shitbucket'. One was the cost - it was the cheapest at the car auction. Another was its perceived reliability and the fact that a common-as-muck motor would mean easy and cheap parts if and when I needed them. However, in all honesty, I'm not proud of it, but I'd have to say that I was seduced because this particular Ford Laser included electric windows AND central locking. What can I say, I'm a sucker for the mod cons.

Therefore, given the general condition of the car, I was not surprised to find that after a few months of loving missuse the windows on the right hand side of the car stopped working - not a huge problem in itself, but the fact that the back one was halfway down at the time was, well, a bit of a pisser...

Now, contrary to popular belief, there are advantages to having a window down all the time, and they include, but are not limited to,
1)Permanent air circulatory system, good for those long hot days.
2)Less hassle when locking and unlocking the doors - no fumbling with keys, just slide your arm through the open window and pop the front door lock.
3)A bin bag marks your car as distinctive, and to have a car that stands out in an otherwise mundane vehicular world is all important in this day and age.
4)It acts as conversational piece - 'Hey you left your window down', 'no I didn't, it's just knackered.' Endless variations.
5)Gives me extra ammunition to throw at Jimmy Wang.

Of course, it's not all roses. There is the continuous worry of theft, as apparently, experts have informed me, it would as easy for a thief to open the car as it is for me. I know, it surprised me too! Also, the inside tends to become saturated with rainwater when I forget to put the attractive binbag cover over it. And having a permanent air circulatory system is all well and good, but it does get a tad chilly now and again, like at 4 in the morning when I return home from work.

In the end I decided that I would have to do something about the windows. The front was easy as it was merely a dodgy switch at fault, so I rewired it to be controlled from a different switch. the back, however, was a little more tricky; I took the panel off the door and you would not believe the size of the motor it takes to put an electric window up and down! It's huge! I studied the schematics, took careful notes and measurements before ripping the bastard out. The window is now held up by a length of wood and an empty plastic water bottle. Chances of it ever coming down again are slim to none.....

The Humanity!

Got my car back today in working order, so no more bus to work and having to blag lifts home at four in the morning. Turns out the distributer was, in a word, shagged. As are my expenses after forking out the dough to get it fixed! Bloody cars. When wil those boffins learn to invent teleporting - are not the prototypes already there in TV land? I'm pretty sure they have the money, and there's nothing else as important as teleportation, so they certainly have the time, so where is it?? If I want to go to France, I want to go there NOW damnit. Not that I want to go to France you understand, but if I wanted to, then I would prefer to go straight away. You get my drift.

The sickness

My 'friend of German' status was slightly tarnished today when I got a telling off from Evelyn, my German housemate, for calling in sick to work last Friday. Had a party to go to, so I had a conveniently timed eye infection, the cure of which involved a six pack of beer and a skinful of vodka. Best remedy ever, if you ask me. Anyway, I still am 'friend of German,' I just don't happen to share their work ethic. I'll just have to make the excuse more viable for Eve as well as the casino next time....

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.

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.

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.

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....