It's a grey morning. We had a late night singing karaoke in the bar. I crawled out of bed and wandered over to the window to investigate the weather and general goings-on. There in the tree jumping around excitedly was a little red squirrell. Now maybe it's just me, but they're damn cute little things. The locals call them tree rats. sheesh. So i stood there for a good fifteen minutes looking through my camera trying to get a good shot fo the little thing as it collected twigs and crept back into it's leafy hide-away. It's moving in - i hope. My window is like a viewing platform for a range of local critters. Love it love it love it.
Unfortunately, i didn't manage to get any photos, and i was late for breakfast. oops.
Oh, and i managed to download some pictures from my digital camera. I'll work on getting some good pics of the centre and sticking them on here. Please hold...
a flag and on-centre training | feb 27, 2003 22:37
whilst in canada, i purchased a flag. a canadian flag. it's quite a luxurious flag, if a flag could be considered as such. I am quite fond of it, and thus, i did stash it in my pack and have it accompany me here to the antipodes. (lovely spot this antipodes place, you all ought come see it sometime...) Because our walls are made of concrete (everyone is jealous of our concrete walls... they all have wood. ha, suckers.) then i can't adhere it to the wall, and so have carefully and delicately stuck it to the ceiling with a series of drawing pins. it looks bloody excellent if i do so say myself. In fact, i'm going to get a picture of it, and i may well be able to post it here for you tomorrow or sunday - or something. (Gazza, I'll need you to please ftp them to my little picture archive space pelase i think unless they have abn ftp client here which i'm doubting. i will advise :o) ) But yeah, the flag looks excellent. My roommate, cam, has installed his super-sized nz flag in the panel next to mine. we look like patriotic folk. nice.
Days of late have been made up primarily of training for various activities and a whole lot of time sitting aroubnd wondering what to do. Evidently, it costs a lot to do anything here. Say, for example, i wanted to catch a bus to ryde. Ryde is about 8km away. After the ten minute walk to the main road, it costs me £1.80 to bus there, and the same to come back. That, if maths isn't you're strong point, is £3.60, which converts to about NZ$10.80. Then, lunch froma bakery is another NZ$7-9, plus a drink, then if you want to get in to any attraction, this ranges from NZ$9-18 or something. Seriously, we like the centre, cos it's free here. but there is NOTHING to do. Well, um, you can sit and talk, or like, sit and watch the woodpigeons or woodpecker that live out by my window... or um, wander down to the beach (which thankfully is free cos it's horrid. ok, not too horrid, it has some sand, and nice shells. yey beach.).
There are rabbits all over the place. The other night, walking back up to trappers, i saw ten. just before, walking to get the key for this comptuer lab, i saw three. They're everywhere. And there are mole holes, so presumably there are moles, we're not quite sure where though. I have seen one red squirrel. they're cute. not much else though besides the hundreds of black crow like birds that congregate in the skies above the centre and swoop down from time to time to steal children and take them away to mountaintops or some such. or maybe that's just me having had too much of daves influence...
We eat a lot. I think i've said something of that sort before. I forget, so forgive me if you find yourself reading this and wondering why i'm not giving you something new. Amy isn't sure either, ok? That's why i'm writing this. Also, there is half an hour to wait until i can eat dinner, and i need to fill in that time with something. So what better to do than talk about food and make myself even more hungry.
We were warned that the food here was not flash. In fact, some of the stories i heard made it out to be so bad that i was actually scared. To be honest, i'm pretty damn happy with the food. OK, so it's not gourmet. It's bulk cooked food, and it is what it is. But, it's a whole lot better than anything i imagined. Also, with such a huge salad bar each night, you can mix and match everything to make a variety of different meals based around the core ingredient, which believe it or not, has never been uncooked mince, much to my excitement. We're unsure yet if we've ever been served REAL meat though. Most of it has been minced, processed, shaped and garnished somehow to make a range of different "cuts" that end in "-lette". Fascinating. But it still tastes alright. Oh, and there are LOT of chips. Seriously, I've never seen so many chips in my life.
Talent isn’t perhaps the best word to use to describe our performance in the bar on Friday night. But it was the word that they chose. Silly them. However, there was quite an impressive haka performed by the rugby boys, and some guitar playing by a couple of others. Perhaps the highlight of the night was nick playing poi. The problem was that nick is English and he wasn’t in our group. But he was well trained in the art of performance poi, and played in the dark with a pair of glowing blue LED poi. He is well loved here.
The night went well on into the evening, our pounds dwindling, and our minds fading. It’s the latest most of us had stayed up all week, and it was still only 11pm.
Saturday rolled around much to our disappointment. Most of us really wanted to still be in bed. Instead we were up early for breakfast and waiting around for our one-to-one sessions. Nerves were shaking amongst the group; our exam results and practical performance would determine our success and therefore whether we were staying here or not. While we were generally confident we had passed there was some degree of uncertainty surrounding us.
Our final meetings were somewhat of a performance review, looking back on our interaction with the group, teamwork skills, exam marks, practical performance, and a variety of other observed aspects from the week past. The pass-rate on the exam was 70%. Some passed, some failed. I took out the field with a stunning 91%. I got called lots of names. Oh well.
We had several hours free on Saturday between this meeting, and a five o’clock welcome meeting. We went to town. There are two towns nearby, Ryde and Newport. Dave drove us to Newport, and we wandered the shops and quaint lanes for a few hours before getting bored and bussing back to Wootton.
We were allocated rooms on Saturday night, and spent a large part of Sunday moving in and trying to make them look a little bit human. The rooms vary in size and location on the centre and each one has it’s pro’s and con’s. Our room is pretty big, it’s up the top of the hill in a building called Trappers. It’s miles from anywhere on centre except for the meadow, and an orienteering point. It’s quiet, but if you forget something, it takes forever to go back and get it. But it’s almost like living off centre, which is kind of nice I guess. The room itself is up a narrow set of steep stairs. It has a couple of single beds, a wardrobe, two sets of drawers, two bedside tables, a washbasin and a little window. Now it has a CD player too. Pictures now adorn the walls, and soon a flag or two will be placed somewhere, once we figure out how. The linen is ugly.
Sunday afternoon, we returned to Newport for a couple of hours. Evidently, on Sundays most shops are closed. The words “sleepy seaside village” comes to mind. Except, it’s not by the sea…
has anyone seen where the week went to? | feb 23, 2003 22:50
i was too busy being exhausted. now, i realise that a good bit of this post is a repeat of other stuff, and i'm sorry - but that's just life. I was sleepy, adn i had to start typing today offlien and i had no diea where i got up to - and no recollection of writing all this other stuff, so yeah, sorry abotu that. but hey, this is some different stuff about the same events, that's twice as much for your money... gotta love it.
Flying to the antipodes sort of induces a feeling of I-don’t-really-care-if-something-flies-into-heathrow-and-blows-us-all-up-ness. When we arrived at Heathrow Airport, we all stood around wallowing in our own exhaustion. Dave was standing there with a 3D clipboard indicating that he was our contact. We thought it was a lame sign. But, Dave’s over-enthusiastic arm gestures compensated for his lack of signage.
His excitement was obvious; but who wouldn’t be excited at the prospect of 16 exhausted kiwis that you get to torment for the next week as they attempt to overcome jetlag in a strange environment where the people talk with frightfully strong accents.
Dave arrived soon. Not the same Dave, a different Dave. There were two of them. As if we didn’t’ have enough things to confuse us – they gave us two Dave’s. The second of the Dave’s is also referred to as Dodgy so for the purposes of not confusing you, the reader, and me, the writer, and um, anyone else who might be involved somehow, lets us call one Dave and the other Dodgy. Nice.
Dave is tall, enthusiastic, and has told us more tall stories in the last wee than anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life. My personal favourite was the one about them burying ten thousand bodies near the centre. He said that after so many people died from the plague, they didn’t have anywhere to bury them, and so they shipped them over to the Isle and created a new hill. He went on to tell us about the rate of erosion and the corresponding chance of tripping over a protruding limb. Charming.
Dodgy isn’t so tall, is enthusiastic in his own way, and talks with an accent that makes comprehension difficult at the best of times. Dodgy is football-mad. He fits the telly football-mad stereotype almost perfectly. He’s great, but not only as a novelty. He’s got that excellent knack of being able to say something serious using a not so serious tone. I guess Dave does too. But yeah, they’re excellent.
Riding the coach down to Portsmouth, or wherever we caught the ferry from, was a bit of a blur, but I do recall it looking a lot like home. Similar trees, similar landforms and well, similar most things. It’s been commented numerous times by various people that it is still quite difficult to accept that we’re in a different country. Everything looks like it could be New Zealand, but we know, somewhere inside of us, that it’s not. Maybe it’s just us trying to grasp at anything to delay the inevitable realisation that we’re on the other side of the world far away from anything that we know and love.
As we were told, the gates to the centre are undeniably prison-like. They are manned twenty-four-seven. It’s comforting in some respects, you feel safe – free of danger from roaming serial-rapists and pillagers. However, it’s a little disconcerting. There is an element of confinement and a feeling of lost freedoms.
England is cold. No, really, it is. It’s winter here. I knew that before I came, but, well, it’s cold. I miss the sun, I miss the long days and the drowsy Sunday afternoons. It gets dark early, it’s cold and about the only good part about that is that all the mud around the centre is frozen. But, in saying that, I think most of us are gradually acclimatising to the cold and we’ll all soon be running round in tee-shirts and laughing at the mere thought of seven layers of clothing and a woolly hat.
We were told the rooms were small. So it came as no surprise to find that the rooms were in fact small. The door hardly opened, just scraping past the tallboy and opening wide enough to let us enter the room. Two sets of bunks, a wardrobe and said tallboy filled most of the room. But it gave us sufficient room to live, and it was warm, so that’s neat. We crawled into our beds and slept until some ridiculously early time of the morning when we woke and lay wide awake until we got up for breakfast at 7:30. This was a trend that lasted for the duration of the week. Though, the time we woke up got later and later each day. Jetlag sucks.
9am Tuesday we had our welcome meeting. I forget what this was about; I suspect most of us just sort of slept through it wondering what time it was. But I’m sure we felt sufficiently welcomed. Oh, no, wait, I recall being introduced to some of the staff, and having George, the centre manager, talking to us in his strong Scottish accent. He has a dog called Bramble. It’s the centre guard-dog. It’s quite little though; a King Charles spaniel. We were issued with folders that contained a plethora of printed notes. The folder is relatively empty but will gradually fill as we acquire more paperwork from all the training over the next six or so months.
We played some games. I like games. I’ve no idea which games we played, but I’m sure they were fun. We also wrote our names on the whiteboard and then had to stand up and talk about ourselves when our name was selected. These “speeches” gave us a small insight into the other group members. Interestingly enough, looking back at what was said, it gave quite a good insight into the character of everyone. After only a week, I’ve learned a substantial amount about various group members and how their character affects their interaction with the group. The opportunities for individual and group analysis are endless in an environment like this and I’m loving it.
An afternoon of meetings, paperwork and listening lasted through until dinner. Having not lived in an environment like this before where mealtimes are set and you can’t really eat in-between times, I never really could come close to comprehending what that’s like. After only a week in this institutionalised existence, I’m programmed into the schedule and find myself getting hungry at consistent times, getting sleepy at consistent times, and waking up at yes, you guessed it, consistent times. It’s surreal. Come 5pm, I’m hungry, and you sit around for half an hour waiting until you can go and eat. The day seems to be based around mealtimes, and we seem to eat all day. However, the huge intake of energy has enabled me to bounce around the centre being my usual self, despite this stupid jet-lag business. I’m afraid I might get fat though. Best I start running or something…
Yet another meeting followed dinner… “Terms and Conditions” and session delivery and all sorts of other bits like that. Then they opened up the computer lab for us to check our emails and such. Then we slept. We like sleep a lot.
We don’t like getting up a 6:30am to be at the seminar room for a 7:15 initiative exercise. But when you wake up at 5:30am and can’t get back to sleep anyways, it’s not such a bad thing after-all. The exercise involved seeing how fast you could get a team of ten people through a bicycle inner tube. We were ultimately being observed to see how we interacted with a group in respect to teamwork. It was perhaps just as interesting for us as it was for those watching. Knowing a little more about the nature of your colleagues enables you to interact more effectively with them, I think. I think I’m too sleepy to really comprehend that many words in a row.
After breakfast, where I haven’t again made the mistake of taking the fried bread, we started the first of our preliminary training. Over two mornings we had four different sessions: sensory trail, basketball, Unihoc and volleyball. The aim was to pay close attention to how the session was run, take extensive notes, and be able to replicate a ten-minute slot of the session on Friday. We had template sheets to fill out which made the task slightly easier. But it’s all the little things that make the difference between a lame instructor and a superstar. You can teach the curriculum, but without the personality, and the millions of tiny additions, tips, tricks and secrets, you’re incredibly dull and boring. So it was a case of listening intently and paying attention to absorb any possible information that would make the session more excellent. Though, it has been said, and I believe it to be so, if you’re a boring person, nothing is going to make you interesting. You’re just plain boring. Luckily, it seems I’m not. Hurrah for that.
Self praise over, the day went on with even MORE informational input, before dinner, and then even MORE and MORE information. Absolute madness if you ask me. However, this was the end. After another early morning initiative exercise, and two more morning sessions, we had the rest of the day dedicated purely to leisure. Aeroball and Problem Solving. Personally, I thought it was an excellent afternoon. But I like stuff like that, and other people don’t so much I guess. And this excellent afternoon was followed up with a night hike after dinner. Generally, when I walk in the dark I like to have a torch, or preferably, my Petzl headlamp. We walked in the dark. No additional lights, just darkness. There was mud, and it was not frozen. There was also one very unimpressed glen. However, as we progressed further along the trail things improved and it wasn’t quite so bad afterall. It was allegedly a time for reflection; a time for thinking about life, and everything we’d done thus far. For me it was a time of trying to avoid getting my shoes muddy, and hearing more about ten thousand bodies buried in that paddock over there…
(Juz says “hi mum + dad and all my friends”) (and follows that up with “thanks dude” which is possibly the most 1999 (according to Rob who says that “that was cool when I was like, yeah…”) bit of language used on centre. Bwahahahaha)
Revision time. Pages and pages and pages of notes covering a diverse range of material from the week thus far. I was confident that the 70% pass mark was well within reach. But it’s not in my nature to settle for just passing. So I revised some more. Then gave up, decided to sleep and look again in the morning.
6am. We’re wide awake as per usual. This is one of many disturbing trends that we’re developing. Imagine being wide awake at six in the morning, every morning. There is nothing right about that. Not a drop of rightness. But, we take advantage of the situation and revise some more. Breakfast is the same as usual… And apparently it stays the same from now on in. 2 bits of Bacon, 2 Sausages, three hot canned tomatoes and a bowl of cereal, possibly with a banana if I manage to get one from the night before.
The exam is in the bar. The bar tables are lined up in rows, each with a chair. The smell of beer fumes congregates around us. Cigarette ash lingers in the carpet. We’re given an hour and a half. We begin. It’s harder than I had thought. But forty minutes later I hand it in and wander outside to breathe. Now it’s time to revise the practical sessions. They begin in just over an hour.
I’m first up. I’m thrilled at the concept. My session is Sensory trail. My role involves a pre-check of the area and the equipment before I go to collect my group where i perform a series of further checks and introductions, coupled with enthusiastic gestures. This of course is just regular flavoured glen – so I bounce around within the confines of the experience and love every second of it. I’m disappointed when it ends, some seventeen minutes after my ten minute slot was supposed to be complete.
The day went by, and I was hoping for volleyball, or maybe unihoc, but no, of course, they’d seen me struggling with those confounded basketballs, and thus they made me instruct a ten minute session of it. The session had progressed somewhat faster than when we did it last time, and I was near the end with very little left to do and no idea of any other skills to “teach”. I could bounce the ball, and throw it occasionally, but that was about my limit. So, I got a brief two minute tutorial on something called a “lay-up” that involved running, bouncing, and throwing the ball. I then taught it. The best bit was that they made me give a demo, and not only did I get it through the hoop the first time, but the next time as well. I’m like a basketball pro. Yes indeed. So then we played a game. I didn’t know the rules, and so my being the ref in that game was a brilliant idea. Imagine the fun we had.
“Talents” were on display that night… Many of us sang songs, danced, or whatever, in front of the existing instructors. Fools we were.
Heathrow airport is srurrounded in fear. The people around here all seem a little spooked by the whole thing. I mean, they seem tot hink that everyone tehre is running around diving for cover and screaming for their lives. they're not. no, honestly - it's just liek any other airport. i promise. except, bigger, and uglier. Now, interestingly enough - customs at heathrow was almost as simplistic as singapore. I was surprised. I was expecting more men with guns, maybe some dogs, and definately a card to be filled out decalring items. but - alas - there was none of that trivial stuff. instead, just a door that we wandered through and smiled at some customs officials. Actualyl i ran one fo them over with my luggage trolley. i felt silly. but oh well - he assured me that he wasn't angry and that i would not be arrested or shot or put in jail. so that was super.
We met up with the 3D peoples. Dave and Dave. I thought it should have been called 2D. But oh well. I was jetlagged - i'm allowed to think such dumb things as that. *cough* So, we then waited for a jacket to be reclaimed from the plane and jumped on the bus which drove us through sountryside that looked undoubtedly like canterbury. Surreal stuff. If it wasn't for the cold, i'd be convinced that we're still in New Zealand. On the bus we were presented with a stack of paperwork. The next hour was a swarm of confusion about what was to be written where. It really wasn't that complicated i don't think - but anything seems complex when you're sleepy.
Darkness came like a blink of the eye. Twilight doesn't seem to exist here. Or maybe i fell asleep, i'm not too sure. So, upon arrival on the isle all was dark. However, the next day, the isle was light again. That was promising.
The gate that you come through to get to the centre is electromagnetically locked and manned by mr security guy. While we were told that this was the case - it still came as somewhat of a shock and i'm yet to decide if it's disconcerting or comforting.
I was up before seven. I wanted to have a shower. Sadly, the rooms that we're in while we're being assesed do not have showers. They have baths, but everyone knows that baths are silly. Thus, i had to trek up the hill to another block of accomodation and use the shower up there. To make it cool enough to stand under, you had to turn teh hot water tap on at the basin in the other room, and then it was just below boiling. mmmmm nothing like a good early morning scalding.
Breakfast consisted of bacon, sausages, tomatoes and, get this, toast dipped in a deep fryer. Doesn't that make your arteries just cringe? Ugh. I think there was cereal and stuff as well, and toast. And let's not be forgetting the cordial.
Our first session today started around nine. It consisted of an intro by the centre general manager and brief introductions of various key staff. Then we did a little talk-about-yourself-in-front-of-everyone type game. The vocal-biographies ranged from a "i'm george and i play rugby" to lengthy interesting ones from a few of us that had too much to talk about.
I'd finally managed to convince myself that we were headed for winter. Now, if you ask me, that's a pretty impressive task given teh weather that christchurch has been graced with in days of late. So, having mentally prepared myself to walk off the plane and into winter, it came as somewhat of a shock when the hot humid climate of singapore stood before me. Unfortunately, the thought had never crossed my mind that singapore would be hot and summery and so singapore proved to be hot and uncomfortable in the clothes i had with me.
However, all was not lost... we went for a walk along the river that winds its way through the central city area. From my hotel room i could see quite and amazing looking bridge crossing over the river, so i suggested that we walk to it. We did. And yes, it was somewhat of an impressive bridge. Along the way, we saw a bike chained to the fence beside the river. It had no wheels. Now, this may not seem much of a notable thing but wait, there's more. I pointed out that it was quite a juxtaposition, because singapore is extremely clean and you just dont see rubish lying around. We saw at least three more locked up bikes within a kilometre of the bridge. It was weird. Oh, and much to Juz's dissapointment, we did not catch any frogs.
Cars, evidently, have little care for anyone else on the road. The speed limit appeared to be 80km/h, and the cars certainly took advantage of that. It's not often that you're standing on the side of the road waiting to cross and a bus tries to chop you in half. When we boarded our bus to return to the airport this monring, the bus was going faster than everything else on the road; we passed all the other vehicles. I do not recommend being a pedestrian in singapore.
Customs was rediculous. We got through and had to physically turn around to make sure that we'd been through. Unlike any other customs department i've seen, singapore just lets you wander through if you've nothing to declare...
The locals know nothing. Don't bother asking.
The plane was neat. Each seat has its own personal television screen that you can then order up specific movies or music or television on. Or, games. But to be blunt, the games sucked. We were not impressed.
Unlike Air New Zealand, Singapore airlines has complimentary spirits and alcohol whenever you want it. They need measured pourers though. I swear that some of those glasses had more bourbon than lemonade... And then the "lovely lady" infront of me decided to bump the chair which bumped the table which subsequently spilt my bourbon all over my jacket. I was not impressed.
The man in purple was scary. He seemed pretty keen on Juz. We think she should have gone for it.
At the hotel, our keytags were not numbered in the most legible type we'd ever seen. Our room was 1628. The boys had 1606... so they thought. However, according to the hotel map, room 1606 was the presidential suite. yeah, sure guys... whatever.
We were a little shocked at the number of english signs in singapore. We later learned, thanks to Mahinder the flight attendant guy, that english is the official lanugage of singapore. That kinda explained the signs then...
for the record, and just so everyone knows from someone who has actaully seen the evidence: If you are buying dutyfree spirits, buy them in Singapore or New Zealand. Britain charges FAR FAR too much for spirits.
Net Cafe's do not exist in Singapore after about five pm. Stupid stupid. That's no bloody use. And further to that, the hotel did not have internet. So, i could not check my mail or anything in singapore. Not that it mattered anyways, no one emailed me.
The small group coming to meet us in singapore were delayed by about five or six hours. They were then late getting to the hotel. 3:30am to be precise. Charming.
The movie Solaris is crap. Don't bother.
5:50am, a lone motorcyclist rides through the darkness on a four lane each way highway below the hotel. I wonder to myself why they need so many lanes...
The men in singapore airport have guns. But Tanks? What tanks?? The "tanks are other heavy military stuff" at Heathrow were not there. It seems they were removed for some reason. awful shame. But, back tot he men with guns. Real guns. Real big guns, spooky spooky stuff. The policemen carry pistols too.
The movie Red Dragon is quite worth seeing.
We spent a lot of time looking out the windows as we flew across asia and europe. The awing aerial views of the colourful pixelated groundscapes of india were a stark contrast to the frozon baron lands of Bulgaria. Stunning stuff - took some photos from the plane - will post them once i figure out how.
I'm struggling to stay awake - so my apologies for the disjointed nature of this post. I may repair it at a later date.
packing is not fun. there is still a bit to do, but i'm going to bed. i'm sleepy.
I'm not entirely sure if i'll have much in the way of access once i'm in the uk. however, watch this space for it shall be filled with anecdotes from week one of my antipodes adventure upon the isle.
leaving party and a birthday cake | feb 14, 2003 01:29
After months of having people asking me when my party was going to be, i decided i ought to take some action. First, it was the twenty first-that-never-was that people were concerned about. Evidently, I was supposed to have a party filled to the brim with smiley people. There was to be loud music, friendly people, and drink. There was no party. So, upon learning of my imminent departure to the UK, the questioning started once more and i decided that perhaps a party would be a good idea in lieu of the twenty first-that-never-was. Various plans were formed in mine head - ranging from the utterly bizarre to the ridiculously formal.
Fortunately, while out drinking with Gazza last Friday night, i asked the owner of ministry nightclub if he was going to put on a leaving party for me. Henceforth, a party was born...
Numbers were limited, so the choice of who to invite became a difficult process. I gave up on trying to select a group of people from that would interact well together, and settled instead diversity. I was laughed at; told it would never work. I smiled and watched everyone come together and be happy. That was cool.
A Pre-drinks party was organised to be held at gazza and joy's place. So come 5:30 people started flocking there... Of course, me being me, i was running late after having been down at the club cleaning the bbq.
The music played, and people talked as the wine supply gradually depleted. As a result, we were running late for the main-event down at the club. So everyone eventually left, and walked down manchester street, many with salads in hand.
Soon the party was underway with a good prog-house cd playing. Who knew at that stage that the music would later be sourced from the eighties genre..?!
The BBQ was setup out on lichfeild street on the footpath. Two friends opted to play chef (complete with rather funny little aprons) while others (that's me and lissa) buttered bread. nice job all around i say.
People ate, people drank some more, and people danced.
We had a cake for Andrew - 'cause it was his birthday. So there was a rather drunken rendition of happy-birthday with an undecided number of hiphip-hurrahs afterwards.
Some time later a crowd of us left the bar and carried on at the flat with 62% gin, 62% vodka (ok, in addition to the REAL bourbon that i had there, i did try some of the aforementioned general alcoholic beverage) and a game of twister.
Some time around four, there was sleep. Some time around seven am, there was an angry flatmate stomping around in the hallway and banging on doors, windows, walls, and from the sounds of it, anything he could find. I was not amused. Eventually he shutup and i slept some more.
I Spent the day in banks dealing with credit card issues, (i advise to sort all this out sometime before your departure, this will avoid the unnecessary stress that i endured today.) and picking up various things that i'd left scattered around the city. Thought i ought to collect it all before i leave. Consider that bit done.
Now, in closing, I'll take this little opportunity to say a HUGE thankyou to:
Bruce and Tony for putting on the party at SMILE. Bruce even drove to the refuse station to empty his trailer so he could bring the BBQ into town...! The thankyou's flowed onto paper at our afterparty, but upon inspection in the morning it was decided that they were a tad illegible and 62% gin-soaked to pass on sadly. The general gist was that Bruce and Tony are the best, and "big-ups" to them for being so generous and cool and stuff like that.
Gazza and Joy for the excellent pre-drinks party, all the alcohol and effort that went into it, and the salads, and all that, and for being amazing friends. And we like your house. And, um, you know, just YEY for you guys!!
niq and timmi for working on the bar and putting up with all those people gradually getting more intoxicated. You guys rock.
lissa and john and um, someone else too i think for buttering the bread. the bread was yummy.
andrew and damien for wearing those aprons and cooking all those kebabs and steaks and stuff. They were mean kebabs.
my mum for taking me to the supermarket to buy the bread, and dropping me into town, and for being mum.
me for leaving so that a party could happen.
to everyone who came. Without people, parties suck. So thanks to everyone who came and helped make it such a great night.
I'm still a tad overwhelmed, but my gratitude to everyone for everything i think must surely be obvious. thankyou.
Now i think it's time for some much needed sleep...
Evidently, the concept of stocking up large on medication here in order to save money in the UK wasn't such a grand idea. While i don't doubt that it will in fact save me a large quantity of dollars, it has left me mouth agape after my little shopping venture at the pharmacy today. I spent nigh on $200 on various items. But, i will be well prepared. Oh yes. Complete with No-Jetlag
While out in the city, I also picked up my very first superfine merino garment. Having worked at untouched world for over a year, i became rather familiar with this product. But the styles there were ugly, so i never bought one. My new top however is made by survival. It is not ugly. (Survival also has a very cool DLE brochure, you know, just in case you're into that sort of thing... *cough*) I got some new socks too. Apparently that's not worth mentioning, but you know what? I don't care. I like new socks. So there. nyah nyah.
Have just now returned from the last orientation meeting with EXI, the company organising my sojourn to the UK. Due to my being in Auckland at the time of the original orientation meeting, this was my first opportunity to meet some of the people who'll be my colleagues for the next six months. It was comforting to see that i wasn't the only one feeling nervous about leaving so soon; with only a week to go, the stress levels are running high.
Despite the nervous atmosphere in the meeting, i got the impression that everyone was at least slightly excited. I suspect the excitement will kick in sometime around a week after we arrive. By that time, jetlag will be long gone from our minds, and there'll be no more multiple-choice quizes... (THAT alone will be exciting)
It was a stunning day over in Lyttelton. While strolling down Sumner Road towards the harbour, the hot sun beating down on us, i questioned why we were leaving New Zealand. We're all mad. Leaving summer behind to go work in a dismal english winter, live in tiny rooms, eat monotonous food and work with children. Yes, evidently we are all mad.
[insert dreams of life without multiple-choice quizes...]
congregating forms and aubergines | feb 7, 2003 02:14
I seem to have encountered the place where all the forms (and other various papers-to-be-filled-in) in the world congregate; my desk. The stack is never-ending, well, so it seems. Though, it's not just the bits you have to fill out, sign, have witnessed, etcetera etcetera, but, all the other stuff that you have to correlate together to support the information you have written on the forms. I'm going to need a small truck to deliver it all to the various places it has to go. I'm glad that i'm not taking them all with me to the UK - my 30kg baggage allowance would be reduced to 5kg due to the masses of paper in my case. ahh bliss.
The fun times have begun. In other words, the workload has declined, allowing me more time to enjoy my last week or so in the country. I'm suspecting that it will be a busy week though - trying to catch up with as many people as i can, as well as parties, dinners, and various other excuses to drink more wine. Will UK wine be good? Will i have sufficient parties to keep me entertained? Will i develop and english accent? Will i join a cult of aubergine eating extremists living in a cave? How long will it take for me to go entirely mad? Have i already gone mad in suspense? Find the answers to all of these questions, and more, soon, when i take you INSIDE THE ISLE... *insert horror movie music here*
a new beginning... | feb 5, 2003 01:24 It took me all night to make this bloody thing. Best you all tell me how great it is, yes yes? However, of course, you can't comment just yet. So, you'll just have to wait until i get that little detail setup. Please hold...
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