Yep, I'm Alive

Hey, sorry if I might have fallen off the radar for a while! I've been working at a pub in Little Wanganui (pop probably something like 25...most of whom I know personally) for the last month. That's cool. Met some amazing people...etc. etc. (if anyone's expecting a good story...forget it. I'm looking foreward to having some good yarns when I get back and don't want to give anything away.). But yeah, that was cool, and there was no cell reception, inaccessable internet lots of food and free drinks (oh dear!). I got a haircut...which I won't go into farther than saying it involved a man with no legs, about $110 and lots of drinking. Some other stuff happened, like we had a hangi, which was sweet. More later. Anyhow, after all that, I hit the road again with a couple of Brummies that shared the West Coast comforts of the Hotel with my good self. So we're cruising around...dow the west coast, now in Queenstown. It's nice here. Cold, but nice. AND: 2 dollar drinks. I don't mean to promote how much I drink as I try to be very responsible and usually succeed, but I'm on the kind of budget that would usually limit the intake of a refreshing, after-"work"(i.e. not work) beverage...so I feel like this is something that I need tot ake advantage of.

So that's just about it (in as much as it's nothing). Oh, we went spear-fishing in the freezing cold at 3AM a couple of times too. And killed some pigs. That was all good fun.
Anyway, I gotta cruise off and do something productive like watch Liam cook and abuse the germans (I haven't met anyone in the hostel yet, but I assume there are Germans and that they are in need of some good abuse). So...until I'm back in the states, assume that I'm still living.

Driving Fast and Taking Lots of Chances,

Nathan

Bob & Buller

Hmm.

South Island is super sweet. I'm not really sure what the difference is exactly, but it's like, is both Islands were salsa, then North would be Mild and South would be one of thoes crazy kinds called something like "Uncle Tom's Ass-kicking Whoop-and-holler" that has warning labels all over it. That's as close as I can come to conveying how awesome South Island is. When we got to Lewis Pass today, we had to pull over so I could slam my head onto the hood of the car, repeatedly, as a form of self-inflicted punishment for wasting (and I do mean wasting) so much time up North. Oh well though.

After saying goodbye to everyone in the Bay (including a near-tearfull parting with Glen)...which ususally concluded with my being advised "don't freeze to death", I headed down to Wellington, where I spent one last weekend with Buzz. Good times. The next day it was pouring rain with gale-force winds as the ferry set sail out of Wellington Harbor. Woohoo. The skies cleared up once we got out into the Cook Strait, which was super. Coming into Queen Charlotte Sounds absolutely blew me away...green, rolling hills with fijords winding thier way around...sweet. I enjoyed the scenery until the wind picked up to a speed where babies were being swept up and flying overboard (almost) and then retreated inside.

Picton was boring, so I hit the road and stuck out my thumb. About half an hour later, I got a ride into Blenheim with a drug-dealer from Greymouth. He was really nice, showed me pictures of his home, family, and town (including a nive video of a rainbow) and left me with instructions to crash on his sofa when I'm over that way. Blenheim was, excuse me, a total shit hole. It may have been that everyone staying at the hostel was waiting for vine pruning to start up, which depressed me on thier behalfs.

The next day I broke down and bussed to Kaikoura, which was pretty nice. Good beaches, mountains, and thousands of seals. I beat the living jesus out of a Danish guy at pool and called it an early night.

The day after that (I would use the names of days if I knew what day it was, or is), I hitched to Hanmer Springs with a pair or French-come-New Caledonian nurses, who were lovely. Hanmer Springs is a really beautiful town up in the mountains, and the backpakers was amazing! Raw wood everywhere, clean, new pans (!!!) and a nice cat that made hilarious noises. Chatted to an Austrian couple and thier baby for a while (to be fair, the baby didn't contribute to the conversation too much), then went out an experienced the teeming Hanmer night-life with Jill and Niko (British and French couple)...where we met up with the French Nurses and an Indian chick who was living is Las Vegas...of all places. There were about 3 other people at the only open pub (at 9pm)...so entertainment consisted mostly of listening to Las Vegas, now on her 9th glass of wine, telling rambling stories. I laughed until I cried. Then we cruised back to the hostel, Niko, Jill and I watched some Weeds and crashed.

Today I hitched with Jill and Niko as far as Springs Junction, just across the amazing Lewis Pass (northernmost pass through the Southern Alps)...which was gorgeous and snowy. After farewelling them, I got a ride into Westport with Mick, an ex-gold mining consultant. After a mandatory stop for pies and tea, he put on some Bob Dylan, and we cruised through the Buller Gorge, with him pointing out plenty of history along the way. ("and just over there, my dad was working on the railroad and got sandwitched between two freight cars and was keps alive by the local farmers who brought out hot-water bottles in the snow until the ambulance arrived." or (while on the State Highway) "when I was learning to drive this was an unsealed road - one way. it took about 11 hours to get to Christchurch, when the river wasn't flooded"). He gave me his number, again with instructions to call if I ran into trouble.

So yup. Tomorrow I'm headed up to Little Wanganui, near Karamea to do some WWOOFin'...which should be pretty cool. After that it's down the west coast, then off home in what seems, increasingly, like not too long of a time away!

Until then!

I'm Walking on Sunshine, Ohhh, oh oh oh! (or: Misinterpretations of Signs from the Universe)

Yee Haw!

Having recently sold my car (well, arranged to, anyhow. the deal goes down tomorrow when I get the loaf of cash itself) I'm headed down to Wellington this Friday, then to Picton on Saturday! I have some 3 or 4 or 5 WWOOF places lined up, and with the better part of $400 in my pocket, I'm going to be doing lots of hitching, and eating plenty of rice and potatoes. But I couldn't be happier.

The new flatmates are settled in, Rene and Kaoru...and they're good fun. Yesterday they caught a bunch of fish, Kahawai I think, and today we're headed out into the boondocks of Omahu to get some fresh venison off thier hunting hook-up...so tonight is a venison barbecue with sashimi hour d'ourves (...sp?).

Swine Flu (hahaha) has recently been usurped in the news by this drug-raid fiasco up on Hospital Hill (obnoxiously blocking off my morning walk). A couple of biker gangs got in a shoot-up over drugs, then a cop or two got shot and they (what appeared to be the entire police force of NZ, with some Army back-up) had the drug cartel holed up in a house. Except the "drug cartel" consisted entirely of one fifty-one year old guy. With no hostages. The police stand-off, that closed 2 or 3 schools, had neighbors evacuated in tanks, and closed off the entire hill for 4 days seemed a little silly to me, and I kept wondering why they didn't just rock in there and kill they guy, like, when he was sleeping (which you know he did over a period of 4 days) for example. But then I figured that Kiwi police probably don't get to see excitement like this very often, and they were probably loving every minute of it (aside from the ones who got shot, with all due respect). I was painting the hallway and wishing I wasn't, and every 15 minutes or so they'd have news updates on the radio. At first, it was just normal stuff, but at the point where they started sending in Kamikaze robots to blow up the garage (of the house the guy was holed up in) I started laughing. It was a good bit of entertainment, and I haven't heard a mention of the damn pig flu since. Ha!

Well, the next post will certainly be from South Island, as I now know the Universe is flowing with me. You see, last week (where I had infamously bad luck, culminating in nearly getting robbed blind by Chinese Internet Pirates) my radio station of choice, Hauraki, was playing unusually good music. I thought, incorrectly, that this was a good omen. It turned out to be, however, God's form of hold music...a sort of consilation prize for nothing else working out for me. However, this week is the debut of Green Day's new album, so I've had to listen to "American Idiot" over, and over and over. So this must be good news, and it also makes me spend a lot more time out of the house and relish the idea of being on the road, vagabonding around South Island.

Hooray!

Buy My Car, Please (or: On The Avoidance of Swine)

It's a great deal, let me tell you! A new (and here, by new I mean 20 years old, so essentially ignore that) Toyota Corolla...pristine mechanical shape with only minor cosmetic damage...!!! And for $800 US? Damn! I'm really dumbfounded as to how so many people are passing up a great offer like this, but it's obviously a crazy world so who am I to comment.

Anyhow, that's essentially what I'm up to at the moment. Sarah and I went to her "work do" (a kiwi tradition of getting together with all your co-workers and having a great big barbecue and get intoxicated) and no one, not even the 3 year-old daughter of her boss was buying. But it'll move. At the moment, I have (let me count, hold on) $23.80 so I don't have what you would call a jam-packed schedule. I've been doing house painting (which would be lovely if I didn't have to have all the windows open in the cold weather) to pay the rent, and Glen's been out of the house for most of the past couple of weeks with a new flame in Waihi, so I've spent more evenings that I would like to admit to sitting around talking to the cat. But today we have two new flatmates moving in, a German/Japanese couple with near-unpronounceable names (Glen calls them "Zeig Heil" and "Ruv You Rong Time", respectively) so that should add some flavor to life.

But to catch up...

After the gentlemen took off from Auckland, I had a lovely, caffiene fueled midnight drive home to Napier. When I got home, Glen and I had some dinner (or breakfast, what have you) and he told me that our flatmate, Sue (who moved in to take over from Keller and Noah) hadn't been home for a couple of days. The next day, while I was out golfing with Buzz, I got a text from Glen saying that he needed me home at 5:00 that evening to be a witness, and act as backup, when Sue tried to move out withour paying rent ($185). I showed up early, and was thus, luckily, present to witness Glen jumped, yanked out the front door, and beat on the sidewalk by Sue, and a pack of her friends. To pay me back for calling the police and saving his life, Glen bought me beer.

The other weekend I headed down to Wellington with Buzz and Chris, and got to meet Buzz's brother, Kevin (and his (married) flatmates, Fred and Melissa). Kevin is a tax attorney and Fred is an acountant, so they have a lovely apartment in a high-rise building in the city, with a balcony and a view of the bay. We had a lovely night, and I had a political/automotive discussion with Fred whilst Kevin honked a duck-call at passers by down on the sidewalk and Melissa banned Buzz from her apartment for the forseeable future after some rather off-color remarks were made about the potential attractiveness of her and Fred's future children. Kevin and Fred showed me the Wellington night life, and I got bounced from my first pub after I started pretending to be a US Marine and making fun of all the ANZACs (NZ army...it was ANZAC day so I guess they all got let out of the barracks for the evening).

Other than that, I don't think there have been any too exciting happenings down here. I'm headed down to South Island to do some WWOOFing, vagabonding, romancing of beautiful farm girls and general adventuring as soon as possible (i.e. WHEN SOMEBODY BUYS MY DAMN CAR)...and I'm looking foreward to that like nothing else! Aparently I'm coming home around the 25th of June...I got a little teary-eyed today driving past the old Taradale house and re-living all the old memories, but I suppose that all good things must come to an end...and I'm really, really (I cannot express this enough) ready to get back on the road!

Anyhow, with any luck the next post will be made from a drastically different landmass from the one on which I currently reside, and I hope to have thrilling tales of daring and adventure to share!

Yippee Ki Yay!

The Inagural Enterpirse of Katz Communications NZ OR: The Depression!

Well, it's been quite a while since we've put anything up...I don't really count the last part about the jobs as that was pretty boring. But it's a nice saturday and I'm i a state condusive to having a quiet sit-down due to standard friday night activities.

We had worked out with BG that we would vacate the good old Taradale house which had served as our base of operations for so long in return for him finding us some sort of alternative acomodations. But we had just enough time before we left for one last party. For Keller's birthday, we had the crew over for a barbecue. Buzz and I made Keller a special birthday hat out of a plastic tiara and the hard-hat that came wth the kid's tool set that we got him. After dinner, we headed over to Buzz's for some drinks and to send him off to University, then off to Havelock. Keller and I got a ride into the village with Buzz's mom, who had an amazing, mellow acceptance of her son. I could never convey the nuances of the conversation exactly, but here's what I remember.

Buzz's Mom: Now, Buzz, don't get in a fight!

Buzz: I will.

Mom: Watch out after him, boys (to me and Keller)

Buzz: I'm going to kill a nigger!

Mom: Oh Buzz...

Buzz: I'll do it.

I feel like I need to say that Buzz has such a strange, calm manner about him that even though he may seem to be slightly judgemental, his overt racism is just another reason we love him, and has never been acted upon thus far. It's all good.

Havelock was lovely, though I lost my sweater. While dancing like an idiot to the terrible, terrible music that absolutely permeates popular bars, I decided that the bar managers must have a pretty good racket - more than half of the money I spent as on drinks intended to dull my senses to the absolutely awful music, and the rest on drinks to slow the coming the inevitable realization that aparently no one in New Zealand can dance. It was still god fun, though.

The next morning, Keller and I drove Noah to the bus station, from where he was off to Auckland to meet up with his family.

After a quiet week of being repeatedly fired by our evil, terrorist, turkish orchard manager (whom we took to calling "Turkish Delight" "Achmad" "Al Qaeda" and other endearing names) it was time to bid farewell, forever to the old house. We loaded up the merc like a bunch of Okies (backpacks ties to the roof, etc. etc.) and made the pilgrimage up to our new home. We settled in to our new digs - and had a good chat with our new flat mates - ex smuggler, con-man, bartender and man of the world Glen, his blind, autistic son Jess and Mooch the cat.

The Katz tribe was in town for the weekend, and we took some time out of our busy schedule to check out the Art Deco festival in town. I have never seen anything like it, or even close, for that matter. The entire city center was closed off, there were barbershop quartets on every street corner, 4 piece jazz ensembles and enough classic cars to make my neck sore from constantly looking around. Perhaps most fantastically, all along the waterfront, for hundreds and hundreds of yards people had set up extremely elaborate tents, with beautiful wooden furniture, tablecloths, sofas (all period, of course) and were lounging, playing croquet and having tea while adorned in resplendent 1930s clothing - all the ladies with long dresses, satin, lace and ribbons with little hats and parasols; gentlemen in suits or rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders topped by flat-brimmed straw hats or fedoras and the children in little dresses and knickers. While we were strolling along, Sarah and I stopped to listen to a barbershop quartet do a rendition of a Maori folk song until we turned and noticed an old man in full Deco battle dress shouting excitedly at Keller in Japanese while gesturing with his cane.

We gave the Katz's a tour of Waimarama beach, Te Mata peak and finally settled back at the Taradale house for a barbecue dinner, before saying our final farewells to the old abode and heading home. Sunday night saw us at the Old Church chatting over a lovely dinner and making business arrangements (Dean, if you could send out my royalty check for this as soon as you can, that would be excellent.) before parting ways, with Keller and I heading back to Glen's and Noah and the fam taking off for new adventures.

On Tuesday, after being fired several more times we signed up at Job #9, picking blueberries. Bleberries turned out to be kind of nice and realxing, compared to apples, and though we were making less money I quite enjoyed it. Friday night Glen took Keller and I out to The Union, the neighborhood pub, which I quite enjoyed - as the working men who seemed to be major patrons had a much more sensible taste in music. We were introduced to the barmaids, and the owner of the bar (all friends of Glen's), sang some karaoke, and eventually staggered home.

Last night (not actually last night anymore) I was grilling up some burgers for dinner and shooting the bull with Glen while one of the trucks at the warehousing yard next door was backing up to park next to Glen's fence. Glen had been in the midst of a fierce battle with the truckers after one of them started crashing into his fence, and was just sitting on the table, quietly daring him to hit it again. As the truck pulled out, the whole fence shuddered and there was a huge crashing noise. Glen was immediately running out of the house shouting at me to get the camera. While I filmed, Glen ran out the front door to the trucker and the manager, who were trying to straighten the huge, metal pole that had been knocked over, with a forklift. Glen hassled them until the police showed up, and took a statement. After that it was off the union again, where Noah whiled away the night chatting up some German girl, and Glen and I had a short nap on what we thought, at the time, to be rail road tracks (but later turned out to be a loading ramp aside the tracks themselvs). Good fun.

This last week has been slow on the work side of things, despite a killing in our foray into ("not" stolen) blueberry distribution. We were going to be picking kiwis today, but that fell through, as did blueberries again, so I'm counting on some ingenuity to get us some money, but we'll see how all that pans out. Two more weeks of work, then we're off to the Great South for 2 or 3 weeks, then Keller and Noah are off to Amsterdam, and I return to Glen's and hopefully some more lucrative work. We should have some good tales from down south, and I'll try to get them up in a timely fashion.

Cheers!

Updates from the Orchard

Hey gang - it's been a while since the last post but alas there's still not much to be said. We got jobs, eventually, through an Indian contractor (Jaswinder Singh) at a pack house. We met him at his office, then followed him along winding roads through, what appeared to be, the swamps outside of Mordor (the name escapes me). Low-lying fog covered the ground, and dead treesw poked up every here and there - creepy, to say the least. But after a long, long drive, we arrived at the packhouse, filled out a couple of short forms and got to work. Squash would come down an airport luggage clain-style conveyor belt, and it was our job to grab it up (fast) and pack it in big, wooden crates. You had to do it so the stems were down on the bottom, and facing out on the sides, and the squash packed in neat little rows. That went on for about 3 hours, then we took a break. Then three more, then lunch - then more squash. One of the guys we had talked to said that we did this for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Hooray. We got out early that day, however, and gratefully headed home. After several days of this, the squash flow (which I never understood anyway...no one in the world eats that much squah. They said it was being shipped to China and Japan, where I suspect that it was used to build houses) lessened, and we took off a day an weeded squash, under the watchfull eye of the foreman, named "Molestery McMolesteryson"...by Keller. 

All this time, Jas had been telling us that there were openings at Tumu Tumbers for workers...and that sounded like the job for us. After a good solid week or so of calling him, not being able to get ahold of him, etc. we secured the position. We showed up for work the following monday, with out earmuffs, steel-toed boots, and reflective shirts...at 4:00pm. The work, we found, was in our expertise of taking stuff of conveyor belts and packing it away. The night shift was about 15 guys or so, mostly Maori, and not to cleanest cut crowd you'd see. Although the work was fast paced (and I guess you could say "exciting"...not really though) there were some downsides to it. First of all, played OVER the noise of all the machines, which made hearing anything impossible (or so I thought) was "Flava" New Zealand's hip-hop and R&B (not the good kind) radio station. Nothing could block out the sound. Not the 3 or 4 saws. Not earplugs under earmuffs. There was no hope. Also, I mean this in the most sensetive and least racially-charged way possible, but ALL of our co-workers who were of a certain, unspecified, South-Pacific tribal heritage (hint: it rhymes with "Baori") constantly emitted absolutely the worst smell I have ever encountered. You could tell when one of them was walked by behind you. It got the the point and when one of them would come over and help me stack some wood, I'd leave and go somewhere else. 

The one night of excitement that we did have, however, was when we were driving home, at 3 or 4 in the morning, after a night of long hard work...and the car ran out of gas. We pulled over to the side of the road...and decided to walk to Flaxmere (the notorious ghetto) to fill up the gas can. However, of course, once we got to the gas station, we found that not only was it closed, but it also had to night-pay system, or posted opening hours. We tried to call a taxi, but the payphone of course didn't take coins, and only certain phone cards - none of which we had. We sent Keller back to stay in the car (to make sure it didn't get towed) while Noah and I were going to wait...for 3 or 4 hours...for the gas station to open. Luckily, after getting bored of waiting (not long, I assure you) Noah and I happened upon a way to call a taxi, and were soon on the road again. Unluckily, the car turned out to not have been out of gas, and instead have had a dying fuel pump, but that's another story entirely. 

The next week we got a call from Crasborns, the company we were thinning with, and soon we were back in the orchards...where we are now. We picked apples, peaches, pears, and more apples. Now we're in the midst of possibly unionizing for better wages, but we'll see how things turn out - supposedly things should be picking up soon enough. 

Anyway, that's the latest on out work situation. We've got a couple other stories that'll get put up in the next couple of days. Until then-