at the end of my 3rd day here, i realised i hadn’t taken any photos yet. then i noticed a soft pink glow coming in through the window and looked out to see this:
today is day 2. oh yes…same day blogging. last night my friend joanna turned out to NOT be out of town, and came by to pick me up about an hour after i’d fallen asleep.
we went over to her place, where we didn’t do much, and after about 40 minutes or so, i confessed that i was really quite tired. she didn’t have a car…she rides a scooter…some of you may recall The Incident With The Scooter from earlier this year, which disabled me for nearly 2 months (it was the cause of the sprained ankle), so i opted for the walking home option.
so then this morning, she emailed and said, “hey, come over and we’ll walk to point chev beach and have a swim.” since 94% of my plan for my time in new zealand is to walk a lot and rid myself of the pesky holiday cookies which are stubbornly maintaining their residence on my mid-section, i was like, “ok.” so i walked 2kms to her house, then we walked 5km to point chev beach…had a swim…i discovered what a horrible, wretched, no good, very bad idea it is to walk barefoot on wet, sandy concrete after not going w/o shoes + socks for nearly 6 mos. my poor, tender, winter-feet.
then we i was too much of a wuss to walk all the way back, so we caught the bus…with a detour to the library. hey, i need books or i’ll get bored. of COURSE the library was closed. (nz-ers take more days off that we americans do.) she’d told me she knew a fantastic place for pad thai, which is basically my favourite ever, so we headed there…after i’d eaten, i was about ready to fall over. you see…i did not walk 7-8 FLAT kilometers. auckland is built on the auckland volcanic field…and it is very up and down…a less extreme san francisco, if you will. knowing how to do a hill start (handbrake on, disengage clutch, handbrake off…no rolling. voila) became a valuable addition to my skill set when i last lived here.
after i came home and took a delightful nap, i walked another 2km or so to go get food from the market for dinner. and i figured walking that much in one day (10km = 6.2 miles), i was allowed to eat ice cream. and ice cream didn’t require cooking. so i had jelly tip and cucumber slices.
and just so this post isn’t without images…here is a photo of our garden. new zealanders call their backyards gardens. they also call it a garden when they plant vegetables. which my only as-yet unmet flatmate has done…very green of her, wouldn’t you say, to reduce/reuse/recycle the auckland recycle bins?
(the driveway is a bit sloped…)
You are going to come back from this trip a twig…you’re doing so much walking!
kia ora and haere mai.
(hello and welcome).
i have arrived safely in new zealand. i travelled for, oh, approximately 800 million hours, and death seemed like a welcome respite (dude, you get to STRETCH OUT in coffins. i’m just saying.) by the time i landed in auckland.
(if anyone cares, it was a 2 hour flight from albany-detroit, 5 hours from detroit to los angeles, 5 hour layover in LAX, 11 hours from los angeles to fiji, 3 hour layover, 3 hours from fiji to new zealand.)
fiji will get more coverage later…after i’ve spent more than 3 hours there, but these lovely chaps serenaded us as we all went through what is arguably the least efficient transit processing i have ever experienced.
pacific island music has a very distinctive sound and rhythm to it.
i’d arranged to rent a car for the time i’m here, and as the rental guy was going on holiday the day i arrived, he dropped it off at my new flat that morning. my brand new flatmate (with whom at that point i’d only emailed), very kindly agreed to pick me up (all my friends were out of town…it was the new year, after all, which here is full on summer. they’re all at the beach.) his car was running low on petrol, so he decided to drive the rental car. (which, as it turned out, was running low on fuel as well. more on that in a bit.)
so, first thing i did after landing was go buy a new sim card…my old prepay one was 4 years old…didn’t work. i texted him first off, “hey, i’m here…out of customs…i’ll wait outside.” i found out after he found me that he’d never gotten those texts. hooray technology! anyway…get this. he FOUND me, because he saw this:
(only the big one). i said, “wow, that’s awesome that i told you i had a polka dotted suitcase.”
“i’m not sure you did…but i thought to myself, ‘well, of all i know of this girl…she would totally have that suitcase.'” i think that is tremendous.
so, we go to the car, i figured it wouldn’t hurt to give me a day or two to get back into the habit of looking right THEN left before crossing the road, so i said he should drive home. we’d been driving about 2 minutes, and he said the tailpipe had just puffed some grey smoke…if it did it again, i might want to get it looked at. i wasn’t too fussed, to be honest; i’d rented from a guy i know provides cheap, older, but reliable vehicles…i bought a 20 year old beater from him when i lived here in 2004; it ran dependably the whole 6+ months i drove it. well, about 30 seconds later, the engine started making a HORRIBLE grinding noise…he took it out of gear…the noise didn’t stop. he pulled over. noise didn’t stop. he took the key out of the ignition. the noise didn’t stop. by this point, enormous clouds of grey smoke were issuing from the tailpipe.
“i think we should get out of the car. now.” i figured that was probably a good idea, so we clambered out of the car and stood 20 feet away listening to the grinding noise become increasingly high pitched and watching the clouds of smoke obscure the road. we’d just gotten on the motorway, and all the cars were stopped at least 100 meters away…i’m sure they thought the car was going to explode.
apparently the car didn’t want to disappoint, because that is exactly what it did. in a sort of anti-climactic fashion. the noise kept getting higher until POP. a disconcerting noise triggered a flow of brown fluid which seeped from under the hood over the sides of the front of the car. and all was still. so there we sat, on the side of the motorway, eating the reeses peanut butter cups i’d brought for brand-new-flatmate. (they don’t do choc + peanut butter here.)
i called the guy i rented the car from (oh sure, sim was working NOW.), who said he’d get a mechanic over right away. scratched our heads a bit at that one…i mean, i’d just explained the POP and the brown fluid…dunno what a mechanic was gonna do. 3 minutes later he called back and said his mechanic wasn’t answering and could we take a cab. he also expressed how mystified he was by this incident; he’d been driving it a lot lately. you see, someone had returned the vehicle with a full tank of fuel, so he was using it up.
i’m sorry, what now? who rents out a car w/ an empty tank? i mean…have you ever heard of that? i haven’t.
anyway, we caught a $50 taxi into town (i am debating whether i am going to try to get that guy to pay for it or not), and the rest of the day was almost entirely uneventful. also, i am happy to report that the kebab i walked 5kms round trip to procure from my favourite kebab place…was every bit as good as i remembered. heaven in a foil wrapper.
as i’m sure you remember, because clearly everything i write on here is a lifechanging event for you, my faithful readers, my little cat was killed not very long ago.
when i got mao, i got a brown tabby, because what i REALLY wanted was a bengal. bengals are awesome, but i wasn’t in a position financially to invest in a pet like that. fast forward two years, and i’m no longer subsisting on ramen, and a bengal is not out of reach.
enter stacey of niema bengals in chicopee, mass…i visited today, and picked out the little man who will come warm my heart when i return from new zealand.
meet the malaysian prime minister.
i am weird about pet names; i want it to be culturally relevant and also funny. (the same sort of applies to car names, but you can ask me about that later.) mao was named mao zedong, which was sort of funny and shocking because he was horrible and killed lots of people, but also, mao in a different tone means ‘cat’ in chinese. so…bengals are bred from domestic tabbies and wild asian leopard cats–indigenous to china and malaysia. and zoolander was supposed to kill the malaysian prime minister. culturally/geographically relevant? check. funny? check.
i got home from meeting this lil fella, and i googled “malaysian prime minister” (incidentally, the one in zoolander was mpm hassan. hassan just doesn’t roll off the tongue like i’d like. “here hassan! c’mere hassancat!” it’s not TERRIBLE, but it wasn’t perfect. i had to find a different mpm name.) wikipedia told me that the incoming mpm in 2009 is named najib tun razak. najib. i like it. it’s also similar to ‘habeeb’, which was my cat in high school.
so expect come march to see many more photos here of little najib (and maybe a few more of his bros and sisters)
see that round belly? najib’s a good eater just like his future mommy…i just hope *i* don’t get so fat and round i can’t walk. it’s cute on him, i don’t think it would work for me.
yes, i do feel a bit funny arranging to adopt another cat so soon after mao died, but with bengals you have to plan ahead 2-3 mos as they are in such high demand. najib is only 3 weeks old right now, and he won’t leave until he’s at least 12 weeks old.
Awww G — Congrats!!! He is so stinkin’ cute! xoxo
I want to smunch his little face.
He is adorable!!!! I can’t wait to see more pictures of him as he grows!
so.
freakin’.
cute.
congratulations!
he’s SO cute!!!! 🙂
I think it’s funny that instead of telling me, you told me to read your blog. Yes, this cat looks… agh… CUTE… but am I totally incorrect to say it looks a little ferret-like in that last photo? Or maybe like a furry leviathan? Hehehe. Just kidding. I support this!
looks like a furry snake.
Dude. That is frickin’ HILARIOUS!! How is it possible that we both HAD to use Zoolander as reference for our pet names? That is one cool lookin’ itteh bitteh kitteh. I hope to read all about the life and times of Najib, the Malaysan Prime Minister.
What an adorable kitten. I’ve actually always wanted to be owned by a bengal. Sadly, that dream’ll never reach fruition as I have two cats already and I’ve managed to develop allergies to them. They’re getting on in age and will be my last, then I shall adopt the label of dog person and wear it with pride. By the way, love the site and the pictures within. (Sarah from scs days)
Oh, his mommy looks just like my cat, Ozzy! So cute! 🙂