my life

When I was a boy I was lucky enough to visit Cornwall with my Mum, her partner at the time and my sister, Rachel. Hull to Cornwall is quite a long drive by British standards – about 7 hours, and around eleven if you keep getting lost! As I was going to be sat in a hot and sticky car for such a long time I decided I would be a good idea to compile a C90 tape of all my favourite Beatles songs. Classic titles like Blue Jay Way, Your Mother Should Know and Rain all made it on there. My Walkman (okay, it was a ‘Sanyo with Auto-Reverse!’) had brand new AAs, and with some spare ones in my pocket, I was ready for the long journey.

There was always something exciting about choosing which songs would make it onto a mix tape

Being a typical stroppy little 11 year old, and not wishing to have anything that even resembled a conversation with anyone else, I remember listening to around 15 songs non-stop for the whole duration of the trip, there and back. I knew which song would be playing next, every single word as well as every chord change and I was really happy.

Now, fast forward 15 years and I was the proud owner of a brand new iPod.

Not only could I listen to every CD album I had ever bought or downloaded, I could also rip and add every album that my friends and family had ever owned. At the last count, I had over 15,000 songs.

So, 15 songs and I’m as happy as a clam in high water; if I have over a thousand times as many songs then…… well all I do now is skip, skip… skip. I have become a lot less satisfied with the music I am listening to; not because of the music itself, but because of the medium I have chosen to listen with. Has the shear amount of choice killed the music, like video killed the radio star?

In case you haven’t guessed, this isn’t a post about Sanyo cassette players versus iPods and is actually a reflection of life in general. Not just my life, but also the lives of a good number of my friends who have been lucky enough to have ‘lived’.

I have travelled to more countries than most folk will ever visit in their lives; I have met more people than I can even remember; and have had more adventures than that little boy in the back of the Ford Escort had ever dreamed of having. On the contrary my sister, Leanne, has lived in Hull all her life and worked in the same admin job since leaving school. Leanne is one of the happiest people I know.

Whilst I know that her life choice was never going to suit me, I sometimes wish that I could go back to a time when things were just simpler. Trouble is though, once you’ve owned an iPod it’s so very hard to go back to cassette players.

The fish as I pulled him out of the water; hook through eye

Today I went fishing and found out today that I am not a natural born killer. I’ve always justified my meat eating habits by kidding myself that anything I was eating I could have killed myself. That beef steak from some cow killing; easy. The lamb chop, all chopped up; simple.

I came to be fishing as I’m actually in paradise at the moment. I’ll write more about it later, but paradise lets you get into a little row boat with a rod or two and head off into the middle of a lake.

At first, this fishing malarky was amazing. The view, the serenity, the book I’m reading. It was at least 2 hours of lazing, and a couple of false alarms before I realised I had a bite! This fish, who was just trying to have his lunch, was going to end up as mine.

Finally dead fish; the brutal reality of what we eat every day

Remembering what my friend Wayne had told me about how to land a fish was proving difficult as the moment struck. The fish came out of the water, wriggling and having trouble breathing, with a hook (that I had put there) right through its eye. God, I felt awful.

Should I let it go back in the water where it obviously felt more at home? Not with a hook in its eye; it had to die. And I had to be the one to kill it. I’ve never knowingly killed anything other than flies and wasps in the past and the reality of what I had to do kicked in.

Now, If you’re a seasoned fisherman or a hunter you must be thinking I am a bit of a pansy right now; you’d be right. I dragged it into the boat, picked up the knife and stuck it into its head, thinking that I would surely kill it instantly. It continued to wriggle about so I stuck the knife through it’s head again. Still moving. I tried to cut its head off but the knife wasn’t sharp enough so it ended up just pushing down on its neck until its eyes popped out.

It was at this point I will never forget the look on its face, as if to say “Why are you doing this to me?” – I kept saying sorry, sorry, sorry as I stabbed it repeatedly in the head, trying desperately to put it out of its misery. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing, this was proving to be a traumatic experience.

He was very tasty

After about 10 minutes (could have been longer, could have been shorter, I don’t know) it was fully dead. Not moving at all. What a relief. I spent the next 15 minutes or so just staring into the distance, contemplating what I had just done to another creature; a creature who had done nothing to harm me at all. It was quite a humbling experience, and until now I never knew that I was such a wuss.

I rowed back, and the nice lady who owned paradise filleted my friend. She then rolled him in flour and black pepper. Fried him, squeezed some lemon on him and I ate him. He tasted nice!

I’ve been here for 5 days now and thought it was about time I posted something on this here interweb.

The first thing I noticed about New Zealand is that people just seem to have more time for you; they’re not rushing around wanting to be somewhere else all the time. So far, they seem a lot more chilled out than back home.

Still being a bit jet-lagged I’ve been having some pretty erratic sleeping patterns, but the other morning I decided it was about time I got into the swing of things a bit and woke up at 6.30 am, ready for what would be the most productive day since I have been here.

I had a web meeting with Simon regarding Simple CMS at 7am so I went to the coffee shop around the corner and logged on for that – an hour later we were done and I had to get ready for a job interview I had arranged for 12 noon.

It’s not that I want a job working for anyone else, as I don’t think I’m able to anymore, it’s been too long; it’s just that if I want to stay here for any length of time I have to get sponsored by an employer. My interview was at the other side of town and after enquiring as to how much a taxi would be (and being told about $50-$60 one way!) I decided it was probably a good idea to get a car. I went on to Trade Me (the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay) and found a big one with four wheels and gave the bloke a call. In broken English he said that the car was still available and I said I’d be around within the hour.

My big car with 4 wheels (and new tyres!)

One $50 taxi ride later (it was further away than I had thought) and I was at the guy’s house. Turns out he was Philippino and had lived here for 30 years, but still spoke with a very strong accent. He told me it was his birthday and invited me around for dinner with him and his wife on the evening; I accepted his kind invitation. More about that later.

He didn’t seem to know much about the car as he was selling it for his son who had disappeared to Australia and he didn’t know when he’d be coming back so had decided to sell his car. Fair deal. All he kept saying was “New tyres, look! New tyres!”. Judging by the size of these tyres, they must have cost a bob or two so I could see why he kept banging on about them.

Anyway, I had a quick look under the bonnet, making those noises as if I knew what I was looking for… I did that thing that my Dad does to make the engine rev without getting inside (it’s a little silver thing you pull on) and put my ear to the engine. He must have thought that I had a clue! I took a ride around the block, offered him $3,100 ( that’s about £1,200 – he had it for sale for $3,500 ). He took the cash and the car was mine.

Oooh, lovely new tyres!

Now I’m no mechanic but I’ve had my fair share of shit cars and I have a good feeling about what not to buy. It wasn’t ticking and banging so I think it’ll be okay. It also had 6 months’ more WOF (their version of MOT) and 6 months’ REGO (road tax equivalent) so I’ve got at least until October before I start having to worry about any official stuff. We Brits can drive for up to a year on our UK licenses, and New Zealand law doesn’t require you to have car insurance… yes you did read that right, New Zealand law does not require you to have any car insurance… so all I had to do was drive away. Bonza!

( Being the assiduous chap I am, I chose to take out some insurance, just in case I bump a Ferrari or the likes. Annual cover cost me £63… yep, for the whole year! I’ve got this awful feeling that someone is going to wake me up at any minute, and I’ll be back in the UK )

If you haven’t already guessed, my new car is the one in the pictures – do you like it? I know, I know, I bet it’s a right gas guzzler but seeing as a litre of petrol is 61p and diesel is only 37p I don’t mind too much. I always switch the taps off when I brush my teeth now, so I feel this keeps my carbon footprint in a nice balance.

So now I had my car but I was lost; I went and bought a Tom Tom and found my way back to the hotel. Had a shower, ironed my best shirt and I was ready for off… and still only 11:00am. I arrived at Green Bay at 11:45. Seeing as I had time to spare before I had to meet the dude, I had lunch of Sushi and made my meeting at 12. Phew… all before I had even got up the day before.

He offered me a job as a consultant designer, which means I can concentrate on setting up the business here, whilst still getting sponsored. So all in all, a very productive half day!

The afternoon was spent recovering from my massive amount of productivity by driving my new car over to the beach and taking the photos of the car you see on the right. There was a man fishing in a little boat so I watched him for a while, and took some photos of the City from the North Shore.

My new friends! Junn is the birthday boy in the middle, the lady on his left is Ruby, his wife. They were very friendly.

On the way back I bought my new friend, Junn, a book for his birthday and drove back to his house. When I got there the place was full of Philippino folk of all ages. They all greeted me enthusiastically and led me through to the kitchen where there was so much food on the table.

Ruby, Junn’s wife, sat me down and piled my plate high with different things I’d never seen the likes of before – and sausages. It felt a bit weird being there as I’d only met them that day when buying the car, and didn’t know anyone there. I couldn’t exactly blend in to the background either as I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb – I think it was the pink shirt.

They all made me feel very welcome though and when the food was over, the karaoke machine came out. Junn started singing and when he was finished hinted that I should go next. That was my cue to leave… but not before I did a little rendition of La Bamba by Los Lobos! Oh yeh!