liquor? but I hardly even know 'er.

I'm revising the beginning of this entry. I was looking for a good way up the nearest mountain without getting caught hopping a fence, and on the way up the road I saw this. Store. I didn't know what to say. I guess this is one of those "cultural differences" moments.

Staying at a hostel in Queenstown, adventure capital of the world. You can do anything here. You can bungy jump from any height, including 143 metres. You can take a jetboat up a river and feel like you're going to hit a cliff, you can take a water sledge off a waterfall, a boogie board down a class IV rapid, hangglide, parasail, cave, climb, heli bike, even fly a rocket on the end of a rope, with you on it. No shit.

Well I'm not doing any of these things (yet) because I am looking for work here, figure I should stay awhile so that if I get an answer I'm still on this side of the country.

Staying at a hostel run by a nice Welsh guy named Taf, or Taff. Taf loves to tell stories, and he's really good at it. Taf knows all the ins and outs of getting a job in Queenstown and has been pretty helpful with his strategies so far. He's worked at the hostel awhile, and it's no accident. See in NZ, just like everywhere else in this godforsaken queen-plagued commonwealth, the company has to prove that no locals can do the job before you, the foreigner, are allowed to do it. Funny thing is, Taf is the company. So it's up to him to put the ads in the paper advertising his job for others. His Welsh delivery was priceless. If you don't know what a Welsh accent sounds like, it's basically british, but really easy to understand. In so being it loses nothing of the wit, timing, and dry delivery of classic British comedy. "Every month or so we'd get these CVs in for people wanting the job and it would just be like 'fuck off'" But it was the best 'fuck off' ever. Taf screwed his face up quizzically, and as he made the motion of frisbeeing the CV into the rubbish bin he formed the words "fuck off" as a question, his voice going up at the end. He had me and another British guy in stitches.

"Pretty soon the ads got so specific that if you weren't a five foot four Welsh guy with blue eyes and curly hair there was no fuckin way you were coming in for an interview. We started running the ads on thursdays cause no one reads the paper on thursdays, and it's cheaper then. The lady at the paper was like

'Thursday, you sure? No one reads the paper on a Thursday.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'Right - so do you want a border around that?'

'Fuck no!'"

He also explained that you can't get away with anything in Queenstown, because everybody talks, and the cops are strict. There is a process called a diversion, whereby you can get out of jail free, if it's your first time. If it's your second infraction of any kind, then you are screwed, buster. Taf has a British buddy that is a bit of a lout. "He's done a bit of boxin' in the past and, well, he's the nicest bloke you ever met and fun to go out and have a pint with as long as the night goes perfectly. If anything goes wrong though. . ." Taf just shakes his head. Well The guy had gotten in trouble for fighting or something at some point and has used his diversion. . .

So one day he was in the grocery store, and he disobeyed the "No Grazing" sign, which Taf thought was "the rudest fuckin sign ever since it compares people to cattle." The guy ate 3 grapes. He ate 3 grapes and got busted for it. The police and store managers estimated that he'd eaten half a kilo of grapes. They never said how they arrived at this estimate, but they stuck by it. Even though the guy was like "Are you kidding? Why would I eat half a kilo of grapes? You can look at the stem and count how many are missing, I ate 3!" They wouldn't have it. He went to jail. jail. Jail for eating three grapes.

Don't fuck up in Queenstown.

finally some USB

Alright you skim readers, here's some shit for you to skim. I'm uploading some select photos to this entry and some previous entries. . . maybe I'll upload them to facebook, is that a better idea? I'll start here and see what people say. Anyway here goes.

I'm in Queenstown right now, which is warm (for a change) and awesome. I guess that's too much information for some folks so I won't write any more of that format. I couldn't get a job in Fiordland, beautiful as it was, cause I can't get the NZ version of my F class fast enough. Haven't heard anything from the glacier company yet so this may mean going to Australia. . . I'll keep you loosely updated on this. Here are the pics.

Do yourself a favour and click them, they don't make sense thumbnailed like this.

Never mind, the rest are going to facebook, this is too hard and I have to apply for some jobs.

Love you.

Maori Bushtalk

Just like everything else in my life this blog is up in the air and unstructured right now. I know lots of people (Deb) stop reading blogs when people travel because they become too dense with information and too much like a log rather than a diary.. . . So it's been my only goal not to make it like that. Tell me if it gets too much like that. I've been driving around the country doing interviews at a glacier, one in the fiordlands down south. That's all I'll say. Here's a life excerpt:

pictures to follow when I find out how to upload them. I forgot the USB cable for my camera. Oops

Also for those interested, my latitude is about 45 degrees South, so that's neat cause it's the same as southern ontario but in the other direction. Longitude is about 173 East, whcih is neat cause a) it's not West, and b) it's only a few degrees away from the international dateline, which would make it west. If you're a tripper and you've read this far, this'll bake your noodle:
my UTM grid zone designation is 58 G. What happened to 19U and 17T? I feel so lost.

If you didn't care/understand any of that, then read this, and excerpt from an email to Laura, figured why not share...

Today the weather is slightly nicer than yesterday, more patches of sun, less shit wind also. . . The mountaintops were sprinkled with snow when the clouds cleared. It never gets old seeing rainforest with snow on it. Why is the treeline not lower if that's where the snow falls? So weird. They call it the bush line here. how British. There was this one Maori (or Mary as he pronounced it) guide at the glacier place, named 'Ox'. He was a huge Maori dude with handlebars. All the guys there at the glacier are growing dirty moustaches for Movember, the prostate cancer thing. He has this tilly hat and a loud voice with a thick ass NZ accent. There's this moment I keep replaying in my head. I was standing on the bus on the way back from the glacier. They drive this big ass city bus style bus up there, that the guides are licensed to drive, and Ox and I were standing up front. The whole window was fogged up from everyone being so wet, and ox wanted to wipe it for the driver. So he asked in his thick, syrupy slow NZ accent where a's become i's so short they feel like they're hitting a ceiling, he asks for the squigi "Ay, caan yew paas me thet suuwpa moisturoizing windew clearing rubba woipey thung?" The driver (also a kiwi) looks at him and is like "what?" Ox tries again to get the words out because he's just too lazy, not illiterate. "Yew knew, thet thing fo the windews, the woipa. . ." Mike: "You mean this?" and hands it over with one hand while he concentrates on driving. "Sometimes I can't understand a word you're saying man." Ox:"Yeah thet's Mary bushtawk". hahahah There was something so golden and humorous about that moment, I keep replaying the mannerisms and the sense of humour over in my head and I just giggle. Maroi Bushtalk, so good.

If you're wondering why I haven't blogged for awhile. . . there's a reason. I'm on the other side of the planet. After about the 20th hour out of 30 hours of travelling, the sun came up over down under. I raised the window shade and I stared out the window, bleary eyed and bloodshot, with the two kiwis on either side of me. I sat slackjawed looking at the pink clouds and purple sky. The sun was rising, and like a giant off centre division sign the horizon between cloud layers was shockingly punctuated by the biggest, whitest, fullest, and most upside down moon I'd ever seen. That was three days ago. Since then I've seen two seas, some desert, rainforest, a glacier that goes through a rain forest, got a cellphone, had a job interview, crossed the country in a car, slept in that car, failed to return the car on time, kept the car longer, and tomorrow I'm driving futher south for another job interview in the last little patch of land before the antarctic. That's why I've taken so long to write. I'm fine, this place is hilarious, the people are funny, and I haven't seen any douchebags yet. Give it time.

Talk toon, 2.24 left on internet here. . .Forgot data cable for camera, no pictures for awhile, trouble writing complete sentences, sacrificed use of definite articles.

Oooooooorillia?

things that happened to me this weekend:

-I rode in a stretch Lincoln Navigator limo

-I went to a bar with bottle service

-I was surprised either of these was allowed considering my lack of fine taste in clothing, 

particularly my ratty old sneakers that my mom can't even stand, never mind the stuffy bouncers

-I had breakfast at 3:00 in a place where everyone was doing it (having breakfast)

-I brought a guy into the breakfast place that had 

my friends staring slackjawed at me, because he had more languages and degrees in his head than he had teeth (he had like 8 teeth)

-he almost gave me a cellphone

-I barely slept

These are probably the things I should be writing about, but the stories are too wierd and I'm too hungover.  Instead I will tell you what I learned about the burnt out car next door.  The guy that owned it was driving back from Toronto.  About 3 k out from here, on highway 6, he smelled smoke coming from his car.  About 2 k out he saw smoke coming from his car.  About 1 K out he saw fire coming from his car.  In each instance he stepped 

on the gas a little more, thinking "Well I gotta get home."  He had a transmission leak, and the fluid caught fire.  He came tearing into his driveway with his volvo, which was now trailing flames, I pictured it like a little rocket car.  He skidded onto his grass, and in one motion (in my mind) the door flung open and he tumbled out, running to his house from his now partly engulfed car.  By the time the fire department arrived the blaze was far to hot to extinguish, so they simply controlled it with a ring of foam around the car and watched it combust.  Awesome.   Apparently the guy knew he had a leak days before and didn't do shit about it, so that's what he gets.  Goodbye old Volvo.  One mystery remains.  When I went to check it out the car smelled like kerosene, unburned.  I'm no expert, but like I said: It 

wasn't a diesel, so why the diesel fuel smell?  Was there more to the story here? Cue twilight zone theme song.