My last photos of New Zealand

Probably. I thought I would go out with a bang...so here are some good ones I got during my trip last week.


Mt Ruapehu contains the highest peak on the North Island. It's also an active volcano, erupting as recently as last September (when I was just a few hundred kilometers north).




Cathedral Cove, Coromandel. This is one of the country's most famous landmarks. It's a beautiful beach, with a cave hewn out of the rock nearby. This cave is featured in the new Chronicles of Narnia movie as the place through which the children enter Narnia.








Off the east coast of the Coromandel. Lots of little islands.




Hot Water Beach. Just a brief drive south of Cathedral Cove. A couple of geothermally heated pools rise to fill the holes that are dug out of the sand at low tide. It can get scaldingly hot--up to about 140 degrees F.






Along the beach where I stayed in Coromandel.




I finished my trip with a drive out around the East Cape on the Pacific Coast Highway. Lots of nice views along the coast.




...including an isolated Anglican church.




Only three more days left. I'm spending them with a shitload of children. There's a big kapa haka competition in town right now, and a couple teams are staying here--at least 60 kids. They are dictating when we can eat and do our laundry. It's cool to see them practice, but I do like it better when the hostel is empty.

North Island road trip: Days 1 and 2

On Monday, I got the car and drove north. Was a fairly uneventful, except I drove past Mts. Ruapehu and Tongariro, two of the tallest on the North Island. Some cool photos to come.

Today, Tuesday, I continued driving North to the Coromandel, a beautiful peninsula east of Auckland.


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I'm in the town of Whitianga (the "Wh," in Maori, is pronounced like an F). It's a nice little town on the coast, and my hostel is right next to the beach.

I'll need to upload my photos later to appropriately show you what I got up to tonight, but one activity I took part in was digging my own spa pool on Hot Water Beach. After I dug out a hole with a few folks I met there, we just lounged on the beach, staring at the moon coming up. Photos to come, I promise.

Coming to an end

Two weeks from now, I'll be back stateside, spending a week in San Diego. I can't believe my time here is nearly done. My last night of work was Saturday. I'm unemployed once again. In New Zealand, you are entitled to eight percent of your total earned income as holiday pay, which you can have paid out as you earn it, or in a lump sum at the end of the year or when you leave your job. So I'm due for a nice bonus before I leave.

Tonight is my last night in my long-term room at Wellywood. Tomorrow, I'm getting a car and doing a brief tour of the North Island, seeing some things I haven't yet seem. I will have plenty of nice photos to share next week. My last week will be spent in Wellington--have to close my bank account and whatnot. I'm excited for something new!

Enjoying a nice day in Wellington

After a string of truly crap days of cold, wind and rain, we finally got a pretty nice one. Blue skies, calm winds. How better to spend it than perched--that is, swinging--over the city?

Halfway up Mt. Victoria, just a 15-minute walk from where I live, is a great rope swing on a giant eucalyptus tree. It's in a great clearing with a wonderful view of the city. My English friends, Mark and Tom, and I enjoyed this wonderful view from the "Welli Swing."

Tom gets ready to take the inaugural swing of the day:





I enjoy my first swing of the day:




Tom takes a go:



Mark's turn:





Me from a different view (what a drop!):




And the view:







And here's a blast from the past. A gorgeous view of NZ's highest peak, Mt. Cook, taken during my South Island road trip with my brother:







And an update on my China trip. I think I'll wait until after the Olympics have begun to apply for my visa, through a special service. It's likely that my odds to get the visa I want will be much higher if I apply through my home consulate.

That's all for now! 22 days until I'm back stateside--first to the lovely San Diego for Paul's wedding. Very excited!

Nearly done...

Two weeks from tomorrow is (hopefully) my last day of work. Four weeks from tomorrow I hop a plane back stateside. Wow has time flown.

One of the owners, it would see, is under the impression that I want to destroy the place as I leave. I noted to him yesterday that a couple other waiters have put in their notice this week. It's a bad coincidence that their last days will be the same week as mine. Apparently this means that I am trying to get everyone to quit with me?

I will mention one point of frustration, however. My replacement, as assistant manager, started this week. Now I have no problem training my replacement, and I let the manager know that. But then I met my replacement. Nice guy, seems to want to work hard. But he's 18 (EIGHTEEN) and has SIX MONTHS of restaurant (actually cafe) experience. I don't know if they are desperate or what, but that seems like a rather unbalanced replacement for me. I guess that's for them to worry about.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this chapter wrapping up. I think I will be doing one last work exchange before I leave. More on that later. Just looking to wrap up my time here with some nice scenery and good Kiwi hospitality!

Mission Mode, once again

In preparation for my departure from New Zealand, which is a mere 70 days from now, I'm going to try to revert to the mission mode I was in last year as I got ready to head here in the first place. While I still have plenty of money saved, it won't hurt to recoup some of the cash I've spent here so far--After all, nothing is guaranteed once I leave here.

So that means more sitting around the hostel, rather than going out. "But you're in New Zealand!" you protest. Indeed I am. And I have been for the last 214 days (can you believe that shit??). And in those seven months, I do not hesitate to say that I have gone out on the town and partied more than the four years following my 21st birthday, combined. So I think I owe both my body and my savings account a solid, by taking a break.

Sitting at home isn't all bad, by the way. I've been learning Mandarin online with Rosetta Stone, which is a great way to learn a language. Chinese had a nasty reputation for being quite difficult to learn; each word can be pronounced with four different tones. But I dare say I am making some pretty big strides and should be able to get around in China without totally relying on sign language and the occasional English speaker. (Mandarin isn't the only language spoken in China, but the majority speak it).

So, when I'm on the plane at the end of June, I hope to be a bit richer, a bit leaner (I run up and down a flight of stairs at work at least 25 to 30 times a night--take that beer gut!) and a bit more international. Not a bad combo.

Yes I am lazy

Sorry about that. Why don't you try to keep a blog on your daily life? Sure it's kind of fun at first, but then you repeat the same routine over and over again and it becomes boring.

Last week, however, the routine was interrupted with a visit from my brother Nick. He was on spring break from his senior year of high school and flew down for 12 days. I showed him some of the best New Zealand has to offer (the South Island), including Milford Sound, the Otago Penninsula and Fergburger.

I've begun researching China so that I can have some sort of loose plan for once I get there. I'm trying to learn some Mandarin, which will help me immensely, even though not everyone in China speaks it. I'm going to go send for a new passport today so that I can apply for a Chinese visa at the local embassy.

I'll try to do a better job of keeping you entertained. I promise.

Valentine's Day sucks

I'm not saying V-Day sucks because I'm one of those jealous single people--My budget is limited, and does not include taking girls out to nice restaurants. But it's because people STILL DIDN'T TIP!

OK, so I had one couple who are old friends of the owners--they had a special menu, taken from the restaurant where they met ten years ago--who tipped me quite well. But get this: One gentleman decided that the cliched Valentines Day proposal in a nice restaurant would be a good idea. He had his table booked at least a month ago. I brought out champagne when they sat down. We played their song for them while he got on bended knee. He cried; she cried. It went perfectly, he told me. Not only did this guy not tip, but he also tried to use a discount card (which we weren't accepting on the 14th) on their meal! I mean, holy shit, what does it take to get a little bit of gratuity here?! You would think that not only that guy, but every paying man in that place last night would have been feeling nice and generous, since he knows he's going to get laid later on.

I love New Zealand, but boy can it be ass backward.

Restaurant Life

It occurred to me that I have been working at this restaurant for three months now and have written very little about the goings on of my work life. I want to change that, and will make an effort to tell you more about the entertaining bits of waiting tables in New Zealand.

First off, about my restaurant: It was opened in 2000 by a Michelin-rated chef and his wife. He is from England, and got his start, along with Hell's Kitchen star Gordon Ramsay at one of London's (and the world's) top restaurants. The restaurant is one of the top places to dine in Wellington (take, for example, that my boss received hundreds of calls looking for a Valentine's Day table yesterday).

The restaurant is in a former police station, and is on two floors, with the bar, lounge and private dining room on the bottom floor. It can get quite busy on the weekends (which includes Thursday)...serving more than 100 people in a relatively small restaurant. The waiters are forced to be pretty self-sufficient. There are no bussers or anything of that sort. It's hard work, but lots of fun.

Being "assistant manager" essentially means that I am the duty manager on Sundays and Mondays when the owners and manager take their days off. I work from open to close (on Monday that means a 12-hour, break-less shift...whew).


Some interesting facts/observations:

--In New Zealand, "entrees" are starters or appetizers. What Americans call Entrees are known simply as "mains."
--The majority of Kiwis do not tip. They are very cheap.
--Three-course dinners are quite common (starters, mains, desserts/coffees). Nearly all patrons have three courses. I can't remember the last time I had a three-course meal.
--Yes, head chefs do act like Gordon Ramsay (the fuck this, fuck that, throwing things attitude).


Despite some rough, thankless patches during the holidays, I'm quite happy that I ended up in Wellington and with this job. It's a great CV builder and huge learning experience.

And now for my next test...Valentine's Day. We have 100 booked, mostly tables of two. We have at least one engagement set to occur in the restaurant tonight. It's going to be total insanity. I'll give you the scoop tomorrow.

Five month recap

I've now been in New Zealand for five months. I thought I would post some photos that hadn't yet made an appearance here. Enjoy


Early morning, Sept. 11, 2007: Nearly there




A cloudy day in Auckland




Morning at the Bay of Islands






A hot pool in Rotorua




Fire on the beach in Wairoa




Cool rock formations




Park in Wellington, where Lord of the Rings scenes were filmed




Cows in Le Bons Bay




Cool path on Otago Penninsula




Lake Wakatipu




Near Milford Sound, Fiordland




Ice blue water




Taking the train




Pavlova--New Zealand's national dessert




From atop Kapiti Island




This sums up most of my Saturdays




Cool sign near Wellington's harbour

The Sevens

I spent the weekend with beauty queens, construction workers, flight attendants, police officers and countless others. If you Omaha folks thought baseball fans went nuts during the College World Series, you've seen nothing.

The International Rugby Sevens is a traveling tournament of rugby teams from all over the world. Gameplay is seven versus seven, rather than the usual 15, and games are 15 minutes each. So it's just a day loaded with quick rugby games. Folks from around the country have been in town and it's been just a huge party--each group picks a theme and gets costumed up. I've seen so many crazy getups marching through the streets. Check out these photos for some of what I saw.

Last night concluded with a street party on Courtenay Place, just down the block from where I live. Madness. It would be like closing down the Old Market.

So aside from nursing my mean hangover right now, things are good. I am trying to decide what I will do after my time in New Zealand. I think either I will go to China in July or I will get a job back in Omaha for a couple months and go to China in September, after the Olympics are over...all the new infrastructure will be in place, but none of the Games crowds. We'll see.

Work Christmas party!

Since the restaurant was closed Monday for Wellington's anniversary day, we had our work Christmas party...good times were had by all, and everyone was quite well behaved **cough**bullshit**cough**.

Not all photos are suitable for publication at this time.

We started the day with a dim sum lunch. Quite nice, though some dishes were a bit suspect (beef tripe...pig intestines...)




Lunch was followed by lawn bowling and many pitchers flowed. Lawn bowling is similar to curling--you are trying to get your balls closest to a small white one at the other end of the lawn. We had a round-robin tournament, in which myself and my teammate, Viviana, crashed and burned. But it was fun nonetheless.





We followed that up with a pool tournament at the pub down the street. Then we walked back into town. The night pretty much devolved from there...



In other news, New Zealand's Windy City is certainly living up to its name today...the wind is absolutely blasting through town. My pizza was nearly taken from my hands. Also, let it be known that New Zealand's ozone is pretty much crap, so it's quite easy to burn--just ask the patches on my legs that didn't get sunscreen at the beach the other day.

Vacation from my holiday

I'm now back from my little adventure up the coast. It was a nice couple days away.

The hostel where I stayed was on a cliff above the coast...great view.




On Wednesday, I went to Kapiti Island, a Department of Conservation wildlife preserve.




I hiked to the top of the 520-meter peak--a 100-minute hike through winding trails. The view was totally worth it. I could see both the north and south islands at once. The top of the south island can be seen below.



And the North behind me:



The island is coated in thick forest, including ferns, palms and other tropical trees.




There were lots of friendly birds on the island, including plenty of wekas, who were also top-notch pickpockets, digging through any pack left within their reach.




And the kakas were determined to get everyone's lunch.



It was a great trip.

Did I mention great views from the hostel?

Gettin' Out

Yes, I know my blog posts have been stagnant. I should have a very good one for you later this week, however. Since I've been in Wellington for two months now, I decided I ought to take advantage of three days off this week and get out of town a bit. I'm heading up the coast about 40 kms to Paikakariki, on the Kapiti coast. It's a small town with an apparently great beach. Just going to relax a bit, enjoy a few beers and enjoy the sunset over the Tasman Sea. Tomorrow, I am going to Kapiti Island, a Department of Conservation bird sanctuary. Only 50 people are allowed to visit every day--I snagged the last permit. In case you didn't know, NZ is home to a lot of birds not found anywhere else, including some real crazy looking ones. The most famous, of course, is the kiwi. I will have plenty of photos to share when I get back.

Gotta eat

Unfortunately, New Zealand does not have Jimmy John's, California Taco or La Casa, so I've had to find new favorite restaurant and take-away foods. Fortunately, doing so has been quite easy.

Fish and chips Or "fush and chups," as the vowel-mangling Kiwis often say. This is a cheap-as (not ass--it's kiwi slang) food option, with two pieces of fish and a load of fries costing usually less than seven bucks. My favorite fish so far would have to be gurnard--light and flaky with a nice taste.

Pies New Zealanders love their pies. Every corner bakery and grocery has a large range of fresh pies--mince, steak, kidney, steak and cheese, and too many more to name. You eat them with your hands, careful not to let the gravy inside leak onto your clothes. You can also get them from the grocery store and heat them up in the microwave. In short, pies are handfuls of flaky, gooey, meaty goodness.

Butter chicken I had never had Indian food before I came to New Zealand. Wellington has countless Indian restaurants. I've come to love butter chicken--I'd say it's one of my favorite foods. Nice rich butter and tomato curry loaded with chicken, on top of rice. Oh, and you have to have garlic naan bread. Every time I have this dish is like a religious experience. I think I just convinced myself to have some for lunch.

I'm still alive

I know you were worried--more than two days without a blog post. Your finger must be hurting from clicking "refresh" so many times over the last 72 hours. Take an aspirin. Go ahead; I'll wait.


Better? Good. OK, so I've been enjoying my new home the last few days. I worked my first shift on Thursday--it's going to be interesting. It's a great restaurant, but it's very fast-paced. There's a lot of things on the menu that I've never heard of, and we do everything manually. That is, we don't enter the orders into a computer. Rather, we have an old-school triplicate order pad that we hand to the kitchen. I've noticed that this seems to be the way things work in restaurants here in NZ. I'm convinced that much of this country is stuck in 1989 America. More on that in future posts. Anyway, the job should be a fun challenge and should help me ease my savings account's pain.

As far as accomodation goes, I have been staying at the Wellywood Backpackers, casually considering my options. One is that I can get a weekly rate here for quite a bargain of a price. A lot of the flat rooms and house rooms available are only free for the summer, or until about mid-February, as they're pretty much all sublets from university students. And many of them cost more than it would cost to stay here. And at the hostel, I'm a three minute walk from work, a one-minute walk to many of the popular bars and five minutes from anything else I might need. It's hard to argue with that. So it's likely that I'll start with the weekly rate here and if something good comes up elsewhere, I'll take it.

Lastly, I probably will be having my laptop shipped to me. (I didn't take it initially because that's a hell of a liability to worry about when you're traveling constantly and sharing rooms with seven people you have known for less than two hours.) This (I hope) is good news for you, as I will be able to provide some enhanced content: more videos, gorgeous panoramic shots that I've taken, etc. And it's good news for me because I won't have to use dodgy shared computers that run Windows.

More exciting things to come soon--I've been sketching out a bit of an "editorial calendar" in my mind. And please don't lose hope if I go a couple days without an update. I have a lot of bars to hit and only six or seven months to do it in.

Sights of Wellington

Since I'm not working yet (some training tonight and first shift next Thursday), I've been taking the time to get to know the city I'll call home for the next several months. Every city has its iconic places that are must-sees. New York has Times Square, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

Can you name any of Wellington's iconic sights? I didn't think so. But you can now:

Being the capital of the country, Wellington hosts New Zealand's parliamentary offices. Are the prime minister and her cabinet set up in some grand building of marble and towering pillars? Nope. They're in a Beehive.




Wellington is only half the size of Omaha, yet it feels at least twice as big. The downtown area is a buzzing place. Lambton Quay (say "key") is the heart of the downtown area.




If you want to get out of the concrete jungle, Wellington's got a great option. The city's cable car has been hauling people up the hill since the early 1900s.




At the top station is the city's botanical gardens. They make Omaha's garden look like an amateur's backyard.






There's all sorts of New Zealand flora to walk among, including many things that I've never seen before in my life...




So that's a glace at some of Wellington's important features. You'll hear plenty more from me on this awesome city over the next several months...but I won't let it get boring, I promise. Next week, I'll give you a glimpse at the odd things that Kiwis tend to find fashionable. Let's just say some of them seem to be stuck in the US in the late 80s/early 90s. Full House, anyone?