Joe and I made this playlist of songs, for one reason or another, we've heard a bunch in New Zealand. They LOVE American pop music here, but also seem to be into a lot of really good music that wouldn't make it in the states because it's not mainstream enough.
Friday, February 25, 2011
First Week In Auckland
Great night last night. My friend Pie, who everyone has been saying is “pretty much the Indian version of Vince from New Zealand”, takes us to his buddy’s house and I get to really experience some authentic Kiwi house partying.
One of the guys has an Aunt who works for American Honey (the WIld Turkey whiskey drink), and apparently she got ahold of a batch that somehow had gone sour (the sugar was crystallizing). Obviously, we could care less about some sugar in our whiskey, so we have a massive batch all to ourselves.
My buddy Nick put it well yesterday, “Drinking with the Kiwis is like drinking with Hobbits.” They’re just such a cheery little bunch. We spend the night singing, playing games, singing some more, and asking trivia off of our beer bottles.
To top off the night, Joe, the guy who’s house we were at, decides to make us all food. Somehow he manages to spill an entire carton of eggs on the ground, but we are not deterred. Joe and I scoop the eggs into a frying pan, straight off the ground, and happily serve the party “floor eggs”. They were a bit chalky, crunchy from the shells, and absolutely superb.
We look straight out of “Superbad”, all drinking our malfunctioning whiskey and munching on floor eggs. Joe would have been proud.
This morning, I wake up and find this note on the kitchen counter:
If you can't read it, it says "Message from Joe. Have gone to dispose of beer bottles & pick up some more floor eggs possibly bacon too"
Joe returns, and we all feast on hangover eggs, bacon, sausage, fresh milk, bread, and a mixture of beans and canned spaghetti that I expect Joe must be salivating over...
Other than that, things have been great here. I start school on Monday, only have class from Monday-Wednesday, have met heaps of great people here, and accumulated some blog-inappropriate stories along the way. Oh, and I saw Joe’s favorite band, The Queens of the Stone Age.Joe was supposed to see them in Christchurch, but, as he playfully put “Christchurch concert rocked my world!! Oh wait that was an earthquake.”
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Earthquake
Just got news from the Statom Family and apparently Joe was able to get through back home, and he is safe. From what I've heard the damage was pretty disastrous. Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Greymouth
I am awoken this morning by Joe slamming the door shut. The sun is just peaking up over the mountains, our windows are heavily misted from the night, and I’m still pretty sleepy. We’re parked in a little grass parking lot. Between us and the beach is a rugby pitch, which has turned golden in the sunrise. I had heard there is nothing to do in Greymouth, but it looks absolutely beautiful to me. I sit and make some breakfast while Joe goes and scopes the waves.
The trip up to Greymouth was one of our prettiest. Leaving from Queenstown, we head North for glacier territory, but are stopped several times by the scenery.
First stop is along the main highway, at this stunning lake. Joe and I are like kids again as we run from the car to the water. This is just some little place we pull off on the side of the road. Nobody else stops here because, I can only assume, this is no out-of-the-ordinary beauty for the natives here. For us, this is one of the greatest lake views I’ve seen.
Next, we make a pit stop at some short little hike advertised as the “blue pools”. After a little walk through the rainforest and a few rickety bridges, we find the blue pools and hop on in. I was feeling a bit fatigued on the road, so the ice-cold water is a good little wake up for me.
Finally, we make it to the glaciers. The largest in the area is the Franz Josef glacier, named after Franz Josef. It’s hard to grasp how big this thing is in pictures, but it is freaking massive, and a bit surreal looking at a huge chunk of ice like this in the middle of summer.
Joe, on a bet, dunks his head in the glacier water (which, we determine, is the coldest possible water he could dunk his head in), and we watch the sunset over the mountains with some tuna sandwiches (prepared on the top of the car).
We drive until Greymouth, and both pass out in the car. It’s supposed to be a pretty good little surf spot here, so Joe is excited. I’m pretty content, amidst the scenery, to just sit back and watch.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Bartenders and Bean Sandwiches
Alright well I guess a lots happened since the last time I had a write up. I've laughed. I've cried. I've done some amazing things. And I've done some dark, terrible, unforgivable things. In the past week we've travelled from Auckland to Christchurch to Dunedin to Queenstown and to Greymouth. Here are some things I've noticed along the way:
"-as" is the kiwi equivalent of "hella". If something is sweet, you say it's sweet. If something is hella sweet, it's sweet-as. If a whale were beached far up on the shore, he would say, "I'm beached-as, bru."
Instead of ketchup, NZ serves "tomato sauce". It's like ketchup, only sweeter and a little bit spicier. However, NZers are brain-washed into thinking that "tomato sauce" is so good that it should be put in every kind of canned food. This includes canned spaghetti and (most importantly) canned beans. As a mass-consumer of beans, this leaves me unsettled. I mean, it's really hard to ruin a bean sandwich. It's the tastiest of all scrapper meals, with the added nutritional benefit of combining your daily serving of bean with your daily serving of sandwich. However, these sheep-shaggers are making a mockery of the fine American Institution of Bean Sandwiches by tainting them with this "tomato sauce"!
All the local Maori (indigenous NZers) males have mullets and it actually looks kinda cool.
The Lonely Planet book is amazing. Every once in a while I hear Vince in a conversation saying something like, "Oh yeah, but the things I've liked the best are the things not in the guide book. You know, off the map." Or something like that. But he's full of crap because I literally can't think of one thing we've done that wasn't in that book, unless it was sleeping in our hatchback in the middle of nowhere. But really, those Lonely Planet books are awesome. Thanks Danielle!
The Lakers just lost to the Cavs. Is Lebron still on the team?
People from other countries make fun of football. And it's not just because you hardly use your foot in a sport with the word foot in it. No, foreigners make fun of football because they think it's for pansies! They make fun of it's lack of toughness as compared to rugby. They prance around, squealing in a high-pitched voice, "Look at me, I'm playing American Football in my cute pads!" Saying football's isn't tough is like saying Marmiduke from Carpoolers isn't the greatest TV character of all time. I was so astonished that I just froze up the first time I heard it. I was too shell-shocked to even think of a comeback. In fact, we watched the super bowl at noon on a monday at a pizza place with hardly anybody in all of Auckland caring. Plus they didn't even play the real super bowl commercials.
Let's say you're at a bar and at some point in the night you ask the bartender, "Hey man, I need some advice. Do you think I should ?" It doesn't matter what is filled in that blank. Listen to bartenders. They are trained to give out life lessons. It the bartender tells you no, then don't' do it. Trust me.
It's a proven scientific fact that Bagface needs to be incorporated into every game of king's cup. But I'm going to go a step further and say that Bagface need to be incorporated into every facet of life possible. Any group of friends needs to create some competition where the loser has to where a bag over his face until a new loser is crowned. The person with this bag on their face must be referred to only as Bagface and must start every sentence with "Bagface say". I'm calling out bros everywhere to replace "Icing" with Bagface. It'll make the world a better place.
Well, soon Vince and I will part again and I'll be on my own for a few weeks. I'll probably rent a car and drive around the bottom of the south island looking for waves. After that I plan to realize my life long dream of becoming a sheep-shearer. I recently asked two local artists for their depictions of me in one month's time. Here's what they came up with. Sweet-as!
"-as" is the kiwi equivalent of "hella". If something is sweet, you say it's sweet. If something is hella sweet, it's sweet-as. If a whale were beached far up on the shore, he would say, "I'm beached-as, bru."
Instead of ketchup, NZ serves "tomato sauce". It's like ketchup, only sweeter and a little bit spicier. However, NZers are brain-washed into thinking that "tomato sauce" is so good that it should be put in every kind of canned food. This includes canned spaghetti and (most importantly) canned beans. As a mass-consumer of beans, this leaves me unsettled. I mean, it's really hard to ruin a bean sandwich. It's the tastiest of all scrapper meals, with the added nutritional benefit of combining your daily serving of bean with your daily serving of sandwich. However, these sheep-shaggers are making a mockery of the fine American Institution of Bean Sandwiches by tainting them with this "tomato sauce"!
All the local Maori (indigenous NZers) males have mullets and it actually looks kinda cool.
The Lonely Planet book is amazing. Every once in a while I hear Vince in a conversation saying something like, "Oh yeah, but the things I've liked the best are the things not in the guide book. You know, off the map." Or something like that. But he's full of crap because I literally can't think of one thing we've done that wasn't in that book, unless it was sleeping in our hatchback in the middle of nowhere. But really, those Lonely Planet books are awesome. Thanks Danielle!
The Lakers just lost to the Cavs. Is Lebron still on the team?
People from other countries make fun of football. And it's not just because you hardly use your foot in a sport with the word foot in it. No, foreigners make fun of football because they think it's for pansies! They make fun of it's lack of toughness as compared to rugby. They prance around, squealing in a high-pitched voice, "Look at me, I'm playing American Football in my cute pads!" Saying football's isn't tough is like saying Marmiduke from Carpoolers isn't the greatest TV character of all time. I was so astonished that I just froze up the first time I heard it. I was too shell-shocked to even think of a comeback. In fact, we watched the super bowl at noon on a monday at a pizza place with hardly anybody in all of Auckland caring. Plus they didn't even play the real super bowl commercials.
Let's say you're at a bar and at some point in the night you ask the bartender, "Hey man, I need some advice. Do you think I should ?" It doesn't matter what is filled in that blank. Listen to bartenders. They are trained to give out life lessons. It the bartender tells you no, then don't' do it. Trust me.
It's a proven scientific fact that Bagface needs to be incorporated into every game of king's cup. But I'm going to go a step further and say that Bagface need to be incorporated into every facet of life possible. Any group of friends needs to create some competition where the loser has to where a bag over his face until a new loser is crowned. The person with this bag on their face must be referred to only as Bagface and must start every sentence with "Bagface say". I'm calling out bros everywhere to replace "Icing" with Bagface. It'll make the world a better place.
Well, soon Vince and I will part again and I'll be on my own for a few weeks. I'll probably rent a car and drive around the bottom of the south island looking for waves. After that I plan to realize my life long dream of becoming a sheep-shearer. I recently asked two local artists for their depictions of me in one month's time. Here's what they came up with. Sweet-as!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)