16 Aug

What's up guys? How's the world's best democracy treating you all? In recent news, Pawlenty dropped his candidacy for President after some of his friends were more popular than him, and Google is going to buy Motorola.

This weekend I was in Queenstown. It's called the adventure capital of the world. It's a nice little ski town up in the mountains that also happens to have a little bay and about 4 bungee jump spots around.

My friends wanted to go up saturday morning and leave sunday, but I thought that sounded dumb. I wanted more than just one night in Queenstown. So I went up with these 4 girls I knew who were going too and spent the night in a hostel with them. It was pretty interesting being the only guy in a room full of girls, and even more interesting when my friends came up and I moved into the place they were staying at and there happened to be only one girl in that room (she was our friend who came with us so it's chill). I mean I guess it wasn't really that interesting. The ride up was actually a lot of fun, we stopped in a couple places just to chill and check it out. These girls were all at least two years older than me, but still acted like teenagers (not the annoying kind) so it was good times.

My friends bungeed from Nevis, which measures in at 134m. It sounded so cool. I might be reconsidering my choice to not jump if we ever make it up there again.
While they were jumping (we didn't go with because it costs $50 to go up and watch), we went on a little hike up to the top of the mountain that over looks the city.

It was super cold (even more so since I was sweaty from that insanely steep hike), but the view was pretty cool.

That day we also played some frisbee golf on a course they had in a park in town. I don't have much else to say about that...It was fun though.

Later on Saturday we heard about this massive storm that was supposed to be coming in that would supposedly strand us in Queenstown until Wednesday. That freaked the girls out, because they all had something they needed to be doing this week, so they left. I wanted to stay because my friends were there and I had already paid for my room, so I did.
We had a great time that night and I'm really glad I stayed. A friend got hit on by some 55 year old lady and got a huge kick out of it. He then went on to almost get in a fight with some french douchebag. He kept his cool and was mostly laughing at the guy when he was expressing his dislike of America, which only made the frenchie more angry. If the guy would've thrown a punch, not only would the bouncer have had his head in a headlock in split seconds, every American (and there's tons of us all over this country, especially in a tourist town like Queenstown) would've been there to back him up. That frenchie would've had a real rough night. Luckily (or maybe unfortunately), things chilled out, and I asked frenchie's other European friends to grab him and walk him the other way down the street (this was after they got kicked out and we had left) while we walked a different way down the street.

We had agreed to wake up Sunday morning at 7 to hit the road before (we hope) the storm came in. When I woke up, the sky was still clear and I wanted to go back to sleep, but we were rallied by someone and eventually we were on the road (most of us were hung over, I think our girl friend was still drunk - although, I'll also point out that our driver and navigator went to bed early and were feeling find). We were an hour into our voyage when the snow started coming down. It was a very good decision to get out that early. In New Zealand, if they get just an inch or two of snow, they start shutting highways down. Bunch of pansies here.

So by the time we were back in Dunedin, the snow had blanketed the ground and the people were freaking out. OMG SNOW WE HAVE NO MOBILITY...
School was cancelled on Monday because of the snow. Apparently, two inches is too treacherous.

I talked to a kiwi about the snow yesterday, and she told me that in her 5 years at this school, she's seen snow like 4 times, and it's happened twice this year already. So this kind of shit is out of the ordinary. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

8 Aug

I turned in my first essay in about one and a half years today. All the philosophy essays have to be turned in at the philosophy department building (house?) which is a block off campus amidst a bunch of raggedy old flats. You also have to sign a plagiarism contract thing and attach it to the front of the essay. I guess they're pretty strict on plagiarism here and I couldn't help but worry as I slipped the essay into the box if I had cited everything I was supposed to and done it adequately as to not get kicked out of school. I'm sure MLA format was sufficient, and that the 5 times I quoted something I cited it (I'm pretty sure). I think the TA is reading them anyway, and he always comes into tutorial with some kind of cutoff sweatshirt like he's some jock out of the eighties. He's gotta be chill.

As it turns out, I've been looking at the wrong thing when finding my math assignments. The thing I've been reading is like 3 times as long as the actual assignment sheet. I was wondering why my grades were so bad, I guess I've been straight up doing the wrong problems. LOL. My math grade is sitting at like a 56% (WHICH IS A C LOL), and I guess not knowing what the assignment is can greatly contribute to this.

My life seems to be getting pretty boring. Sorry I don't have much more to report this time. This weekend I think I'll be heading to Queenstown where the highlight will probably be watching my friends bungie jump. I don't think I'll be doing it (yeah I'm a pussy), for a couple reasons: 1) it's like $200; 2) I'm not super into 10 second free falls, and I'm not sure I want to spend the money to piss my pants. If I was the kind of person that would really enjoy that, I would gladly "invest" the money in the experience. But since I'll likely black out after the 5th second, I don't think it's worth the money.

That's all.
Peace out!

4 Aug

Damn, it's been a long time since I've done one of these. Maybe I'm feeling less dependent on it. Like I less and less require connection with the world of the northern hemisphere. So that's probably good.

Jeez, I guess that also means that a LOT of stuff has happened since my last post. There's definitely not enough time for me to tell you about it all. I posted quite a few pictures on facebook of some of the adventures I've been on, but for those of you who haven't sold your souls and identities to the great social network, I'll be sure to put up a few here. There's definitely some gems that you have to see.

Maybe I'll just run through the highlights of the last week.

Turned in my math hw late, but pretended to be confused and sad about it and it was accepted. Score.
That dubstep concert was really dumb. The dude didn't go on until 1:30 and by then most people had left. I'm pretty sure the entire audience (which was literally like 50 people) was international students that weren't clue yet to the fact that this guy was nobody. It was still a really fun night, though.
Last weekend we went to the Otago Museum and hiked Mt Cargill. Both were awesome. What attracted us to the museum was the butterfly exhibit where you can actually walk around in a butterfly room with butterflies flying around and landing on you and stuff. But when we got there, easily the coolest thing there was the one made for kids. They had this mind game where the objective was to relax your mind and whoever was most relaxed won. It kept track of your brain waves or something and moved a metal ball towards the person who was more tense.

I never lost a game. I've got meditation skills these hakujin can't begin to compete with.

Here's some pictures of me in the butterfly exhibit. They were actually kind of scary, these butterflies. Like flying praying mantises coming right at your eyes. It's okay when they land on your shoulder, but face is a no-no.

We heard they like the color red. So I had to rep the Asian Student Association tee.

The next day we hiked Mt. Cargill. It isn't really a real mountain, but it has some really nice views from the top. On the way, we stopped at a place called the Organ Pipes, which is a columnar basalt formation. These kinds of formations are crazy cool. Here's a few pictures there.

From there we made another stop at a place called Butter's Peak, just because it was on the way. One of my friends was like, "It looks kind of dumb." And we were like, "Uh, no it looks kinda tight." So we told her to shut up and we went. And it was awesome.

That's what it looked like from the bottom. Looks awesome, right?

Then someone peed up there and it was the most epic pee I have ever seen caught on photograph.

Eventually, we got to the top of Mt. Cargill, but honestly I think the previous two stops were way cooler. Here's some pictures from the top of the "mountain" though.

That's Dunedin in the distance there in the bottom picture. Pretty sweet stuff.

I'm hungry now, so I'm gonna be done with writing. This weekend, I don't have any huge plans. I was going to go to the Catlins, but the car ran out of room, so I'll have to hit that place at a later time. It's supposed to sleet out there anyway and I have a philosophy paper to write, so I'm not super upset about it. Yeah, that's right, I have a paper to write.

I'll keep warm if you guys keep cool.
Peace out.

28 July

I think I'm finally starting to get into rhythm here. I'm settled in and things are running acceptably smoothly. I get to class most of the time (when I don't decide that it's a waste of my time), I have what I consider to be a solid group of friends and my flatmates and I have a pretty good living relationship. I have a guitar and my calluses are back, I had spam "musubi" (quotations because I didn't have a molder so they were hideous) for dinner last night - also pointing out that I have finally worked out the kinks in my stovetop rice making abilities - and last friday I even got to play tennis.

I guess I should expand on this tennis thing because I know dad would like to hear about it and tennis is a fairly sizable chunk of my life. I got in contact with this guy who I guess is the President of an organization called Tennis Southern which seems to umbrella all the clubs on the south island. He wanted to see how good I was so he could hook me up with some people to play with, so I met him at this indoor sports facility called the Edgar Centre. The place is something over 2 miles from my house and not really a distance that's fun to walk, so I took a cab there and it costed me $16!! So next time, I'm either walking or getting someone with a car to drive me. It was literally a 7 minute drive...
ANYWAY, the courts at this indoor place are literally a poured concrete floor with a green carpet over it. Shittiest courts I have seen. Well, that's not true at all. But they were still a sad excuse for tennis courts. The carpet took any action you had on the ball right out. Kick serves do not exist in this place. I'll have to get a picture of the courts at some point. The court lines were painted in amid the basketball court lines, rugby lines and all kinds of sports. The Edgar Centre is not by any means a tennis center, it's an all purpose sports warehouse.
So I played this guy, who was probably closing in on 60 years old (but still smacked the shit out of the ball when he felt like it), and I won in straight sets. I think it was 6-0, 6-4. In the second set he stopped trying to win rallies against me and just pounded the ball at a corner hoping for a winner. It worked way too often and I found myself down a break in the second set. Eventually, I just played retriever and won the last 4 games of the second set. He told me there are some good juniors around that I would enjoy hitting with and that they would definitely benefit from hitting with me. Also, there's a coach that's always looking for help with teaching or maybe even stringing that he was going to hook me up with, so I might be able to make some under the table money while I'm here, which would be really nice since I'm spending so goddamn much of it.

But yeah so my life here is chilling out. We'll probably stay in town this weekend and hit up the walking distance attractions; Cadbury factory, Otago museum, other random stuff. Tonight I'm going to a dubstep concert. The guy calls himself Filth Collins...I checked him out on youtube and his stuff is pretty cool, and the tickets were only $12 so I figured, why not? I've never been to a dubstep concert before, but I'm sure it won't be as crazy as I've heard they are in the states (besides, I've heard ecstasy is really expensive here so there's no way this will be as crazy as a concert in the states).

I have some math homework to do I think so I better get moving on that. Peace out.

25 July

Hey guys! Man it was a great weekend. Let's see, I think I left you all last time with a mention of heading to the All Blacks game.

The game was incredible. Professional rugby is definitely something to behold. I think it's much more graceful than football in the states. The only thing was that the game itself wasn't very competitive so that took some of the fun out of it. The All Blacks destroyed the Fiji team, but I heard that was to be expected. The match was just an exhibition to raise money for Christchurch, I think.

Saturday morning we got a rental car and decided to explore the Dunedin area. This was a three day rental so it was going to be a sweet weekend. But before we could leave, a friend from school and I had to get to the Willamette lunch that was happening at the Speight's Alehouse. A professor from our school was in town and had offered to take us all out to lunch with university money, something none of us would argue with. I had a $22 steak and $7 sorbet, all paid for by my tuition money. It was the most delicious free lunch ever. I was told, however, that there couldn't be alcohol on the same bill, so free beer on Willamette was out of the question (something that deeply saddened me). I'm still waiting for Willamette to buy me a beer. After all it's put me through and done to me, I think it's the least it could do.

So after lunch we headed out to the Otago Peninsula. The place is beautiful. My friend had his camera with him, so I downloaded these pictures off of facebook to show you guys.

Here's our car, it's the one with the FS license plate. And our crew standing in front of it waving like idiots.

First place we hit was a place called Sandfly beach. It was beautiful. We saw some sea lions on the beach messing around and lept off of sand hills. Don't let the great sunlight in the picture fool you though, it was a cold-ass day. Taking my shoes and socks off was probably a terrible idea.

Next we went to a place called the chasm and another called Lover's leap. These were both basically huge cliffsides, but each one was amazing. I think there are some pictures of these places as well.

A friend of mine planked the place. What a champ.

This was lover's leap.

These places were pretty awesome.
That's all we had time for on saturday because we had to get to a birthday party in the basement of a bar. There was some kind of bar tab deposit that someone put down so all drinks were only $3 until 9, then $4 until 11 or something. It was a strangely quiet night around Dunedin, but I'm pretty sure everyone there had a fairly decent time.

The next day we hit up Tunnel beach and the Albatross museum. But honestly, it was the driving around the scenic peninsula that made it cool. There's a few pictures of that too.

The craziest thing though, is that sunday morning it started raining and by the time we got back into town, the streets of Dunedin were blanketed with about an inch and a half of snow. By night time, kiwis were talking about having no school in the morning. This place deals with snow just about as well as Portland does - not very well at all. Nobody knows how to drive. Today, I still had class (unfortunately), but I went and withdrew some money to move to my NZ account I found the bank closed. The post office too! Also I was hoping to buy a sandwich here on campus because I didn't make a lunch for myself today and I find out the sandwich shop is closed too! These kiwis are a bunch of pussies that don't know how to deal with snow. The upside, though, is that the liquor store will be open. The people that run the place are from the neighborhood and the people that shop there are as well. I heard that X-Men Origins is on TV tonight, so I will for sure have something to do somewhere warm tonight.

Hope the addition of sweet pics, courtesy of my Texan friend (first one ever I think) allow you to appreciate my babbles a little more. Until next time...

Cheers! (lol)

21 July

I'm beat, man. The most I've exercised since I've been here was our hike up to Signal Hill, which was basically climbing up dirt bike paths the wrong way, straight up the side of a hill. Other than my daily routine of pushups and crunches, I haven't really exercised at all. So today when I went and ran through the Botanical Gardens nearby for around 25 min or so (including a sweet hill to sprint up) and then some solid pickup ultimate frisbee later in the day, I could feel how my fitness has slipped in the past two weeks. My friends all went and played dodgeball and I didn't have the drive to continue this whole "being active" thing. Tomorrow, I've got to walk over two miles across town to get to the indoor tennis center, where some guy wants to hit with me and gauge how good I am. I haven't played in three weeks, so I'm gonna look so shitty. Pile that on top of my slipping fitness and my explosive speed muscles which are sure to be sore tomorrow, and I might be a mess. But maybe kiwis aren't that into tennis and I'll look fairly good in comparison. We shall see.

Honestly though, I miss exercise. I fucking miss camp, too (STILL!!!). I miss knowing that I'll have time for a run through the desert terrain, and maybe get to a sweet view at the end. A breathtaking view becomes even more so when you're out of breath upon seeing it. I need to wear socks all the time, because well obviously because it's cold here, but also because if I look at my feet I see my fading flip flop tan. This causes me great sadness and that sucks. I can't help but be without socks in the shower, so this it's always the best and worst part of my day.

Speaking of showers and things associated with showers, I saw an Axe commercial the other day, the one where the slogan is "even angels will fall". I know you all know that one. Well I saw that same commercial here, but the product they were selling is called Lynx. It's a shower gel, just the same as Axe, but it's New Zealand and it's the cheapest one on the shelves. I have come to the obvious conclusion that Lynx IS Axe. Cool huh? Shut up, I thought it was.

I've talked with a few friends back home about how good writing down your thoughts can be. I think they're right, writing this all is very therapeutic. However, I'm not sure about the merits of putting your thoughts down and then immediately posting them to the internet. Who thought that was a good idea? Apparently me.

Tomorrow I have tickets to see the All Blacks take on Fiji. That's a New Zealand rugby team against one from Fiji. There's like some crazy political shit going on with this match too, but I'm not real up to date on that stuff. It's going to be sweet, though. We have like face paint and stuff and some people went out and bought All Blacks gear. I'm super excited. I would go out and buy some gear, but a simple jersey costs at least $100 and that seems ridiculous to me.

Oh and the Speight's tour that I had mentioned last time was super boring. The kiwi had such a thick accent I couldn't understand what he was saying. I could tell he was trying to make jokes because he would laugh at them himself but I could not bring myself to laugh since I did not understand. The tour was totally worth it though, because at the end they lead us into this room with a bar and all these glasses set out. The guy went and got more glasses and told us to have at the bar. We basically had an open self-serve bar for half an hour. THAT'S how you get your money's worth at the Speights tour.

20 July

Yesterday I got a guitar. I almost got a $270 one for $150 with the promise that he would buy it back for $100, but when I went in with the money he said that a cheaper on had come in and he would sell it for $80 and buy it back for at least $40. I'm down for spending $40 for a semester of playing the music I love. It has only been about 2 weeks since I left my wonderful 3/4 size acoustic in my room at home, but playing this little chunk of wood felt really great. I like to wait until my flatmates have left the building for class and stuff and then I pick a song and sing it as loud as I can. By then end of the semester my neighbors might know the words to "Baby I'm an Anarchist" or "Poison Oak".

It's been even longer since I've hit a tennis ball and I'm wondering how awesome that's going to feel if I can ever get to it. I've had a phone conversation with a guy from Tennis Southern New Zealand and he wants to hit and he's hoping he can get a coach there to gauge how good I am and who would be able to hit with me. I'm pretty sure by this time, the rust has set in and I won't be able to connect the ball with the strings, but hopefully they'll understand as I embarrass myself.

Tonight may be a wednesday, but there are two things happening. I am about to leave to go on a brewery tour of the Speight's brewerey (pronounced Sp-ate, like the number 8), complete with beer selection sampling. Speight's is the pride of the south, apparently. Also, our neighbors are having some kind of party. Some european girl was over last night watching Toy Story 3 with us, telling us that it was mermaid themed and therefore everyone should be naked. First of all, I'm not sure she understands what a mermaid is. Second of all, no. An "everyone naked" party sounds like a disaster. She also made a point of saying that she will be the only one allowed to not be naked, a privilege she will most certainly utilize. Some host, huh?

Tonight should be cool. Cool and clothed.