One Angry Monkey

On the second weekend of my stay in New Zealand last October, I took a photo which still provides me with a little amusement. I’ve decided to share it with the world because, well, I’m just that generous. Yay me. Shall I share the back-story? I think I shall!

The Coromandel region was once known for more than just its surfing beaches. It was quite the booming gold mining region, back when people still did that sort of thing. I lie, there’s still a working gold mine. And a museum with a severed thumb preserved in, like, formaldehyde or something. When you’re a kid, that’s pretty cool. It’s also a geographically unfriendly sort of place, needing much taming from the early prospectors. Evidence of that remains, in the form of a hole in a rocky mountain. Read the rest of this entry »

Gisborne to Rotorua

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Thanks to the better night’s sleep I was marginally less reluctant to get out of bed. Marginally. It seems the Matriarch doesn’t provide coffee to the needy, only supermarket raffle tickets. We set out as soon as we were packed. I suspect she had spent the morning before I awoke planning ways to get me out before having that dreaded second cup of coffee. Not to worry. I still had 2 more bottles of V. God bless four-packs.

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Opotiki to Gisbourne.

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I awoke, disgruntled, to the smell of no coffee while the Matriarch enjoyed her cup of liquid wakefulness out on the balcony as she enjoyed her eighth smoke of the day. Although we were in what she refers to as Rastafarian country she was smoking ordinary cigarettes. Disappointed at missing what should have been a good chance to participate in keeping New Zealand green I rolled out of bed, landed heavily on the floor and began crawling towards the lounge area to make my first (of hopefully many) coffee for the day. That activity was made more difficult by the arm deadened by the weight of my body as I slept upon it awkwardly but by that stage nothing was keeping me from my caffeine.

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Thames to Te Kaha and back to Opotiki.

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For the first time ever I managed to delay the departure until a reasonable hour. 11am Friday the Matriarch and I finally left her delightful home a short way out of Thames. We were “On the Road Again”, as she so likes to sing whenever going anywhere, bound for a trip around the East Cape of New Zealand’s North Island. Despite having grown up in New Zealand I had never been on that particular journey. The Matriarch sought to fix that, thereby introducing me to what she feels is a spectacular length of coastline. I was happy with that idea, being a scenery junkie, and sat in the front passenger seat eagerly awaiting my first glimpse of New Zealand coastline for several years.

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Day two on The Farm and I’m apparently no longer on holiday. The Matriarch gave me some chores she wanted done by the time she returns home from work. Dutiful daughter that I am, I set right to it.

Job one was reattaching a few decorative things to her front deck. During a not-so-recent storm her dangle and her tinkles were damaged. That’s what she called them. I suggested a urologist might be better equipped to help her but she insisted and you do not argue with that woman. So I reluctantly accepted despite knowing that I am not exactly an accomplished repairer of wind chimes.

I acquitted myself fairly well, however, getting her wind diva re-hung with relative ease. It was the chime that would prove to be my downfall. What initially seemed an easy task, use some fine fishing line to tie the chimes to the ring from which they had once hung, proved to be a little more complicated than I had first thought. They had to be threaded using one long line per chime through a horizontal ring which kept them equidistant before being looped over a vertical ring and then fastened somehow. After a morning peppered with words I’m glad the Matriarch wasn’t here to disapprove of I finally managed to strip a twisty-tie of its plastic, wrap the wire around the improvised fishing line and use pliers to pin it as tight as I could.

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Brendan is a huge fan of anything that doesn’t have a storyline. You know, documentaries, stuff like that. One of his favourites would have to be “Air Crash Investigation”. We were watching it this evening (mighty generous of me I must say) and something occurred to me. There is something really, really strange about humans.

You see one person who had been on the plane in question was saying that during the freefall he made his peace with God. That was a real “what the hell?” moment for me. If I believed in God, which I’m not convinced that I should, I would not be saying, “yes, I’m looking forward to meeting you, Lord. I am ready!” There’s no way. You see, if I believed in God, I would also have to believe that God was responsible for bringing down the plane on which I was currently sitting, crapping myself.

I’d be thinking, “You son-of-a-bitch.”

Almost two years ago now I visited a small South Australian opal mining town called Coober Pedy. I have just now recovered enough from the experience to write about it. You see, it’s one of those things that stays with a person for a very long time, a grown woman on an eight-hour drive with her mother in a car their friend’s children have named “the Beaver”. It’s a long story, the short version of it is that evidently small hatchbacks resemble beavers in the eyes of a seven-year-old.

The journey started, as all of my journeys seem to start, at the crack of dawn. Granted dawn to me is around 9 am, but it still seemed awfully early. At the time I was working at a supermarket, finishing around half past nine most nights. The supermarket is a story in and of itself. Perhaps another time. Anyway, where was I? Oh, at the crack of dawn. Read the rest of this entry »

I was flipping through some of my old photos this morning and I came across one, I think it was the only one, I took during my brief visit to Seoul. I loathed the place from the moment I left the airport and spent my entire time there thanking whatever gods may exist that I was only spending two nights there. Now to be fair all I saw was the bit between the airport and my (dodgy) hotel, a few nightclubs and a little CBD so my view is a little narrow but there aren’t words for how much I disliked being there. It was dirty, smelly, crowded… It was pretty much your sterotypical Asian city I suppose. Do I sound racist or judgmental? I suppose I do. In my defense I loved all of my time in Japan. Even the bit where I ran out of money and only had a bag of chocolate somethings to last me the two days it took to get back to my brother’s place. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Wednesday (Yes, that is over a week ago. Yes, I am somewhat slow in getting around to writing posts. Yes, sue me. No, don’t.) I arose at the crack of dawn in order to accompany Brendan to a place I’d never been before. For reasons far too boring to disclose he was going to Port Pirie for the day and I decided, “What the hell, I’ve never been there, I might just tag along!” Bearing in mind this is the exact logic that saw me leaving New Zealand, not passing Go, not collecting two hundred dollars and going directly to jail. (What? This place did start out as a penal colony.) Perhaps I should put in place a rule that states that if my entire reason for going to a place is because I haven’t been there before then I’m not allowed to go anywhere until I’ve come up with a better reason. Why? Well I’m glad you asked. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was increasingly-less-recently admitted to hospital courtesy of the crohn’s my mother came over to help me out around the house. Yes, it was a lovely thing to do. Yes, she’s a wonderful mother. She spent three of the four or five weeks she was here sitting by my bed keeping me company while I waited patiently (hah!) for my doctors to swing by and tell me what exciting new thing would be keeping me there for just a couple more days. Eventually, however, I was released and returned to my home only to discover that “home” is no less boring than “hospital” to spend all day every day.

Still unsure of my newfound health (I’d been released at one point only to have to return a week later) I was hesitant to travel to any place where I wasn’t sure about the location of the toilets so to break the monotony we decided that we’d visit Victor Harbour, a delightful little seaside town only about an hour or so south of Adelaide. I’d been there before and therefore had already scouted out the loos. For the record, taking into account the fact that they’re public toilets at a popular tourist spot they’re surprisingly not bad. Not five star but how picky can you really be about something to which you’re doing what you do to toilets? (Check that, I’m fairly sure you’ll find it’s technically accurate. Don’t, however, say it five times fast or use it as an example of grammatical correctness.) Read the rest of this entry »