followkatie: August 2004

Went to the Wellington comedy night last night at Indigo. The compere was just getting into his warm-ups, when suddenly we started to recognise some of his jokes...someone else's jokes! Remember the mad comedy night in Auckland I went to, where the 4th act on was a Japanese man doing his whole act in Japanese.....the guy that was on after him had borrowed a few jokes from that night and we were recognising them. Not that funny second time round. Wonder if I ever was on Japanese telly! Am staying to work in Wellington till Sept 24th and then legging it up to Auckland for my flight on the 24th.

So apparently I make the worst beds in the world. I currently have a sheet, 2 blankets, a duvet and my fleecy cuddle blanket. Every night I wake up with the duvet on the floor, one blanket itching my face, the sheet wrapped around my neck, and I am always freezing (which means re-making my bed when I wake up all cold, waking up properly in the process and having to try for ages to get back to sleep). To make things worse, the other night at 4am I woke up to Cat squawking outside my door. When I opened it, Cat looked at me, blatantly thought "hah, gotcha" and walked off. And I somehow managed to set one of my alarms for 6.12am. (Yep, ONE of my alarms...I have several because at 7am, bed is my favourite place in the world and I don't want to leave it. I suspect nobody really believes my Madagascar stories of getting up at 6.30 every day). For the last 2 mornings I have failed to put it back to the proper time, thus waking up at 6.12am every day this week. After thinking about all of this I am no longer wondering why I am always tired!
The other thing is, I am always 1 to 5 minutes late for work. This I blame on the traffic lights. They take forever to change and let the poor pedestrian workers cross. Walked extra fast this morning though, due to mad old-ish lady walking along behind me shouting unintelligible stuff. As we probably all know of Katie's experience with mad old lady in France.......best to keep away!

It is absolutely freezing in my room making it very hard for me to get up in the mornings. After the more August-like weather of New Plymouth at the weekend, Wellington's wind & rain come as a bit of a shock again. Wandered around in the foothills of Mt Taranaki, went out Saturday night, and got the best cooked brekkie on Sunday morning (fuel for the drive home!!).

Anybody want Gmail? I realise you may be all perfectly happy with your current web-email account, but just in case you want lots of free storage and some other stuff.....you have to send them feedback and tell Google what you want gmail to have if it doesn't have it already....you can make demands basically. I have 6 invitations to test it out if anyone wants them.

Back to normal now, but the last few days I have been hailed on and rained on and blown around, generally getting beaten up by the weather. Went to see Ladykillers on Tuesday night...cheap Tuesday at the cinemas in NZ so it's an institution in my Wellington life. The film was really weird, and absolutely hilarious towards the end. Mind you, I'm not sure I like Tom Hanks playing "weird". I like him being romantic comedy-esque with Meg Ryan. I love film trailers.....except now I have seen the Garfield one more times than I can cope with. Wednesday night I planned to go out, but was prevented by adverse weather conditions. Made Mexican food and watched a bit more telly. Last night went to see MacBeth, bit hard going as I have never read it or anything and have no clue what the storyline is. I did some famous line spotting, and admired the pretty cool set, costumes, lighting and general fantastic staging. I think I did miss some vital parts of the story, so will have to read it or watch the film or something. Going up to New Plymouth with Liz and Sally after work tonight, 4 hrs drive in a car with no heating or radio...I'm leaving Jeremy behind to have a rest for the weekend. Then I'm going to drive the car like mad before its MOT type thingy runs out.

still blowing a hooley here in the harbour city!

oh my god you have got to see the weather I have to walk home in!!! In about 10 minutes time! Help. Maybe I should have invested in an umbrella after all. Then it would probably get turned inside out. The unfriendly hostel cat has adopted me....this is because I illegally feeed it in the middle of the night when I come home, and in the mornings when it looks starving. I'm sure its pretty well fed anyway, but there's only one way to buy a cat's affection! It's worked too, little mog is now my mate...which is pretty damn lucky because I am a little bit friendless over here, except for Liz, Sally, Sally's bloke, and my Wednesday night drinking friends...most of whom I don't know the name of. Oh, and the man in the shop down the road. x

Commemorative playing of Elvis songs on Wellington radio today. And Google has gone all Greek and topically Olympicky.

I'm a parliament geek. I've been to a few now, IOM, Westminster, Scottish Parliament, bit of a wander round the Capitol and the Whitehouse. Now I can add the home of New Zealand's government to the list…I've even seen its earthquake-proof underbelly. Yup, yesterday was a day of free stuff…free things are all I can afford till Thursday, when I get paid for my first full weeks work. Saturday was slightly less free and involved some driving…all the way to Masterton, where Liz and I went to the park, added another swing-bridge to our list, waved at the deer, talked to the parrots, accidentally witnessed some budgie sex and talked to some more parrots. Then slurped a milkshake in the café and went for the largest portion of fish and chips ever to be invented. The parrot conversation wasn't all that scintillating…but they did manage "hello", "scratch" and "bye-bye". "Scratch", don't know what that's about! Saturday night was a definite non-starter after Friday night, so I did nothing! Went to bed about 10 and got up bright and early to go to Parliament. Friday night was good, found some new bars, went out with Irish boys from my hostel, Sal and Liz.

"Those omnipresent Manxmen are blooming everywhere". Take a look at isleofman.com.....it made me laugh. Another Manx one arrrives in Wellington today, welcome Jockstrap!

I walk home past a shop called House of Hank. Except without my glasses on it looks like "House of Mank".

I haven't moved. Webb St Backpackers has a cat and 2 dogs so I just couldn't leave.

I am in my 2nd week of working, going well, getting up still kills me and the kitchen in the backpackers doesn't even open till 15 minutes after I have left for work so breakfast eludes me every day. Liz, Sally & I spent our weekend exploring the city's bars. Saturday afternoon went up the Kapiti Coast a bit and bought cheese and wine to have in the park which was pretty funny with the wind howling around us and a threateningly dark bit of sky heading our way. Yesterday I cooked Sunday dinner for 3...took forever, but the roasties finally roasted by about 8.45pm. Think Liz has gone to a lifedrawing class today and I will be taking Jeremy to get his tyre fixed later on. Made friends on Friday night in one of the backpacker bars (Me & Liz were hiding in the toilets from some dodgy kiwi types and attempted to befriend every girl that came in, which eventually worked, hurrah). Bought a new mobile phone too, seem to be cheaper here and I will just have to try not to get it nicked again. Nokia is bad luck for me! And ended Saturday night with 5 or 6 naked women. No not like that. Hee hee....ok I was in a strip club and actually, it was kind of boring.

maybe saying goodbye to Jeremy soon...don't need him and the place I am moving to has parking only for short term backpackers. Don't want to get rid of him! He's done so well all round both islands and been handy for never having to carry my rucksack anywhwere. aaaah.

Back to Work

So much news....but I have been the busiest ever so haven't managed to write any of it down! I have a job, started yesterday after a few days of depressing excel and word tests and thinking no-one would ever want to employ me. So I am now in gainful employment at the Road Transport and Logistics training organisation. So I will be in Wellington for about 6 weeks now I think. Moving house today as well....Have never tried to move and start a new job on the same day and I don't recommend it. Had to be at work for 8am as well....and had no sleep cos some inconsiderate person decided to get the washing machine going at 5am...and they seemed to have no clue why I was annoyed! Then I had bad dreams for about half an hour about missing work. It's because I have avoided having to get up early for so long I think...my alarm clock has been taking a break up till now. Wellington's streets completely confuse me...I get lost everywhere I try to go, whether I'm walking or driving. But....the good news is this is how I found my new home, so maybe having a pitiful sense of direction is a good thing.
Spent 2 nights in Picton, watching videos and getting free apple crumble and ice cream in the evenings. Got the ferry over to Wellington on Wednesday, spent 4 days in Upper Hutt with Sally at Barry's, spent these days mostly looking for jobs, places to live and having a few drinks.
Found a yoga class to go to, and am so relieved that I have an income again. The situation was gettting a bit desperate. I might have found myself stealing chips off peoples plates a la Wiltshire in Australia.
Oh, and good news, our thief has been caught and confessed and will be appearing in court v soon. Don't know if there's any chance of getting any belongings back but you never know. And the hostel we were at turned out to have a few decent staff so I take back some of my criticism of it.

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Friday, August 27, 2004

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