An image is worth a thousand words?

Sorry not enough energy to compose but wanted to put up a little something something. Will update on NZ soon. In the meantime chew on this.



What the eff I did in New Zealand for 3 weeks.

You've asked for it. Now you've got it.

Greetings. So I feel a bit guilty for slacking on the posting of my pictures lately. It’s almost week three of my trip and I still haven’t posted up pictures from Fiji or Auckland even. It’s been hard trying to find the time to go through photos to resize and upload but I’ll say it’s been even harder finding the time to write something I’d be satisfied with. Currently, there’s half a dozen partially written entries that are sitting on my computer waiting to be finished. What with being constantly on the move and the limited opportunities in charging my laptop it’s been a challenge indeed. So I’m now finally taking the few moments I can while riding the Magic bus down to Dunedin to at least compose something about the Auckland photos. There won’t be much narrative because of time constraints but fear not! I’ve plenty of things that are brewing in this here noggin of mine that are hankering to get out. Trust that there will be heaps of verbal spewage in the upcoming weeks to get your proper read-on.

After too short a stay in Fiji, I was scheduled to fly out of Nadi (pronounced Nan-di) to Auckland the Friday of my first week. Prior to my arrival, I had made arrangements with my friend Jodhi who was going to pick me up from the airport and take me back to her house situated in the outlying areas of the city. I had actually met Jodhi during my first stay 2 years ago when I randomly strayed into the shop she was working in at the time and struck up a conversation about what options there were for night life. Turned out there were hardly any being a Tuesday night and we ended up exchanging emails and corresponding a few times since then. When I told her I’d be stopping in Auckland again on my travels she graciously offered me accommodations and her services as a guide to the city. Since my first trip had been all about sightseeing, I didn’t feel the need to push myself as a tourist this time around and so treated my stay in the city as more of an opportunity to experience it from a local’s perspective. Because of that, I’m sorry to say I don’t have many pictures of the cityscape but in compensation I’ll fill in the holes by digging up ones from the first trip. Yes, it is a little cheap but what can you do? I can forgo them all together but I’d like to maintain it’s integrity as a travel blog. Yea? Ok? Pbffft. ah who cares.


The welcome into Auckland International is a winding maze of blue stanchions.


Now that’s more like it.


Yup, just as I remember



Foodcourt on Ponsonby. See the food menu to the left of Jodhi’s head? Mexican. Didn’t know they could swim that far. OooooOOooo...ok, poor taste.


What’s a city without a big ole needle in the sky?


On our way to Pasifika. An annual festival celebrating the multitude of south pacific island cultures.


Wish I can remember what Island this was.


Kiribati has their own unique island culture. Just like Fiji and Tahiti have their own. They say Fijians are one of the friendliest. From what I encountered, I believe it.


No beer and not a lot of white people but plenty of stands! (the not a lot of white people comment is a commentary on how the cultures are still somewhat segregated).


I had mussel fritters earlier that day and almost got sucked into the mussel fritters vortex. So good.


One of those iconic New Zealand things. According to Jodhi the story is that back in the day these guys took leftover low grade meat, canned it into corned beef and marketed it to the natives. Well the maori’s took it and created wonderful recipes from it and now New Zealand is claiming it as their very own once again. Nice going white imperialists!


I don’t know half these brands but then again I’ve been out of the candy game for a while. What’s snickers?


The 1st stencil I spotted. I hear they’re a band.


K-road is the alternative shopping and nightlife district. Similar to the mission in SF.




There’s this hot new couture fad here where you incorporate foodstuffs like spaghetti into your fashion.



The main road that runs through downtown is Queens Road. At night it becomes pick-up central. Sort of like Courtney place in Wellington and Kings Cross in Sydney.




Auckland is so very clean. The comparison to LA is only because it lacks it’s own strong cultural identity and is very commercial. Not that LA doesn’t have it’s own distinct character. Actually I’m not sure what they are talking about.



This was off of High Street and Queen Rd. Another quaint shopping district with high-end boutiques, galleries and chi-chi dance clubs.


Old world charm always gets me.


Awww..it’s mother and son. Manaaki is Jodhi’s rad 10 year old son. I don’t meet too many kids I like but he’s definitely one of them.

Alright, so I tried to rummage up those pictures from my last trip and it looks like I’m gonna have to jump through some flaming hoops to get them so I just want to say that I will add them later as an addendum to this entry. Hope that’s ok!

They kinda talk funny here.

How to speak New Zealander.* For bist efict, rid these out loud.

peck-to fill a suitcase
pigs -for hanging out washing with
pug -large animal with curly tail
min -male of the species
leather -foam produced from soap
lift -departed
jungle bills -christmas carol
guess -vapour
fush -marine creatures
fitter cheney -type of pasta
ear -mix of nitrogen and oxygen
duffy cult -not easy
bug hut -popular recording
bun button -been bitten by insect
beard -a place to sleep
sucks peck -half a dozen beers
beers -large savage animals found in us forests
one doze -well known computer program
sex -one less than sivven
igg ecktly -precisely
beggage chicken -place to leave your suitcase at the earport

And here are some words I’ve picked up while hanging out with friends in auckland and wellington (I welcome any and all corrections NZ friends. And additions even!)

kia ora –maori for hello
choice -use as an affirmative in suggesting approval like excellent
bro –friend; used as commonly as mate or dude when saying friend in a generic way
sweet as –an affirmative term used like cool or awesome ( and i thought they were saying "sweet ass!"
singe –a negative term used for indicating disdain if it's bad, gross, kind of like the word budge
munter –jock, meathead, retard
munted –to get completely knackered/wasted
(even though munter is derogatory, you can still use munted to refer to yourself and not actually be a munter)
tomato sauce –red condiment they use with hot chips (fries)
psst...we call it ketchup.
business time –time to get busy, popularised by flight of the conchords
business associate –friend with benefits or someone you shag with no strings attached. This was derived from the business time reference and is more like an inside joke between the flatmates of ghunzee st.


(Figure 3.14159265) Their national equivalent to our Dr. Pepper.
Except it's lemony.

So this is utterly retarded of me but I didn’t get until the other day when the lightbulb finally went off, that mince meat is the same as ground beef. Like mince pie. I think I thought mince was the way you seasoned it or something. duh.

*from safari petes ultimate guide to backpacking new zealand.

A disclaimer.

I know I said that I’d be blogging about Fiji soon but it looks like that entry is taking much longer to write than I anticipated. My original intent was to document everything in chronological order as it happens but now I’m thinking that in order for me to maintain some sort of regularity with the posts, I’ll have to blog what I write in the order I finish them in and give a fuck all about maintaining continuity. Otherwise, any long entry will end up bottlenecking the ones I have waiting in queue and what’ll end up happening is nothing will be posted for weeks because of being overwhelmed in trying to keep up with backlogged entries which in turn will cause me to stop updating altogether. The worst case scenario is that I add them all at once when I get back to the states but wouldn’t that totally miss the point of the whole endeavor in the first place? So yea, you have my neurotic perfectionist tendencies to thank for that. It says your welcome.

Random photographs in no particular order.
LA airport.






Touchdown at Auckland International Airport

In Jodhi's car on the way to the Pacifika festival.


Interisland Ferry from the North Island to South Island (Wellington to Picton)






They have double flush toilets here but I don't notice the water decrease in using the half moon button. I think it's a sham.

I couchsurfed in Wellington and this was at the apartment. Charlie, one of the flatmates created cardboard robotheads for his band. They said that sometimes they'll wear these out in their neighborhood. Sweet as!

Got it in Fiji and I think it was worth every painful moment.

OK poll.
Would you like to see captions under the photographs? Leave a comment with your answer.

LA LA Land

I guess you can say my world trip really officially started as soon as my plane left LAX even though I had departed SFO last Friday. Personally, I feel it would be cheap counting the LA portion of it since I was staying with Jane the whole time and was all too comfortable there. Being around family is like being at home no matter where you are. I could be on the moon, I’m sure if I was there with them it wouldn’t seem so foreign. So I won’t count it.



In a lot of ways I compare my jump off in LA to standing at the end of a diving board with a lot fidgeting and staring down at the pool. There’s always a lot of anxiety and trepidation and simultaneously a deep inner recognition of fear too. When faced with that feeling I always think to myself that fear is all it is, that it’s something to overcome and if other people can do what I’m contemplating doing then there’s no good reason why I can't do it either. So I take a deep breath, close my eyes, jump and hope for the best. And yea, I’m not talking about diving anymore.



Bye Bye SF!

What I’m saying is that there were definite moments before leaving that I felt that fear acutely. Numerous times, I’d be doing something like standing in a supermarket line minding my own business when all the of the sudden a rising anxiousness in the pit of my stomach would hit me out of nowhere. I knew better than to allow it carry me away with it but it definitely took a concentrated effort to push it up and out of my mind. What was the anxiety about? Well, most of it centered around the prospect of the unknown and whether or not I’d have enough money to sustain me through these four months. (And now 10 days later I can undeniably say that I will beyond a shadow of a doubt be far surpassing my modest budget. Ack!)

Anyways, I took some pictures during my stay in LA although I am bummed that I didn’t get pictures of Craig and Veronica. On each separate occasion with the both of them, right after we’d exchange our heartfelt goodbyes it would immediately occur to me that here were perfect photo ops that I had totally missed and would then proceed to privately kick myself for forgetting the camera. Some blog this was gonna be right? But in all fairness it WAS the beginning of my trip and I hadn’t quite yet gotten in the habit of having my trigger finger poised and ready to go for any opportune moments. So cut me a break will ya? I mean I already did. Last week in fact. And this is the part where I go on about self-compassion and forgiveness. Ha. Yea right. Just kidding. Anyways, sorry there aren’t more pictures. It was my practice playground before the real deal. So here ya go.



Logging my travel expenses

Ok. So I know these pictures are gonna come back to haunt me but I only think it's fair if I'm posting up Jane trying to emulate some sort of puppy that I should probably put up the one where she's trying to make me look like a turtle. Trust. I did not want to post the one of me up at all. Anyways, one of the nights I was there we ended up having an impromptu photoshoot because I got one of those nifty gorillapods and we thought we'd test it out. You can thank Jane for the sepia tones.