Of Belt-Tightening and French Maids

Back in Queenstown i do be. Met up with yet another bum from Ireland when i did. A fello called Rob that i used work with in ISI is over for a week so we are just having a few drinky-poos and what not, none of the expensive stuff. I think he might have gotten the wrong impression of the place though cuz the first pub we went into was strangely enough filled with attractive women dressed in French Maid outfits, believe it or not this is not the usual scenario in Queenstown bars. So we hung around there for a while as the girls were now on the tables and bar dancing around, which was nice, the bar staff were all taking pictures fro0m behind and below. Anyhow after a while the DJ cam on the speakers and announced how "hot it was getting, maybe we need some......firemen!!!" At which stage a ton of guys in firemen outfits ran in, at which stage we left.

So bar the occasional drinking not much going on, i am back in the Black Shep in a proper warm, clean room without condensation on the windows and dripping from the roof. Will be here for 2 weeks then have to move again. goingtop be pro-active this time and book a proper hostel a few weeks in advance. See i have also looked at my bank account and it is not doing that well. Anna's visit really took a lot out of it, typical women. So i have decided to tighten up the bootstraps and give myself a budget and try and stick to it. Cutting down on all my stupid expences, which unfortunately involve all my internet time. I am a member of the gym and library and have a ski pass so hopefully if i justy stick to those things i will not be tempted to spend that much else. I am not in dire straits by any means but just cant continue like i have been spending.

I joined a job agency in town and will wait for a call from them but i think that i will also start randomly sending my CV to a few of the hotels around the place and see tdo they have any wokr. I do not want a full time job though, cuz that would just make all the money i spent no snow boarding stuff a waste of money, 15-30 hours a week is what i am looking for.

On another random note however, i was walking down to the gym last night when i saw this guy practising Capoeira over by the lake front. I went over and asked him if he knew of any classes that go on around town and while he mentioned one or two he invited me to go training with him a few times a week. I told him i had only been doing it a year or two cuz he was pretty class and it turned out he had been doing it 20 years, but he said that that was no problem as it is just easier to train with somebody else and that he would be able to teach me some stuff as well. So hopefully i will start getting my 1 on 1 free capoeira lessons next week. Then after talking to him and walking 50 yards down the road i met another South American guy i know (they are common as dirt over here) and his friends, also from South America. I got talking to them and it turnes out they are looking for a house, gave them my number and we may go looking this weekend. Then while in the gym got talking to a guy about his tattoo and it turned out he was from Ennis, its a small world.

Thats one thing that weird over here. When you are travelling on your own you have to learn to be self-sufficient, or insular as one girl i was talking to about it said. If you are not with a group then you have to get used to spending a lot of time just on your own and learning to be happy with that. But you also have to learn to be more out-going and willing to talk to complete random strangers, to initiate conversation with people anywhere cuz otherwise you will never make any headway. Have to admit that was not very easy for me at the beginning but you get used to it.

I will be well insular this weekend though. Have pre-ordered the new Harry Potter book and will be picking it up on Saturday morning. Its being released at 11 o clock in the morning over here so i though, "super, i will get to read it before all ye bums back home" then i realised that with the time difference it would be just about midnihgt in Ireland ant thats when the big releases are at back home, grrr. Will probably spend the weekend reading that, its nearly 800 pages long so i should finish it in a day or so, a day if i dont sleep til late. Sounds like a plan.

Where Paul talks about the Harry Potter Film

Will try not and give away spoilers but tough if i do. Plus i presume this will be of no interest whatsoever to Steve and Pa, philistines that they are. So just back from ye olde Harry Potter film. Went with three fellow hostel people in this pretty sweet cinema. It was real old and had been a theatre for decades so there was big sweeping stairs, fancy foyer, vaulted roofs and class balconies and stuff in the cinema room, cant really call itjust the 'screen' cuz it was prett big. Anyway the cinema was nice.

First impressions coming out of the movie was "Is that it?". Found it very underwhelming to be honest. Perhaps it is the book that it is based on. Order of the Phoenix is actually one of the best books in my opinion, mostly because the story actually starts going somewhere, its pretty big, and not as childish as the first few. I think that might have been the problem though, turning that type of book into a film was always going to be a tall order.

First of all they of course had to cut out large amounts of the story in order to make it a watchable length. It was a little over 2 hours long i think. So for fans of the book like myself it was a bt frustrating that they left out bits that i would have thought were important or just interesting. But then for people who did not read the book it seems a bit disjointed at times as they seem to take for granted that people will know what is happening behind the scenes. I seem to remember thinking the same after the last movie, but not to the same degree. It parts this one definately seemed rushed and too much was happening in too little time, the obligitary montages were trying to pack to much in and were leaving too much out.

The fact that this book was more of a placeholder in the series and was a bit more about character and plot development rather than action always meant that it was going to be an odd one. Even though it was relatively long it was all just buildig up to the climax at the end and so i felt not much was going on in between. Lots of Harry Potter being angry and angsty and the others trying to be understanding. Although saying that yerman Danieal Radcliff was far better in this than he was in others, perhaps cuz he did not have to do much except mope. He is not really looking much like a 14 yearold though. Guess its easier to make a 20-year old look 17 ala Dawsons Creek thatn to make a 17 ear old look 14. Yerone who played Hermione got a bit annoying after a while, just seemed to be outraged about stuff the whole time with her eyebrows going crazy and runing around in her peadophiles dream-jumper.

The ending was pretty class all the same but not sure if it was worth waiting for. I am definately glad i went to see it though, kind of had to be done. Roll on the 26th, have the book ordered.

Back to Dunedin....for a few days

So i have arrived back in Dunedin for a few days R&R to recover from the stress of hosting Dolans. Was a bit of a nightmare getting here but it all turned out in the end. Went to book a bus ticket this morning (how farsighted of me) except it turned out the bus was booked out. So pretty much i was stuck in Queenstown for another night without accomodation. Mightly irked i was talking to yerone from the bus company on the phone and she said that if i could get to a town called Cromwell, around an hour away then the bus might have emptied by then. So buses to Cromwell, dont be so silly. I had to swallow my pride and actually hitchhike. Was out i the freezing cold for nearly twenty minutes before i got a lift from a nice fello called Julien from Switzerland. Offered to pay him for some petrol but he refused. Very nice of him.

Of course that was not the end of my troubles. Managed to book the ticket for the bus but was three hours early, gave myself a little too much time to catch a lift. So luckily i found a library, with a graphic novel stand. So next time i look at my watch its five minutes past the bus departure. Picking up my ridiculously heavy rucksack i ran up and thankfully got the bus. Even though i broke two eggs that were in my bag, who would have thought they were so fragile. Now since i started staying in the hellhostel in Queenstown, Downtown Backpackers tell your friends to avoid it, i have started developing pneumonia. Well a sore throat and cough anyway. So i stopped int o a pharmacy before i left and bought some cough syrup. Unfortunately i did not have a spoon to measure it so i just took a few chugs from the bottle on the bus and hopped for the best. THink i might have ODed on it though, felt pretty sick the whole way down and pretty drowsy. The cough went away though. In one of my lucid moment on the bus did see something i thought was odd though. THis old woman got on a little after the first stop and the only place for her to sit was beside this teenage fello. The odd thing was they started talking and were at it for the entire 4 hour trip. Did not catch what they were talking about but it seemed quite animated, i think he gave her his number at the end.

So i am back in Central Backpackers until Monday when i head back to Queenstown to stay in the Black Sheep for another 2 weeks, which will be pretty nice. Its weird how homely this place feels, i would not mind hanging around here indefnately to be honest. The danger of a place being too comfortable. I even got a pure cheap rate in the hostel, works out at 15 dollars a night. The perks of being friends with the boss. Just going to get some beer and DVDs now and will just bum around for a few days. I told Richard, the owner, to get tickets to Harry Potter so 4 of us are heading to that on Sunday, should be a lorra fun.

So i am

The Aftermath

So Anna and Rob have headed off to whatever godforsaken country they come from and things are getting back to normal here in Queeenstown. Twas a good two weeks while they were here, lived up the Queenstown lifestyle, drinking, parachuting, racing through canyons at high speed in jet boats. I am trying to put up pictures on bebo but am being stymied by damn computers at every turn.

So i have decided that i am going to head back to Dunedin for a few days just to chill out before i come back here next week and start looking for a job. A big reason i am leaving is that i am staying in the hostel of death here at the minute. Its around 30 years old and i dont think has ever been re-decorated. The walls are all covered in carpet and condensation drips from the roof, mildew is everywhere and the service is shit. I got no sheets or duvet for my bed and had to hunt them down myself as management vanishes and reception closes at 7 in the evening. God it is so dingy, perhaps i will put up some pictures of that just to show you what i have to put up with. Whats worse is that it is being demolished in two weeks so they just do not give a shit anymore, it is no shit that its not part of any of the hostelling groups so no discounts and so it is also one of the most expensive hostels that i have stayed in. Ridiculous.

Ya so i am heading down to Dunedin and am tres excited about that one, going to be a nerdy one. Going to see Transformers again as last time i had a fidgety Anna and Rob tossing and turning and bitching at me, philistines, and i also have tickets booked to see the new Harry Potter movie on Saturday, that should be a lorra fun.

I will not fear, fear is the mind-killer that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.

So things have been much better here over the last week or two. I should really blog more so i dont have lots of stuff to say when i do. Went snowboarding for the first time yesterday. That was a whole lot of fun, did not fall over that much and am not that sore, the gym must have paid off. The actual sloped themselves were not that good, much smaller than the ones we went to in Italy and much more crowded. Still the season is only starting and more runs will open as it snows more. It has actually rained over the last 4 days and that actaully closed one of the snow resorts cuz all the snow melted. It gets pretty miserable as a lot of other stuff cleses as well.

Anna, her friend kate, and her brother Rob arrived last Tuesday and we have been out and about a bit since they arrived. the girls took snowboarding classes while i went up the slopes. We will be going back again tomorrow for a while, might try and jump on a few of the rails around.

So i have moved to another hostel for a week as i has stayed the maximum two weeks in the other one. The one i amin right now is the absolute pits. I mean it is dank, constantly smells damp and has carpets on the walls. Still its cheap and i dont spend much time in it, plus its only 19 dolars a night. Anyhow so this morning as around 12 i get a call from Anna who is at the other hostel, god bless the Black Sheep, saying she was booking a skydive and did i want to go. Said i might as well but then found out that we were going to be doing it at 3:00! It was good in a way as i did not have much time to worry about it and it did not really sink in til i was 12,000 feet up with the doors of the plane open and me sitting on the ledge. It was a tandem dive and i was doing with this guy who had like 10,500 jumps under his belt so i was not really worried about that. I was not really worried about anything going wrong to be honest, i mean even if everything went right it would still be terrifying. The scariest bit was the first few seconds after leaving the plan, just dropping and dropping and dropping til you reached terminal velocity. I will admit i roared like a baby. after that it was all good, dont really remember much of it to be honest. I paid an extortionist amount to get a DVD and photos so i will put them up after i get them tomorrow.