grrrr

So appearantly my blogs dont really give the reader "anything to sink their teeth into". Well screw you Honan, how about this, at this moment i am just after finishing toiling for eleven hours, my lower back is killing me, i have blisters on my palms and my fingers are so sore and stiff i can barely type, i smell and starving and have 3 hours to do everything before i go to sleep in order to get ready for tomorrow, how goes sitting around reading your law books?

that little rant aside......well i dont have much else to say really. I am sticking with the job until next friday, at that stage i will have done nearly 4 weeks. I am then going to go to Dunedin for a week to chillax and do sweet fuck all bar drink and play computer games, then off up to Christchursh for a weekend to see Snow Patrol, then back to Queenstown for 2 weeks to enjoy the last of the season..andf then god only know what.

Some questions i was thinking about recently,

1) does the actions of early european colonists in the America's constitute ethnic clensing?

2) if you had really draconian penalties for people caught using coke or weed, as in obligatory jail time/community service/criminal record, would a lot of middle class users stop and therefore profits plummit for dealers

3)would we have an evolutionary advantage over alien races as we have ten fingers and our mathamatical system is based on 10, is this even a coincidence?

Toiling away gives me lots of time to think of shit like that, lots of other stuff too but its usually computer/nerdy based, wont bore ye with that.

food calls

a working man i am.

Does anyone else think it is strange that i am not really that bothered/tired after working an 11 hour day? After a week i am slowly getting used to it i think, getting up at 6 is never fun but at least i am no longer having to physically drag my body from the bed. The day goes pretty fast as well, think it is because i am actaully enjoying the work. The one thing about it is that i do not have a lot of time to do stuff, an example being the post ing of pictures on the internet. I finished work at six, came straight to the internet cafe to check out my stuff, have to go back to the hostel now and get my gum gear, go down there for an hour or two before it closes at nine, cook my dinner and then try and be in bed by 10:30, busy busy busy.

My weekends are pretty busy as well, like i said i went up that mountain on Saturday and after some more research i found it was actually 1200 metres tall which i suppose makes it a Munro, now i just have to do 8 more before i beat the record Niall set when he was nine. The walk, while tiring, was pretty enjoyable, understand a bit better what Pa sees in the Outdoor Pursuits.

So on Sunday we rented a car and went off on another trip. This time i saw:

The Ford of Bruinin (this was where Arwen called the flood to wash away the Black Riders
The River Anduin and where the Argonoth were (the river they went down with the huge statues on it)
Also saw some mountain range that was used as a backdrop once or twice when Gandalf was heading to Minis Tirith

I actually think that i have exhausted all the LOTR sites within a 3 hour drive from Q-town so might actually start going places for other reasons now. ON sunday we were in a town called Wanaka which is around an hours drive away. It was all sunny and nice and we just sat around the lake before goig to the local cinema which was called Cinema Paridiso. It was pretty class, small eough but all the seats are either old armchairs, sofas or Laz-E-Boys. They have an intermission at half time and you can buy freashly cooked muffins and cookies or preordered pizzas and stuff. Went to see History Boys cuz it was the only thing on, a bit boring but alright.

oops, my hour is nearly up, must be off. ONe good thing about work is that i have a lot of time to think about stuff and actaully composed this in my head during the day. Hurrah for the win

On physical excercise and Fish

oh lordy i am tired. So did a full week of work this week and i have to say that it was not actually that bad. Getting up at 6:15 is never fun but am getting used to it a wee bit. Start work at seven and then finish at six. I have been lucky this week as i have been working outside but the weaher has been fine all week. From wednesday on it was even geting hot enough during the afternoon that you could go aorund in t-shirts. It feels so good to be out in the sun again though, it makes me happy, i have always been white but my skin is so pasty after 12 months of darkness that its good to get a bit of the old UV rays.

So working hard all week thought we would take it easy during the weekend. No such chance. Went to my capoeira class last nihgt, noone else turned up so i just had a private class, which was 'class' har har har. The trainer's name is Omar and he works ont he site as well so i get on pretty well with him. Today i had a glorious lie-in till 10 and then myself and Emmerson, a South African guy who is also long-term in the hostel went on a humoungous hike up a local mountain called ben Lomand, if anyone has Google Earth ye should check it out. Its a 2600 ft peak just over queenstown and we made it a 5-6 hour trek up and down. I was so pooped going up, emmerson is some kind of mountain goat who is crazy into his hiking, biking and other active shit back home so i was struggling to keep up. Around 2000 feet up i was just shuffling along with my poor legs burning but i had my chocolate bar just before we hit the snow and managed to make it up to the top. The snow bit was fun, we were not really in the proper gear and at some stages it was more like rock climbing but we eventually shuffled our way up and made it up there, took a piss of the top and everything, it symbolised me pissing on Queenstown.

Just back now and i am completely wrecked, will head backt o the hostel and spend an hour or so in the hot-tub before we are heading to a sushi-party tonight. One of the guys who used the stay in the hostel, a japanese fellow called Makoto left around 2 weeks ago to an apartment and is having a kind of house-warming thing tonight and said he would cook us some sushi. Now i dont eat sushi but it should still be a good night. Dont really feel like drinking though, want a proper nights sleep and was on the wine last night. Early morning again tomorrow as we are renting a car and heading up north to Arrowtown and Wanaka. Hopefully i will get a few more LOTR shots, i know that the Fords of Bruinen are up that direction, thats the river where Arwen called the flood to wash away the Black Riders.

i have a lot of time during work to think about stuff but seeming a lot of it i have forgotten. Another post may be made tomorrow if i remember any of it. Plus it good to see you reading Pa, none of those pictures are up on Bebo yet so dont sully yourself by checking just yet, congrats on teh Harry Potter books, another gold star for Shona/Shauna,

LOTR GLAVIN!!

Today i saw

Amon Hen (the forest and the actual peak)
Isengard
Ithilien (where the oliphants were)
the Misty Mountains
Caradhras

running around giggling like a school-girl was th order of the day

Of Jobs and the Lord of the Rings

So i have not really been doing that much blogging lately, thats partly because of lazyness and my unwillingness to spend money but this week it's because i got myself a job. Yes that job in the construction site i took and started on Wednesday, after a bit of humming and hawing on behalf of the manager, whoever said pester-power does not work is deluded.

Ya so that work is pretty tough, 11 hours a day and it is in demolitions so i am just tearing up carpets, knocking through walls and smashing town plaster ceiling all day, as well as lugging stuff to the skip, not very complicated but pretty damn tiring. Getting up at half 6 is a bit of a culture shock but i am getting used to it, work for nearly an hour before the sun rises. I am working with three guys from the hostel and the other guys on the site are pretty cool as well. One week down another 3 to go. I am earning 15 dollars an hour which works out at a little under 7 euros an hour but is actaully quite good by NZ standards, its nice to actually have a bit of an income at last. The really fun bit is that the building i am demoloshing is that shit-hole hostel that i was staying in for a while and that was charging throught he nose and making me sick. I think its poetic justice that i am now destroying it.

The house i decided not to take in the end. I went up and looked at it and met the housemates and while it is really nice and they are sound it is just too far from Queenstown for me to get in on time for the job. I have to be on the site for 7 and the buses dont actaully start till then so i had to forget about that. Felt kind of bad cuz my friend who was living there is pretty sick and had to move home to Dunedin and its an extra bother for him to sort it out but i say it will be snapped up pretty quick. I am staying instead in Bungi Backbackers which urns out to be one of the cheapest i have stayed in, 18 dollars a night. I have made a good few friends here and the management have a far morte relaxed view towards long-termers, technically there is a one week maximum stay policy but if they have space they do not mind you staying longer so thats all good.

Since i am working nearly 60 hour weeks now we have decided to make the most of our weekends and so i have managed to convince a few of the guys and gals that we should rent a car for the weekend and go for some hikes around the place. However my nefarious plot is to suggest and organise all the places that are reqally nice but coincidently are also Lord of the Rings locations, which it is hard not to around here. Today we went up to Deer Park Heights and there are tons of animals wondering around that you can feed, deers, llamas, alpaca, different kind of goats and sheep and stuff. That kept the girls happy but the real reason i wanted to go there was beacuse the peak of the hill was a big scene in the Two Towers. It was when the Rohirrim are moving their women and children from Edoras to Helms Deep and are attacked by wargs, that entire scene was shot up here. I was like a big kid, took tonnes of pictures that i will put up later, probably on bebo. Tomorrow we are heading up Glenorchy way, which is where all the Isengard scenes were shot, thats very exciting.

Edit: In other news, do everything ye can do to sort out this Shannon-Heathrow malarky, i dont want to have to fly into Cork or Dublin next May, that would not be mighty irksome. There was a march tonight i hear and some sort of petition is going around, that would please me

i said it would all work out all right in the end

woah, so Paul has not been updating much recently eh. Well i am pretty strapped for cash at the minute and trying to cut down all my spending, and a large part of that is the internet so i have nae had the time to write anything here.

All that is going to change soon however as things are finally coming together for Paul. Yes i have managed to find both a house and a job. Both are not ideal but i think i will take them. The job is on a construction site. I have decided that i am needing the money so i am going to work full time for a month and then leave and spend the last month snow-boarding before i leave Queenstown. The construction job will be tough enough i say, its from 7 in the morning til 6 in the evening 5 days a week. on the other hand it pays a few dollars over minumum wage so i should make a bit out of it. From what yerman told me it seems that i will be involved in Demolitions so that sounds like fun.

The house thing is kind of lucky for me but at the expense of other. A friend of mine came up from Dunedin to work here in Queenstown for the season and was put up in a house because he works for the Ski companies, however he has fallen il and has to go home for an operation and so said i can have his room. Hurrah for sick people. Its a house and costs around 80 dollars a week, which is dirt cheap. Unfortunately however it is a bit outside town, around 20 minutes cycle. I would like to take it but i will check out bus timetables and stuff first.

thats it really, things are slightly looking up, huzzay