I arrived back from my trip to Australia and

I would like to thank them for boosting my immune system by introducing me to a wide new range of bacteria.

The people I am staying with have not one book in the house, despite having a 5 year old. No-where to sit and eat. Two tvs and a large sofa is the order of the day. One day, said child came back from school and I was cooking something. She looked at me all confused, and then in her best innocent 7 year old questioning voice said: “What are you doing?”
“I’m cooking something to eat!”, I replied.
“Why don’t you get a takeaway?”, she quizzed.

Hmmm……

Still, the general lack of sense of humour was lifted one day when the vet came and needed to take a “sample” from a colt.
But he’d run out of condoms (yes, that’s what they use!).
So, one of the staff said:
“I’ll get them…I’ve got to put my daughter up from school anyway”.

He returned sometime later looking unusually flustered.
“I’ll have to remind myself next time not to go into a corner shop with a 7 year old girl and ask for an ice cream and a packet of condoms!”
Oh, how we laughed :)

I have been kicked, bitten, trodden on and zapped by electric fences…all par from the course.
Slightly more nerve-wracking is having a colt (male horse, un-gelded) try to mount me.
Yes, it really happened…I turned my back on a stubborn horse to try to encourage it to walk forward, when I heard the sound of a horse rearing, next thing I know, a hoof comes crashing down my side. Not badly cut, just scraped.
Actually, I don’t know if it was trying to shag me or attack me….I’m just glad that, if the former, it didn’t succeed!
They all joked about it, saying that the horse obviously wasn’t picky…but if it had pushed me over and trampled me, I could have been badly hurt…that’s 500Kg of horse.

Anyway, I’m still there 6 weeks later, not least because it’s the best damn weight-loss regime ever! Lots of muscle gained and fat lost.

The TAB were here filming for the day, for the weekend’s TAB Trackside. The programme turned out to be quite interesting, even with two seconds of me!

You’ll also see a True Kiwi Bloke. In fact, they have a saying down here:

What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?
Nothing. She’s already been told twice…

Anyway, generally, a conversation will go something like this (starting with the Kiwi):

“So anyway, I was driving my……er……yeah…..um…”
“Car?”
“Yeah! My car. So anyway, I was er…..”
“Driving….”
“….driving my car down the old um……er……”
“Road?”
“Yeah! Good on ya! So anyway, I was er driving my car down the old, um, road…..”
Conversations of this level can usually be measured in terms of
stubbies….bottles of beer. Recounting a tale of the purchasing of a spare car part can be a 6-stubbie job.

Then, there is the keyword. “Fackin’”. Without which no sentence is comprehensible to a south island Kiwi.
No matter how simple or complex a statement, it is met with confused and scared looks - the kind a socialist might give you if you were to suggest he does a days work and joins the real world. But drop in the keyword at the end of the sentence:
“Fackin’ oath!”
and you can almost see the little lighbulb above the head start to glow dimly, and perhaps within a mere quarter of an hour, the reply “Aw yih!” or
“Good on ya!” will fall neatly into reply.

If doubt still remains, you need the second keyword: cant.
And I’m not talking about the short form of the word “cannot”!

So, remember:
If there is a lack of comprehension in any part of the conversation, you
need:
“Fackin’ oath!”
and for added effect:
“The cant!” or “the fackin’ cant”.

So, now you know :)

Well, I quit my job. Nice work, shame about the tosser who runs the place.
I was not prepared to go on while the hours got longer and longer…it was working out that I was getting about $6/hour.
I should have been doing a 40 hour week, I was doing a 60 hour week, and people were leaving and he was getting more horses in, and I wasn’t getting any spare time to do anything. Which is a shame, because I lashed out $170 on a pair of really good quality leather riding boots and a pair of leather chappettes.

So, what to do next? Well, I went to see the Methven Rodeo, and the opening ceremony of the World Firefighters Memorial Games (There are also a couple of pictures of the Firefighters Memorial, which is the only 9/11 memorial outside NYC to be built using bits from the World Trade Centre.)

UNFORTUNATELY - I stopped writing here! Will add more very soon

This chap in NZ received a phone bill, with an extra charge “for being an arrogant bastard.” And so he setup a website about it.

If you want to know what the typical Kiwi/Oz bloke is like, have a listen to this

In case any of you want to know (or care) about where I am, here’s a bit more about NZ from the CIA World Book.

A student called Ellie Levenson has caused minor outrage with an article describing New Zealand as “The Most Boring Place on Earth”. Apart from the fact that she spent most of her entire 3 weeks in the south island (which even the charitable Kiwis say is a tad backwards in the social and arts stakes, beautiful as it is), she also seemed to come with a preconception of what NZ should be, which was the UK but warmer.

Travels Tips and websites

The best and worst of travelling:

* Get yourself a YHA (Hostelling International) card - this gets you discounts at many places, attractions, travel services etc…show it everywhere.

Exceptional backpackers:
YHA Kaikoura - the best view you’ll ever get from a backpackers
YHA Methven - a little pricey, but very friendly.

The worst
YHA Rotorua
- The staff are unhelful, unfriendly and rude. And it’s not just me who noticed - the guestbook is full of comments like that.

Stonehurst backpackers in Christchurch.
- I don’t know how they won a Tourism NZ award - the beds are uncomfortable and very creaky, the rooms tiny, the facilites poor, the staff are unfriendly, and you cannot use a calling card in either of the two phones there - you either have to walk a long way to a Telecom phonebox, or pay over $1/minute in their phones. And it’s way out of town.

Ways to travel:
Fly. Book online at http://www.airnz.co.nz/ in plenty of time, and you can fly from, say, Dunedin to Christchurch for $59.
But ensure you know where the airport is in relation to the city. And don’t forget the 20Kg 1 bag limit - you don’t want to be paying $5 per Kilo over the limit. Hand luggage is 7Kg.

Fascinating Facts:

New Zealanders…
*Eat 60,000 tonnes of hot chips each year
*Eat 9Kg of butter each year (per head)
*Own well over 1,000,000 registered guns, including 3,300 “restricted weapons” (machine guns etc).
Air NZ has 470 internal flights each day

Websites

http://www.kiwinews.co.nz/

Top 20 Statistics from Statistics NZ:
http://shorterlink.com/?93LRJB

Facts and Statistics
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nz.html

More NZ information
http://www.worldinformation.com/World/Oceania/New_Zealand/keyfacts.asp?country=064
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1136253.stm

Maps and route plans
http://www.wises.co.nz/
http://www.geosoft.co.nz/

http://www.newzealandnz.co.nz/

Phonebooks
http://www.whitepages.co.nz/
http://www.yellowpages.co.nz/

Postcode finder
http://www.nzpost.co.nz/cgi-bin/nzpost/postcode.pl

What’s the average wage?
http://www.business-migrants.govt.nz/Bml/away/doing-business/sub-regulation.htm#average

Maori Translator
http://kel.otago.ac.nz/translator/
http://divcom.otago.ac.nz/infosci/kel/software/RICBIS/e2m_main.html

Think you felt a quake?
http://www.gns.cri.nz/bin/latest_quake.asp
http://www.gns.cri.nz/news/earthquakes/index.html

Directories:
http://au.dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/New_Zealand/
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/New_Zealand/

Tags: aotearoa,New Zealand,nz
Categories: Australasia, New Zealand, travelogue