Home?

After a good couple of months exploring Melbourne (and with a working visa for Canada finally secured) , it felt like the right time to head back over the ditch and buy into the whole "being a real person" thing again for a while.

I spent a few days catching up with people and couch-crashing between my brother and my girlfriend before finding my own flat on the same side of town as I've always lived but a little closer to the city (just can't seem to stray from the eastern suburbs).

After a couple of weeks, a couple of hundred applications and a handful of interviews I managed to secure myself full time work back at the airport but this time working as a barista/ front of house for Mojo, a fairly reputable coffee place. As I write this several months after the fact, I'm still working there and enjoying it for the most part. I don't think anyone can ever really say they love getting up at 3 in the morning for work but outside of the early starts it's all good.

I have an interesting relationship with Wellington these days having both spent more time here than any other one place in my life so far and venturing far from it for extended periods of time over the last few years. Upon arrival I fall in love with the place all over again for about 2 months. I think a lot of people feel similar things about their respective hometowns. It's nice to be back in a familiar place, to get coffee from long-time favourite cafes, drink at preferred bars, participate in communities that don't induce huge amounts of anxiety. This city is definitely home to me and I'd proudly call it my city to anyone.

That said, since my first adventure off to the U.S. as an exchange student (and perhaps even further back than that) I have been very aware that my status here at any given point in time is merely that of a visitor. My time in this city is limited and every time I return it is with the mindset that I will shortly be off exploring again. I'm not sure if I'll ever find a place with the power to capture me permanently but Wellington is my home and the thing about home is it's a wonderful place to return to fleetingly. In order to properly return to a place, however, one must first leave that place for long enough to miss it.

I've been back now since May, and I'll be back until March which at the moment (just after Christmas) feels both too far away and incredibly close. This visit has been a good one, and I am ultimately glad to have had major travel plans delayed. At the same time, the moment I get to touch down on North American soil again cannot come quickly enough.

My next post here will be about one of the coolest performance opportunities I've yet had the pleasure of involving myself with.

Laughing in Australia

My visit to the great city of Melbourne happened to occur at the same time as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and so as well as experiencing the usual quirks the city has to offer, I also got to see some pretty amazing comedians in their element.

The first show I saw was a spontaneous affair. I was sitting at the hostel chatting with a couple of people I'd just met when we decided we'd go out for a drink. The Canadian girl in our group suggested that we get tickets to a show as well and go check out some of the festival so we looked through the schedule and settled upon the London-based Canadian Catherine Ryan.

We got ourselves some food and a couple of drinks in town before heading up to one of the smaller rooms set up within the town hall complex where Catherine's show was hosted. She was vaguely familiar to me having appeared on some English panel shows I've seen but I'd never seen her do stand-up so I was going in mostly blind.

She was hilarious. From telling us about her room-mate (5 year old daughter) to the most accurate Beyonce impression you'll ever see from a white woman, her show came to an end far too soon. I think it ran for an hour but I would have happily watched her for double that.

The second, third and fourth shows I saw were a bit of a marathon affair. Looking for something to do one day I decided to check out the cheap tickets office where they sell off tickets to shows that day at a cheaper price to try and sell as many as possible to shows that haven't managed to sell out.

Arj Barker who I was familiar with through Flight of the Conchords and his various appearances at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival was one of the shows on sale so I got a ticket to his show. I realised while getting my ticket to that show that with the time it was on, I could probably swing getting to a show before and after his performance. I ended up buying a ticket to James Acaster who I'd seen on tv in New Zealand before and who I rate pretty highly as well as one to see the combined show of Guy Montgomery (NZ comedy's 2nd favourite Guy) and Rose Matafeo in an effort to support the kiwis at the festival.

Arj's show was as expected a flawlessly crafted hour of comedy genius culminating in the most shameless sales effort I've ever seen in a show that I paid to see in the first place. To some extent it worked because I did end up buying one of his dvd's, although mostly so I could get him to sign it and say hi to him, which I did!

I went into the Rose and Guy show without really knowing what to expect and was treated to a very New Zealand experience. An audience member got a phone call in the middle of Guy's half of the show and as he tried to call her out on it, she yelled back that it was from his cousin which was both hilarious and probably true. Rose was on form with her unique brand of awkward comedy featuring cringe-worthy stories from her life with a little bit of observational comedy and her famous attack on the creepy coffee club ads. All in all I underpaid heavily for the show these guys put on (I think it cost me 15 bucks).

James Acaster was someone I REALLY wanted to see at this festival so I was stoked to be attending his show. He is the master of awkward white boy humour and was in the best form I've ever seen him in (having seen him do a lot of stand-up via online videos). From talking about his thug-life days in the SW-4 (I think) street gang to his hatred for Lucas, whom he served on a jury with and eventually gained respect for after a series of harsh realisations, his set was all over the place in the most fantastic of ways. I can't decide who was funnier between James and Catherine but it was close.

I really appreciated the non-headline shows because they were in such wonderfully intimate settings and I feel like that's the best way to experience any performer. I'd take pub performances over crowded stadiums any day. Those sorts of shows make it feel like you're just hanging out over a beer with the performer rather than someone who has paid for the privilege of being in the same vicinity as a superstar.

The shows that I went to see in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival were all amazing and I will definitely be back for the festival in the future to see more great comedy.

My next post here will about my return to Wellington.

Melbourne

In Mid-March, I got sick of not travelling and booked a ticket to Melbourne without anything much in the way of a plan. I stored all the stuff I couldn't take with me with family, emptied out everything from the flat as we were all moving out and the landlord wanted everything gone (furniture, dishes etc...). While it wasn't a whole lot of fun leaving Clem, it did feel really good to be getting on a plane bound for somewhere I hadn't yet seen.

I'm not really sure what all to write about my time in Melbourne but I'll brush over a few of the more memorable things and hopefully this post wont be too all over the place to follow.

Accomodation-wise, I booked myelf into a backpackers in central Melbourne before I left and decided if I liked it I'd just stay there the whole time. I ended up working there as a cleaner to pay for my accomodation and becoming a part of the staff culture which was an ecclectic mix of travellers from all walks of life. We had a bar downstairs that had something social going on pretty much every night and I spent a lot my time in my first couple of weeks down there meeting new people only to have them leave a couple of days later. It was a quick walk or free tram ride to pretty much everywhere you'd want to see in the central area from where I was staying so it had that going for it as well.

I spent a bit of time busking in the downtown area and loved that. The streets are wide and the foot traffic heavy which is pretty much a buskers dream. It was a bit more of an intense process getting a busking permit there than in Wellington but I guess that can be expected from a city of 4 million odd people trying to keep everyone in line.

The two most interesting people I came across were an utterly insane Englishman who became one of my best friends in the hostel, and an equally ecclectic guy from small town Victoria who I ended up taking a weekend camping trip round the Grampians with and who showed me some of the most beautiful parts of the state (cheers Ben).

My favourite hang-out spot in town was the ACMI (Australian centre for the moving image) at Federation Square where I spent a lot of time wandering through the free exhibitions and watching random collections of animations and short films from their archives.

I got incredibly sunburnt in the Cricket World Cup fan zone down by the river where I sat and watched with great commitment as New Zealand were embarrassed by Australia in the final along with an English cricket fan named Freddy who was equally distressed at our poor showing against the Aussies and two Scandinavians who probably had very little idea of what was going on.

I drank a lot of terrible beer at various different places across town, went to a poetry night at Ferdydurkes where I was too intimidated to read anything of my own, probably my only regret from the whole trip and was shown some cool bars around the central area which I could never find on purpose again.

I got to catch up with a guy that was hosted a couple of years after me by the same host dad as I was in the states. We went and got lunch and it was nice to chat with him about Fort and reminisce about things back there.

Ultimately, I went to Melbourne to get away from the familiar for a bit and achieved that. I can't wait to go back again some day, hopefully on a more permanent basis rather than a 2 month taster. I think my favourite thing about Melbourne is that it has a very ecclectic artsy feel to it (much like Wellington) but on an absolutely massive scale which appeals to me. I like that there is so much to discover there and that I could never find anything until I wasn't looking for it at which point it would appear seemingly out of thin air. Melbourne is definitely a city for the explorer, and there is so much there to be explored.

My next post here will be about my experiences with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which co-incided happily with my visit.

Shakey Graves

Upon returning to Wellington after the fun of New Year's I returned to work as a construction labourer, something I was fairly confident I would be able to do full time without having to commit to anything more than a casual contract.

This was important because of my plan to escape to Melbourne in March to satiate my wanderlust briefly whilst waiting for the U.S. government to provide me with a copy of my non-existent criminal record so that my Canadian work visa could be approved...but I digress.

I signed up with a recruitment company who called me up the next day to send me to a site I would end up working on 40-50 hours a week for the next two months. Sorted.

During my time on this job two important things happened, the cricket world cup began with Australia and New Zealand co-hosting and one of my favourite lesser known musicians (though not for long) announced a New Zealand date on his tour.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the incredible alt-bluesy sound of Shakey Graves, get to googling that name. I highly recommend "Dearly Departed", "Late July" and "Roll the Bones" as songs to get you hooked on him. He hails from the famous musical city of Austin, Texas and is the type of artist (in terms of fan-base size) that would normally ignore NZ altogether (I'm looking at you Watsky!) on the logic that a couple of Australian dates covers all that needs to be covered in the South Pacific region of the globe.

When the announcement came through that he'd be stopping off for one New Zealand show at The Tuning Fork (A really cool bar type venue setup next to vector to cater to smaller scale gigs), I did some number crunching and booked my tickets as soon as they became available, electing to head up and back by bus over the working weekend, spending one night in Auckland.

I had a hell of a time booking accomodation because the night of the gig also happened to be the day that Eden Park was hosting a cricket world cup pool match between Australia and New Zealand (the first of two clashes we'd have with them in the cup as it turned out) but eventually managed to find a bed in a backpackers not far from Queen Street for a reasonable price.

On friday I finished up work, jumped a bus up to Auckland and arrived mid-morning saturday. After wandering around for a bit I came across a fan area set up with a big screen and seating for people to come and watch the cricket. Figuring that would be a nice way to kill time before the concert, I dropped my stuff off at my accomodation, stopped by a supermarket for game-watching snacks and water (it was a ridiculously warm day) and settled in a good spot within the grandstand to avoid the heat as much as possible.

The cricket played out pretty spectacularly with both sides dropping wickets like crazy, New Zealand eventually getting the better of our tasman counterparts very narrowly in what should have been a more convincing win given the bowling effort. The game wrapped up with just enough time for me to walk down to The Tuning Fork as doors opened so I got the best of both worlds really.

As expected the gig was fucking phenomenal. There was a New Zealand solo act named Will Wood https://www.facebook.com/WillWoodnz?fref=ts who was very high energy for one man with a guitar and is worth checking out. He played a few original songs and a few covers of classic country/blues type songs whilst rocking around stage in a cowboy hat. After Will's set, Shakey came out with his touring drummer and played a hell of a set. He ripped through all his staples (Roll the Bones, Dearly Departed, Late July) played some impeccable mouth trumpet and even called random fans up to stage throughout the night to help him sing some of his songs.

It was an incredible show and I'm grateful that Shakey decided to make the NZ stop on his tour. I hope he'll be back on NZ soil again soon or that I'll get to see him over in the USA or Canada next year when I'm travelling. Definitely worth the 24 hour return bus trip to get up there to see him and definitely good use of a weekend on my part.

My next post here will be about my Melbourne excursion and things I discovered in that crazy town across the ditch.

Discovering Auckland

In December 2014, I resigned from my much-loved position as a humble donut baker and waved goodbye to the horror of 2am shift starts. This conveniently left me with an entirely open Summer ahead of me and no obligations to anyone through the Christmas and New Year period with the minor inconvenience of having no income.

With Christmas and New Year's Eve well celebrated Clem and I had a day to ourselves in central Auckland before she was booked to fly home after which I'd arranged for another couple of days in the city for the sake of urban explorations in a place I'd not yet spent a lot of time alone in.

We booked ourselves into a backpackers just off the lower part of Queen Street, right in the heart of the city who charged us a fairly reasonable rate for a room to ourselves in such a convenient location.

For those unfamiliar with Auckland City culture, the December/ January summer period is the time of year where the city's population is at its lowest, with most of its workers taking off out of the city to enjoy the sun. This being the case, we had the golden opportunity to explore the city without the hordes of people that usually occupy the space.

A thorough K road excursion was of course, a mandatory item on the agenda after fuelling up at The Strand Arcade Cafe (best coffee I've yet had in Auckland). We wandered from end to ecclectic end stopping in anywhere that took our interest. I searched in vain for a second hand guitar shop I'd stumbled across on an earlier trip eventually realising that the arcade it was in had closed up for the New Year period.

We got brunch and more coffee (well, alright, iced chocolates...) from a place in the St Kevin's Arcade complex which a quick google search tells me is called Alleluya. I highly recommend the food and the iced chocolate there. I had a big breakfast which was phenomenal and everything else I saw going to other tables while we were there looked incredible too.

After brunch we headed back to explore more of Queen Street via the Myers Park walkway which is my favourite part of central Auckland. It's this absolutely stunning park and walkway that starts at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to St Kevins arcade and finishes up by a really cool looking old kindergarten on Queen Street. There's a couple of quirky statues on the way and a kids playground that looks like it could be a post-modern sculpture installation. I make a point of walking through it about 5 times a day whenever I'm anywhere near that part of the city.

We made a stop at Real Groovy (again mandatory Central Auckland culture) and spent a bit of time fossicking through their novelty section and books before succumbing to tired feet and heading back to our accomodation to rest up a bit.

It was nice being able to explore central Auckland with Clem a bit, both to show her my favourite parts of it and to do a bit of discovering together. I started writing a poem about the central city that trip which I ended up finishing a little ways after and performing at one of the Poetry In Motion (Wellington poetry group whose events I perform at quite often) open mics. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to perform it at an Auckland venue and get some footage of it up on youtube. When that happens I'll stick it here for you all to see, I feel that it captures my experience of Auckland pretty perfectly.

The next post here will be about returning to work, the start of the cricket world cup and most importantly seeing Shakey Graves live at The Tuning Fork.

Island Hopping

After a thoroughly enjoyable few days on the Barrier with Clem, we made our way back to Auckland by way of a flight and a bus from the airport to Queen Street ready to set off towards our New Year's plans on Waiheke Island.

A flatmate of my best friend Charlie had offered to host a group of us at her dad's place out there so we decided we'd all have a backyard campout in true kiwi style to see in 2015.

Clem and I organised our tickets for the ferry over and killed time shopping for last minute camping supplies before we were supposed to meet up with Charlie and board. He ended up running slightly later than planned so we weren't sure for a while whether we'd make the boat we were hoping for or if we'd have to wait on the next one. He ended up getting there right on time for us to all board together which was helpful for navigation purposes once we got to the other side.

With a conspicuous and uncomfortable amount of gear with us, we found ourselves a few seats on the boat to spread across and settled in. Charlie and I got set up with a couple of beers from the bar/tuck shop thing because there's nothing better than drinking on a boat in the midst of a glorious summer day.

He had a bit to talk about, having just spent a significant amount of time with his other half's family, who I'm pretty sure he'd only just met. She's an Aucklander so I guess he figured the Waiheke plan was a good excuse to tie in spending some time in Auckland and meeting her folks.

On the other side, we offloaded ourselves and our stuff, eventually finding our way to the correct bus stop to get us where we needed to be. This is where having Charlie there came in handy. I had very little idea of where we were supposed to be going or how best to get there. He at least had a vague idea and knew what bus we needed to be on.

Fortunately for us the bus stop we needed was right at the end of the line so there wasn't a lot of real effort involved in finding our way there. We arrived to find the other handful of our people chilling out in a giant marquee which fit a couple of couches, a food table, an air mattress and all of our gear with ample room to move about.

We spent what was left of the day which wasn't a huge expanse of time chatting, drinking and setting up sleeping arrangements (tent in the back yard). Charlie and I took a bit of a walk later on after it got dark which gave me a better idea of the geography around us and ended up down on the beach chatting for a while which was nice. 

The next day was December 31st and absolutely stunning weather-wise. We decided we'd do something with the day and catch the bus into the town-y part of the island where most of the shops and cafes seemed to be to get lunch and spend some time at the beach. 

We wandered around a bit before finally all agreeing to duck into a very busy restaurant where if memory serves correctly Charlie met up with us, having left to collect his other half Lucy who'd just arrived across from auckland on the ferry.

It was a nice spot to sit for a while, with a lovely outdoor area which had a table capable of seating us all (I think there were 8 of us all up) and allowed for a good amount of people watching. We sat and chatted for a bit over a light lunch and a few drinks before clearing out and heading down to the beach not far from there.

There was a bit of a breeze coming through at this point but a few of us were still game to go swimming. I didn't stay in long but it was nice to get some time in the ocean, having grown up spending significant portions of my Summer in and around it. In recent years I've been doing less and less ocean swimming in the Summer months and I definitely miss the feel of salt water on my skin when I've not been in for a good while.

After our swim, we got dried off and headed back over to the house. We organised a troupe to take part in an excursion the the local liquor store and service station to stock up for the night by way of several of us crammed into a four seater car.

With ample supplies acquired we set ourselves up back in our marquee with good music run through a halfway decent speaker and settled in to our intimate celebration of the New Year. 

As the night rolled on and we arrived at the all important moment of truth that is the countdown, I found myself flat on my back in the dewy grass outside the marquee in the most wonderful state of inebriation imaginable. I was with it enough to participate in the countdown and share a New Year's kiss with the woman I love but out of it enough to fully appreciate the magic of the moment, to feel the joy of new beginnings as they should be felt whenever the December 31st clock strikes midnight and rings in January 1st.

Clem, Charlie, Lucy and I all left the next day once everyone had fully woken up and we'd organised our things enough to pack the tent. We'd had a great couple of days on the island but having constantly been in close quarters with other people for the past week or so, I was looking forward to having some decent one on one hangout time with Clem.

We said our goodbyes to the rest of the group, the four of us took the same boat back to Auckland and we all got lunch together at Mad Mex before going our separate ways. It was a nice end to one of the best New Year's celebrations I've yet experienced and it was nice to spend a bit more time with Charlie and Lucy getting to know them as a couple as well.

Our celebration on Waiheke was one I will remember and tell stories of for many year's yet. It was the perfect way to see in 2015 and the group of people that were there are an awesome bunch of humans. I hope next New Year's is at least half as cool as this one was.

The next post here will be about my explorations in Auckland in the early days of January 2015.

A Very Barrier Christmas

For most of my life, I have alternated Christmases every year between Dad's side of the family and Mum's. I spent Christmas 2013 in Tauranga with Dad's side of the family so 2014 was Mum's turn. Usually my grandparents on that side of the family are the ones who host Christmas but this year Mum decided that she wanted to host everyone at her place on Great Barrier Island.

I flew up to Auckland and over to The Barrier a couple of days before Christmas with the plan of staying until a few days after Christmas. Clem was having Christmas with her family but was joining me on the island for a couple of days afterwards.

When I arrived, Mum's parents who I call Marshy (Mum's mum) and Darshy (Mum's dad) were already there. Campbell, Linda and Mum's youngest sister Nicole were also there for Christmas but arrived after me.

It was a lot of fun getting to experience the island in the height of its Summer boom. There were a lot of people around compared to my last visit. A lot of the holiday home owners were enjoying their Summer paradise spots and there were quite a few travellers over for the quality surfing as well.

We did a lot of stuff together, most of which was walking around and seeing places that I hadn't yet seen so that was fun. We also did a lot of eating and drinking in the true spirit of family Christmas. For a few years now, food has been my favourite part of the holiday season, not just the traditional Chrismas lunch but all of the good food before, during and after December 25th itself.

When Campbell arrived we went out and did some fun stuff together which was awesome because we don't get to hang out and do brother stuff all that often any more with having to co-ordinate schedules and such to do so. We took the Kayaks out a couple of times and tried fishing off them albeit unsuccessfully.

Christmas day itself was pretty quiet. It suited the location. We all just chilled out, opened gifts, ate when we felt like it, drank all day. The Barrier has a chill feel to it that sort of inherently impacts everyone in the place. It's a pretty hard place to stress out about anything and the perfect place to relax.

After Christmas, when Clem arrived, I had a couple of things planned to show her. We didn't have a lot of time to do stuff before we were back to Auckland and on to New Year's plans but it was enough to get around some of the cooler stuff on the island.

The main thing we did while she was there was visit the hot spring. We went for a drive across the island in a combined sight-seeing and filling up the car at a cheaper petrol spot adventure and headed to the spring after that. I assumed I'd be able to find the track fairly easily having been there before but I managed to get horrifically lost.

Where I thought the track started was actually the start of a different track. It ended us up in the same place but instead of an easy 15 - 20 minute walk each way we had an hour and a half's walk through rough, storm - damaged track to the spring.

We had a nice relaxing time down at the hot spring after the massive trek we took to get there and on the way out we linked up with the track we were supposed to take so we had an easy walk out. The only problem was that with taking the correct track out, we were about a 15 minute walk downhill from where we'd parked the car.

Being the gentleman that I am and being ever conscious of how far I'd made Clem walk unnecessarily already, I convinced her to sit and wait in a grassy area by the side of the road for me to go up and get the car. After a long uphill trudge on a very hot day whilst horribly thirsty I got to the car, drove down to pick Clem up and we headed home. It was a cool adventure even though it didn't go exactly to plan. Clem probably wanted to murder me by the end of it all, which is fair.

The other notable experience we had was attending an evening of food and music at the Barrier's Thai restaurant. There was a buffet of various Thai dishes and a local band (named Beatz Workin, google them) played a set of classic rock songs from the 60s,70s and 80s. The food was good as was the music and the weather. It was nice to chill out with family and to be able to enjoy everything from a seat at the back with a drink in hand.

The Christmas and Post Christmas festivities on the Barrier were a fun and relaxing time with family and I hope to be able to get back to the Barrier again at some point next summer. It was great to have Clem come over and to be able to show her some of my favourite things that I've experienced on the island so far. I couldn't really have hoped for a more relaxing Christmas.

The next post here will be about New Year's and our trip out to Waiheke Island.