Living in Wellington

I have a friend who once said "I lived in Sendai for two weeks", and I have never stopped making fun of him (i.e. when he went to the toilet and someone asked me where he was, I replied "He's living in the toilet"). To me, two weeks is a holiday. But then, where do we draw the line? My friend says that he went to Sendai to work, and was given an apartment for the duration. But two weeks? I've had a holiday for two weeks where I rented a small apartment.

I thought of this quote today when I was moving out of my flat in Wellington and counted back how long I had been there. It was only ten weeks. Ten weeks? That could be a holiday for some people, so I wondered if I really could say if I lived in Wellington. Here are my thoughts about whether I did:

Yay: It was more than two months
Nay: It was only ten weeks

Yay: I paid regular rent, power and other expenses
Nay: I didn't own a single piece of furniture in my bedroom and I used a shoebox as a coffee table

Yay: I earnestly went job hunting and took on student jobs to make ends meet
Nay: I knew it wasn't permanent

Yay: I helped friends move house
Nay: I never really bothered making new friends knowing it wasn't permanent

Yay: I had all my details changed to Wellington, including my postal address
Nay: I never got letters anyway (not always my fault, remember)

But then I look back over my Wellington era, and back at the question of whether I lived in Wellington.

From moving here without a real plan or any certainty about the next few months, to some great cameos from friends (and family), the ridiculous flat situation, doing stupid student jobs and enjoying them more than I should, the Saturday vege markets, and beautiful days like these biking along the waterfront:
Well, that and the cameos from friends (and family).

So back to the start of this post, I can confidently look that friend in the eye and say "I lived in Wellington for 10 weeks."



This brings me to the end of the Great Re-Migration, as soon I'll be back in Japanland. It has been a Carrot-top-like year and a bit - you don't expect it to be very good, but when you get dragged along to go because all the other Vegas shows are sold out, you really do enjoy it and wonder why you doubted you would.

I'll keep up the weblog, under a new (yet to be decided Banner), but thanks for keeping up with me and my occasional and erratic brain droppings. Don't expect much to change in the next phase of ruvaman.blogspot.com, apart from perhaps more stories that happened because of plum-wine hallucinations. Because location is really the weakest excuse for anything - like a stoner wanting to try every possible situation while high, until eventually he's just incredibly more stupid than he incredibly already was.

Stay safe and have an amazing week!

Show us your Beans

It may sound odd, but one of my most lasting childhood memories has to do with coffee. I have Dutch parents, so this makes it a little less odd. Sometimes from the age of 4-ish I would ask my parents for a 'kinder-koffie' which looking back was just warm sugary milk with just enough coffee to make it taste terrible.

But although I myself didn't actively start drinking coffee till I was 16 1/2, coffee was a huge part of my childhood. Several times per day, I'd make my parents a coffee and myself a hot chocolate. It was just the way things were. However, we almost never had real coffee - it would pretty much always be instant coffee - and it would always be Nescafe Classic.

Being a devoted coffee drinker now, I get it now too. Instant coffee in general taste like crap. The cheaper brands remind me of cheap rum, and even the more expensive brands don't give that satisfying coffee feeling. But when you open a pack of Nescafe, the real coffee smell wafts through the air and it makes me feel happy to be alive.

My parents would always collect the Nescafe Beans, and we had a vast collection of classic red Nescafe mugs as a result, so when I returned back to New Zealand last year I also began collecting the beans. After drinking one kilo of instant coffee I decided to cash them in. Surely my efforts would have paid off. What could I get? Mugs? Towels? More coffee?

I signed onto the website. It is a bit disappointing that the beans reward system is all done online now, and you don't even have to cut out those little beans anymore either. This should have been a sign of things to come. It was a flashy website that took forever to load, but eventually I was signed up and I entered in all my beans. 1000 bean points! That sounded promising. However, when I went to cash them in, the only rewards you could get were a video store voucher for 50 bean points, a discount for an AA membership for 50 points, a discount for a Navi for 50 points, or something to do with Ezibuy - whatever the hell that is - for 50 points. They don't even do mugs anymore. Nescafe points are basically now an alternative for advertising on the back of grocery receipts. I was deeply disappointed, I would get nothing for all my coffee-drinking efforts.



The only other option was to donate the points to charity - 500 points for 5 dollars.


So in the end, I pretty much drank a kilo of coffee to help children... children with diseases. I am not the charitable type, primarily because I am poor. But it would have been nice if I had of known last year that each time I drank a cup of coffee I was curing a sick child. Not only would each coffee have been delicious and relaxing, I could have improved the experience with the smugness you get when you donate to charity.

It would be nice if other vices had charitable incentives. For example, if you eat 20 kilos of butter, you can donate to saving the rain forests. Or for each carton of cigarettes Camel gives prophylactics to hookers in Thailand. Or for season of Jersey Shore you watch, they offer to remove neck tattoos of released convicts so they can re-enter society without reoffending. It's just a thought. Either that or give me a stupid mug, Nescafe!

Stupid Bike Ride

As a form of commuting, biking is the best. I thought this even before I lived in Holland. Besides the fact that it's cheap and good for self-righteous tree-humpers, as long as you have a bit of fitness and a decent bike it's faster to bike than to use the car or bus. The problem with cycling in New Zealand is that New Zealanders are so ignorant to the cyclist-cause. Yes, this means that automobilists simply don't realise that you might be there. They'll change lanes in front of you without indicating, they'll turn left into a sidestreet while you are on their left, parallel-parked car doors are like a giant game of whack-a-mole. As a result, I'm one of those agressive cyclists who won't hesitate for a moment to slap the side of a car that nearly kills me. I won't try to dent or scratch the car, but I just want to make a loud a noise as possible so get the driver's heart-rate to go up as much as mine just did. It's only fair.

But this is old news, complaining about drivers not looking out for cyclists. What it also bad is pedestrians crossing the road. I was once biking down a road alongside a long trail of traffic-jammed cars when suddenly a stupid bitch steps out right in front of me. She looked at me like a near-future roadkill and thrust both the palms of her hands at me. I couldn't stop in time, so I swerved slightly and ended up ramming my shoulder into her double-hand punch. I didn't fall, but the stupid whore gave me a dead arm for more than a day.


But stupid people happen everywhere. It's when stupid reaches the govermnent level that it becomes truly scary. There is a section of road here in Wellington that I have biked every day for the last few weeks, as it is the main road from Newtown to the central city. This small stretch of road would be hilarious if it wasn't so ridiculously dangerous. So today I brought my camera along for the ride to break down this cyclist death-row.

This section of road has a bus-lane, which doubles as a parallel car-park. Often at times like this, you need to swing onto the main road. Luckily it is downhill, so it is easy enough to get up to about 40kmph so you can slip between the cars.

Suddenly at the end of this section of road, they kindly decide to introduce a cycle path. Well, it's not so much as a cycle path as a regular footpath with a picture of a bicycle on it. This is quite a busy pedestrian crossing, so it's really quite pointless.


Then, the footpath takes a 90 degree left turn around the corner of a building. It's quite exciting because who knows what is around the corner? Is it a person?


No, there is a damn telephone pole. If you are cylcling with any speed faster than walking-pace, you will have to take the corner wide, which will lead you right into this pole. So you have to break, and continue up the footpath.

Now we come to the end of this footpath/cycle path. Note that there is no picture of a bicycle on this end. From this end, this would appear to be a regular footpath, which according to New Zealand traffic laws, you aren't allowed to cycle on. But it gets worse here. The road from the left is a blind street where cars or people could step in front of you. And the road on the right is a major one-way two-lane street with the left lane possibly being used for cars going in the street straight up ahead. This means that most cars don't bother indicating, and I have to either wait for a gap in traffic, or try and merge which is almost impossible since I can't get up to speed since there is only 10-20 metres of road and this section goes uphill.

This is the shoulder of the two-lane road, which is the closest I've seen to a cycle lane. This lasts for about 20 metres of road.


Soon, there are more parallel parks, and this stupid trailor billboard advertising mini doughnuts. You can see how little room there is for a cyclist - and remember that the taxi is travelling at about 50 kmph. Can you imagine how pissed off you'd be if you died because of somebody wanting to advertise sugar-coated dough?

Then the roadworks begins, with no regard for cyclists. I personally think sacrificing a few parallel parks and making a few people walk a little bit further to work is less effort than scraping a human off the tarseal.

You see here, the dotted yellow lines are just wide enough to bike on. But these are also sacrificed, for as far as I can tell, no apparent reason other to advertise the fact that further up ahead are some road workers waiting for their turn to ride the tractor or hold the stop-go sign.


As of yet, there were no road works going on. But here we have a set of traffic lights. There's nothing wrong with this persee, but read on.


So as soon as you pass the intersection, there are more supid cones, but not only that, you see a sign on the footpath on the other side of the road.

Yes, magically, the cycle path makes a return, but on the wrong side of the road with three lanes of one-way traffic between you and it. Also, remember that you were just at an intersection, which means that most of the time there is a lot of traffic and you have to basically wait until the next red light.

This is the "cycle path" which also looks suspiciously like a footpath. The problem with these is, when there are real footpath users, they don't expect cyclists to be coming up behind them.

Then the cycle path ends after a hundred or so metres, and you need to cross the road like a regular pedestrian.

Now tell me that this isn't the stupidest section of road for a cyclist in existence? Obviously, after a few days of commuting this, I began hogging the road, trying to get my speed up so I could bike in the left lane of traffic as if I were a regular vehicle. I also ran red lights and weaved through cars, because this was not only much faster, but much safer.

New Zealand apparently has one of the highest cars per capita ratio, and you sometimes hear about policies to try increase the amount of cyclists. Everyone knows the benefits of cycling for the individual, the environment and for traffic congestion, but I now understand why so few people commute by bike. You have to be fit and a bit of an adrenalie junkie, as well as an asshole that is always looking out just for yourself. I understand why automobilists often get pissed off at cyclists, but they don't understand that to be a cyclist and not die that you need to be an asshole. I think that all public workers, city planners, road-workers and policemen should be forced to bike around cities for a week every year, and maybe the roads can get a little less stupid for cyclists. I don't think we will ever get dedicated cycle lanes in New Zealand, but things could be improved so much by a few simple non-stupid steps:

1. No half-assed cycle lanes. You know that councils want to address the problem, because there are sometimes sections of green painted cycle lanes, or those pictures of a bike on the footpath. However these are completely useless if they stop after a only a few hundred metres or less. It would be like cutting out sections of powerlines every few hundred metres - we'd all be living in the dark
2. Widen the shoulders. If a cyclist is having to tread the dotten yellow line like a tight-rope walker, then something is wrong.
3. Clear the shoulders. People are shit at paralell parking anyway, and they're pretty terrifying.
4. Again, force automobilists to bike around a city a few days a year so they realise how incredibly dangerous it can be.
5. Non-asian tattoo artists should not be allowed to tattoo Chinese characters. This has nothing to do with cycling, but I think we can all agree than this is a good idea.

Street Art

On request, here is a post without immature (poop) jokes. Instead I am going to encourage criminal behaviour by praising the graffiti that you (I) can find around where I (probably not you) live. Newtown is known to be an artsy place, and this is often expressed in graffiti and peeling posters.

Generally I am no fan of graffiti as it encourages idiots to scribble their name illegibly, or people who think they are artists writing things in a stupid font that noone can really read. Basically, I'm just against bad handwriting. However, I always enjoy a clever civil obedience which you often see on the internets, and now also on my walks around my house. They aren't top quality, but I do enjoy them and maybe you will too.


I don't know what this is supposed to be (my best guess is this is what you'd get if a llama humped a plesiosaurus), but like many of these graffitis, it is small enough to not offend too much. If this was a few metres tall, you'd probably want to swear at the offender, but as is, this is nice detail.


One of my favourites, this is right outside a dairy (a NZ convenience store). I don't think the Indian owner probably asked this to be here, but I also doubt that he would want to have it removed or painted over.

Artistically this is not the most technical painting, but it is definitely an improvement on the building.

Nice stencilwork here, but poor application as seen in the runny face. The thing about most of these is that they are alongside a amain road, so the artist would need steel balls to complete each work.
Some paintings are painted over, like this pavement octopus.

This is probably somebody's first attempt at a stencil (or maybe it is a pre-fab from the 2$ store). Still, I appreciate stencilwork, and you need to start with the basics.

It seems that someone is a real pokemon fan.

And it seems like someone fancies themself as a new pokemon creator. See?


Somehow I think this is a politically charged work, but I don't get it. Still very nice though.

This one popped up a few weeks ago. This was appropriate because a while back I applied for a job at the zoo. I was appliying to be a giraffe, because apparently I look like one. Very good work on this though, and especially making it that extra size larger.

And lastly, one of the best ones. A brilliant, expressive work with good use of wall as the third colour. Class-act lawlessness.

So everyone get out there and leave your mark. Just no bad handwriting, okay? Thanks in advance.

Passive Aggressive Fantasies

It's not like me to publicy rip on a particular person on the weblogs. The only other time I can recall I have was when I tore Luis Suarez a 2nd anus so he could spout all the pent-up bullshit. Since that time, he went from a Dutch-reknown douche to an international douche, so you know that when I rip on someone it is probably justified. If anything, I went easy on him.

Anyway, this story needs to be told because I'm slowly turning into a monster. Earlier I wrote a small post about how my new flat kind of sucks. There were pictures of dead mice and all that, but overall I am pretty pleased with my new flat. It's cheap (relative to Wellington) which is a bonus if you are unemployed. It is close enough to town and plenty of great shops and a fantastic Saturday vege-market. And I have a large bedroom with a nice big sunny window. And mostly, I can put up with the flat because I have a countdown calendar. If I was staying longer in Wellington, I would be flat hunting, but for a few months (now three weeks), I was happy tolerating a studenty-New Zealand-messy flat.

Then, about a month ago there was a bad omen.I woke up one morning to find the bathroom sink filled with vomit. It was our new flatmate, who apparently had been drinking the night before, had a vom, and crashed before he could even attempt to run the tap a little bit. Fair enough. It can happen. I mean, not to me. The few times when I have vomited due to alcohol poisoning/awesomeness, it has always been preceded by a moment of scary clarity. I mean, I once vomited while on a public bus, but I regained a sense of myself a few seconds before and held it in my mouth for a full minute till the bus stopped at my stop.

The point is, the new flatmate is a bit younger, and whatever. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. So, I was awake that morning enjoying my porridge when he woke up.

"Shit" he said, "I'm late for my school trip."

I laughed at him, out of politeness.

Then he looked at me and said "Can I borrow 40 dollars for a taxi?"

Now, this put me on the spot. On the one hand, this guy is in need of a hand and this seems like a fairly reasonable request. On the other hand, he kind of deserved to miss the trip, and I am unemployed. It's like asking a baby if you can borrow their nappy. In the end, I loaned him the 20$ cash I had in my wallet and had a big clean-up after he left, enjoying the quietude of the next 2 days.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, but just not a person you would want to really flat with. You know, the general little things that piss you off about a flatmate - borrowing little things without ever seeming to give back, leaving piles of dishes, and lazing around the living room watching TV pretty much the whole time. But you know, I'm not new to flatting, and besides, I was out of here soon anyway. No sense in being a bitch.

Then last week I finally found some work. I had to be on the opposite side of town at 7am, so I woke up at 6am. It was brutal. On the way to the kitchen for my coffee and cereal, I stumbled over a body in the living room (it's open plan). There was a guy sleeping there, and my flatmate on the couch. This isn't so weird, except for that he has two beds in his bedroom. But maybe they fell asleep during their late-night TV watching.

I didn't think much of it, until that evening he had a whole group of friends over. And that next morning I again stumbled over a human being on the way to the kitchen, but this time there were four of them.

Now at this point, I should mention that the flatmate and his friends are all Fijian.

So, whatever. I think the night before they were watching rugby on TV or something, on our satellite TV. It could have been an important game or something.

Wednesday morning, and I couldn't believe it. This time there were 8 Fijians sleeping in my living room. No, I joke, there were only three. I just found the situation rather ridiculous. It was as if we had squatters or homeless people here. Only, they didn't have bags or anything with them. So they obviously just live in other parts of the city. By now they pretty much had a permanent presence in the flat. Every other minute you would hear what I call Polynesian laughter. If you are unfamiliar with it, you might think that it is mocking, sarcastic laughter. It kind of sounds like it begins with someone standing on your balls until you realise it doesn't hurt, kind of tickles, and everyone thinks it is hilarious so you all turn it into laughter. But once you get used to it (I grew up at a school with many polynesian students), it is one of the most pure sounds you will ever hear. But amazingly even this is less welcome when it continues till the early hours of the morning when you need to wake up at 6am.

Furthermore, apart from some drinking and smoking, it seems like they were here mostly for the satellite TV. They were treating the flat like a hotel room and they were leaving on all the heaters and stealing the tissue box. The next few days continuted like this, and we ended the week averaging 3.4 Fijians sleeping on my living room floor. We did it! People said it shouldn't be done, having 2.4 friends sleep over for no apparent reason for a full school week, but by golly they pulled off a miracle. And they kept going, apparently trying to break their own record.

Now, in their defense they were polite enough to pretend to keep sleeping while I not unquietly made my breakfast, coffee and packed lunch, but they weren't really good house guests. For one, the best thing about house-guests is that they leave. But they didn't really clean up, made it awkward to go to the kitchen and then all that noise pollution. Furthermore, I think they might be douche-bags. Despite the fact that they are always here, I submit the next two facts as evidence:

1. One of the guys went to sleep with his sunglasses on. Really? It's bad enough when assholes like LeBron James wear sunnies to a night club, but I'm sure he even takes them off when he sleeps. Also, he is LeBron Fucking James and can do whatever he wants.
   
2. When I say that they are here to watch my TV, I mean exactly that. They are so indiscrimiate with their programming as if they have never really seen TV before. They not only watch Jersey Shore - and they watch it unironically - but once that is finished, they continue with Geordian Shore which is the English version. That makes another reason I don't want to go to the kitchen. It makes me feel dirty. I already know to much.
   

At 1:30am, after the 8th consecutive night of the Fijian invasion of my flat, with TV, mis-tuned guitar and peals of polynesian laughter ringing through the house, keeping me awake before my 2nd week of 6am mornings it began: passive aggressive fantasies. As much as I hated not getting my regular 6 hours of sleep, I hated myself more for the petty thoughts of just waking the fuckers up at 4am and kicking them out (it was also raining), or of stealing the code card from the satellite TV decoder, or things that even cannot be said here. How did my flat turn into a Fijian Men's house? Is there a dusty track leading to the back door? Will the place soon be overrun with chickens, stray dogs and palm fronds? And then to make it worse the white-guilt set in. Maybe this kind of camaraderie is the Fijian way of expressing friendship in another country.

But fuck that. The only thing that matters for a flatmate is how much you want to continue living with them. He might be a nice guy and a good friend (to his friends) but he's a terrible flatmate. On a 1-10 scale with 10 being "I will follow you whereever you go", to 0 being "Let's fight to the death and the loser has to do the dishes", I rate him at about 1.5. (He could raise that number to 2 by paying me back my 20 dollars.)

My point is, not that I need it, but I have yet another reason to be impatient to leave. Not only is there a pull from Japan, but also a nice friendly nudge from New Zealand, or Fiji, whereever this is.

(p.s. if you recall the photo of the vomit-filled sink, this is but one of the reasons I keep my toothbrush in my bedroom. Just a tip for all the people out there still flatting...)

Surveying the Traffic

For those of you who thought that my previous job of auditing tyres (fancy speak for "copying down the writing on tyres") was rather simple, well, my next job is ten times more brain numbingly easy. This time I'm a traffic surveyor.

For me "surveyor" connotes those people with the fancy tripod and equipment who always look as engaged as a roadworker yet have the unmistakable air of self-importance knowing that most people couldn't even begin to comprehend how their equipment works.

No, what I do is I count pedestrians. I don't even get to count cars. The only equipment I was given was the forms to be filled in - I had to supply my own pen and watch. In fact, I think the only qualifications needed for this job were that you had to own a pen and a watch.

For a whole week I am stationed at two locations during the morning and midday 'rush hours'. The first location is at the Hobson Street overbridge.


View Larger Map

This apparently used to be one of the most expensive streets in Wellington (it was written on a nearby neglected History Walk signboard that I have read hundreds of times out of sheer boredom).

The fact it is an overbridge means that I have all the advantages of noise pollution, while above I have very little to do.


Nowadays, Hobson Street is rarely used by foot-traffic. I get maybe one or two people passing by every minute, which leaves the mind to wander a lot, which is not a good thing if you have the quality of being me.

For example it has a garden for the blind. This sounds good, but the garden actually looks like crap. I guess that might be the whole point, but it means that if nature calls, I can't exactly duck behind the lavender to take a piss. That would be like telling a devout Hindu that a Big Mac is made from 100% soy.

Furthermore, right across from the road where I stand is the German Embassy. I'm basically staking out the Germans. As a Dutchman, it makes me feel dirty and I like it.

When I finish my morning shift, I have three hours to kill to my next shift. Note, that I do not get paid for this down time despite it being far too short to make going home worthwhile. So in reality, for 7 hours of my life I get paid for only 4. That's one hell of a long toilet break.

My 2nd shift is right outside the Supreme Court of New Zealand.


This buidling may look like the winning entry for a primary-school architecture competition but it is in fact a very serious building. So serious that it is where protesters come to bang pots almost every single day. Today I had to tally up a bunch of people wearing hi-res vests with the controversial words "stop child abuse" printed on it. These people are really going out on a limb. Taking a stance against child abuse is like saying Hitler was bad or that mothers are good. Someone needs to tell these people that the industrial revolution was a few centuries ago. Or you know, they could be at home with their kids instead of waving placards and writing crap on the pavement with chalk. But whatever, they seem to be having fun, and it's more fun here to watch them instead of wondering if there is a guy in the German embassy nervously looking out the window at me.

Besides, nothing much can bother you when you are wearing headphones. It's the universal signal to everyone that I don't want to talk to you, which I almost always don't. Coupled with sunglasses, I'm practically immortal. And I guess it's a pretty sweet job to be paid to listen to your MP3 for four hours per day. I've been listening to podcasts from The Bugle (John Oliver from The Daily Show) which is hilarious. So picture me sitting on the stairs of the supreme court, looking at people, writing stuff down and grinning and frequently laughing like a maniac. Add to that the fact that I was coming down with a cold and looked like crap, I probably fit right in in front of the Supreme Court ("Down with Slavery!").

But I guess it's good to be working even if it's doing practically the same thing as I when I was in intermediate school and we did a survey, only now I have an MP3 player and I get paid. I really can't decide if this job is crap or really great.

The whole point of this post however, is to make an announcement. For the next two days (Wed & Thurs), there will be a limited edition gift for those readers who stop by to say hi. Yes, you'll get a gift and be tallied rendering you statistically significant! It's a win-win! 7-9 at Hobson Street Overbridge, and 12-2 at the Supreme court. Be in while stocks last!

Tyre Auditing


To most people the above image is probably one of the most banal subjects in all of existence. For me, it was one of the most banal subjects in all of existence which cost me two days of my life. Yes, I spent two full days of my life looking at car tyres.

Like many graduates I am currently happily unemployed, but I got a great piece of advice from the unemployment benefit seminar that I was compulsed to visit. There was an inspirational poster - by which I mean there was a royalty-free stock photo of a man smiling into the camera. The text said "Since I began working, the financial situation for my family has improved." I had never thought of it that way. When something is so simple it is either genius or idiocy, you have to pay attention, and two full months later I finally got my first job... looking at car tyres.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with car tyres, they are usually found close to the ground. That meant there was a lot of bending over. In fact, the job description said that the ideal candidate should be 'good at bending over.' Now when a job lists the qualities of the ideal candidate and says they should be good at bending over, that's your dream job right there.

So I was given a clipboard and a reflective vest and set free in a building where there are many tyres. This is called a 'car park'. For those familiar with car parks, you'll recall that these are usually dark, but you probably are not aware of just how filthy these places are until you have to to spend 8 hours in one, kneeling and lying on the ground. By the end of the day I emerged like the Chilean Miners - flithy, exhausted and my lungs filled with soot. The only thing missing was all the nationalistic bullshit upon reentry.

So that went so well that I did it for a 2nd day. I'd like to say that I now know what all the markings on the tyres mean, but I only know how to find them. I'm like what an astrologer is to an astrometor. I could spout all these numbers and wear dirty, ill-fitting clothing and have people pay me good money... Sorry, I forget where I was going with that.

The point is, well, I forget that too. But if I can just impart on you one thing, it would be that working is a way to earn money (although not the only way).