“Look over there, those dark clouds, that’s the end of the world right? The apocalypse has reached south Auckland and now we’re mere miles from certain death?!”
“No it’s fine, look over to the north there’s bright streaks of sunshine up there.”
“How many different weathers can you count?” We both spin and count the weathers surrounding us from this elevated vantage point.
“233? 312?”
“Hum, could be.”
We’re standing on the rim of an extinct volcano, call Mt Eden. I had never stood on top of a Volcano before, so I was pleased to place another tick against this activity on my mental to do list. Like any hardened couch surfer, I had dressed appropriately for climbing a wet, grass covered extinct volcano by putting on my flip flops. This meant I wouldn’t actually be doing a great deal of standing, and that tick should really have been demoted to a half tick as I spent the rest of the time slipping down the volcano on my ass as this picture will testify:
It’s here that we first noticed just how amazingly versatile the weather is in Auckland. In front of us as far as the eye can see invisible deitys were hosting a gigantic weather battle. The elements are fighting for supremacy, “I’ll see your overcast and raise you hail.” “Hail? Ha! Bring forth the thunder.” “Thunder? That all you have?! Time for my trump card - the rainbow!”
Hang on a minute, rainbows? When was the last time I saw a rainbow? I thought only children could see rainbows. I thought it was a skill just they had, like not feeling self conscious when naked ie something we all grow out of. Rainbows are little more than weather unicorns aren’t they? Now I know that to be false. If I had a New Zealand dollar (worth about 3p) for every rainbow I’d seen since we moved here I wouldn’t have to go trying to locate their end to be in the possession of a pot of gold.
Surrounding us were Korean tourists, whose agendas must be packed tighter than my overdraft, as their tour bus drove them all the way up to the top of the mountain, delivering them to the knockout views which they had 3 minutes to enjoy before being herded back on to the bus. Watching it is a little reminiscent of a tourist sheepdip, albeit with a very pleasant volcanic backdrop. I felt like running round and stapling all their eyelids shut, for they had not earned the pleasure of these views by getting lost and walking several miles around, and around, and around the volcano before walking slowly up. Cheats!
When Crowded House sang about experiencing “four seasons in one day” I always thought they were talking about England, an observation they probably made on a wet monday, on a ringroad, in Wolverhampton. But it cannot have been that which inspired such a sweet slice of 90’s pop. Now I know better. It can only have been about New Zealand weather. The weather here changes its mind faster than a woman, no wait, faster than an army of women all attempting to navigate from one map.
One minute it’s beautifully clear, with bright sunshine then a blink or two later the heavens have not opened, they’ve erupted! But these rain eruptions, despite being some of the heaviest I’ve ever seen only last about 5 minutes and then it’s fine again, bright and sunny like nothing happened. I’m used to this from Asia, where it would last for 30 minutes or so a day and you got the feeling that if it didn’t people would probably die, so it was fine. Here, we can have 12 or more of these 5 minute torrents a day. At an absolute minimum 2, as there’s always one on my walk to work and one on my walk back. It’s as if we’re plumbed directly in the pipes of some higher power, and whenever he turns the taps on to wash his hands or prepare a caesar salad he unwittingly, temporarily, floods Auckland.
I’m used to rain, I’m English, I have an MA in rain. But in England you know where you are with rain. When it rains, it rains and then it rains, when it’s bored of raining, it breaks the tedium with - rain, like that non-stop for two weeks. You make a plan, you open the curtains, you see the rain, you close the curtains, you make a new plan starring the indoors this time. Here I don’t even know if you can let the weather stop you doing anything, as it’s not cold, and only rains for about one hour a day. But if you get caught in any of those five minute mini floods, you’ll be wet until the next one.
“It never rains, it pours” he says, “It never pours, it floods would be closer to the truth” I reply. I was talking to a guy at work, as we watched the latest downpour drown a few of the weaker swimming pedestrians who left home without their umbrellas lifejackets. He said that the best thing to do is prepare to go out whilst it’s raining, then by the time you’ve left it will have stopped and you have a good 15mins to do whatever you wanted to do before the next onslaught. Weather strategy huh, time to update that MA.
The other thing I find strange, is not how changeable the weather is, but how different all our experiences are of it, within such a small place. Because of Aucklandians backgrounds (it’s not actually that easy to find Kiwis here, almost everyone in CBD seems to be immigrants - Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Irish etc) Talk to a Kiwi and “oh, the winter’s here now, horrible and cold” they moan. But that’s about it, another jumper and they get on with their business. For our Singaporean friends, it’s a different story “you don’t want to do anything when the weather’s this freezing” they say. Geez, no wonder we can’t get them out of their house, this is a hibernation worthy winter to them. For us, its a perfectly pleasant but endlessly fascinating 17′c hourly lottery….
Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happpppyyyyyyy birthday to me. For I’m a jolly good fellow, for I’m a jolly good fellow, and so say all of I, and so say all of I.
Phew, glad thats over with. Absolutely no-one sang happy birthday to me this year, possible, probably the first time in my long life. Apparenly Annett doesn’t “do that” and the people at work (who did buy me a cake though) apparently also don’t “do that”, and I don’t know anyone else here to “do that”. So I’ll have to sing it to myself, which has turned out to be strangely empowering.
25. Even feels longer to say than 24, 24 just rolled straight off the tongue, all youthful and zesty. 25 lingers. its plods its way slowly out, taking it sweet time. I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve achieved in those 25 years, and I’ve realised as I’d told friends already that I feel I wasted the first 15 or so years. There I stuck mainly to lifes introductory chapters - bladder control, talking, bike riding. In short, I started slowly. Since then its been a mad dash to do, see and conquer. In the last year alone Annett and I travelled to 10 different countries around Europe, Asia and now Australasia.
But even at that speed it would take us another 24years to see all the others. Laggards. Time to pick up the pace, there are bad genes on the fletcher male side (my dad being the first to live to over 40 in a few generations). Theres no knowing just how much longer is left. I’ve not even been a millionaire yet, or become an evil dictator, or bathed in Dr Pepper. I thought about writing a list of all the things I’ve done so far and then trying to just take some time out to enjoy them, as I am very bad at ever being satisfied with anything. Then I decided that wouldn’t be very motivatory, and instead I should make a list of all the things I want to do instead, that might be a bit more focusing. Turned out to be a pretty long list. I have an idea what to do with it though and if that works out I’ll put the whole list on a blog somewhere soon.
I can’t see us making it to another 10 countries this year anyway, I’m experiencing serious travelling burnout at the moment. The furthest I want to travel right now is the bathroom, and even thats feeling like a expedition. All I want is normality (or my version of it) - the sofa, books (big up to the Auckland Library), music (5 months worth to catch up on), the internet (geez, what a time sucker that is, i’d forgotten how easy it is to get distracted on it and just wander off for a few hours looking under the internet equivalent of rocks), movies and episodes (if you havent seen it Lars and the real girl is pure genius), plus Entourage, Lost, the Wire……the cultural tap has been switched back on and we’re both drowning in a sea of rapidshare piracy. Heaven. How I’ve missed the simple things.
A monumental event is about to occur (or has just occured, depending on if theres been news I’ve yet to recieve), my old Leipzig buddy Antje will soon produce a mini human. This will be the first mini-human anyone in my friend group has ever produced (a few undesirables in my school year have been laying mini humans like chickens lay eggs since we were 14, but they aren’t friends and don’t count). So I’m now of the age when my friends will have children. I’ll have to learn how to interact with them, without me or them being freaked out, or making mean slurs about their head/body ratio. Next someone will get married, then someone will buy a house (damn Fraser already did). Fuck, we’re adults now. Where’s the rewind button, I want to go back to only having homework to worry about.
Antje at 9mnths. I’m awestruck when I see this. How do humans do that?!
I’m planning a proper post on how I’m finding New Zealand so far. I’ll probably put it on HipHipUK though, the Zig type stuff that I don’t mind just anyone reading will be on there from now on. It’s be a t-shirt free blog at last, as I don’t have to fund the traveling trip and Tjunction is making a tidy amount.
Whats the point of this post? Well after a mind-numbing 1.5hr spent researching discounted beds for the beds affiliate site, I need a break before I tackle wine or supermarkets. Its impressive that I picked these three niches when I’ve never brought a bed, don’t like wine and don’t buy my groceries online. Actually maybe its more impressive that they make money. Whatever.
Get to the point. What was the good news? Ah yes, I’ve finally uploaded pictures of the flat onto flickr. The plan was to do it earlier but the flat was always too messy. Annetts out working (short-term temp thing) so like the little bitch I am, I just cleaned the place up and now its dazzling clean. So go and take a look at where we live now if you’re interested. We’re off to the capital Wellington for a few days now, enjoying my last days of freedom before I start work on Monday 
After 5mnths off its going to be a big culture shock to re-enter the world of working. Grrr. If you don’t know where I’m working you can read about it on HipHipUK
That it? Yep, now get back to what you were doing.
In front of you….jobs. Flirting with their attractive paychecks, flaunting suggestively a big 20 days of holiday, ‘yeah I know I look good’- full pension and medical up in here. So you pick one. Now its all over. You’re committed. In a working relationship. The glory days are over. At the start it will be all nice during the honeymoon period. You’ll arrive on time. You’ll wear matching socks. You’ll eat with your mouth closed. But then they’ll start notice things about you. Firstly that you’re a moron. Secondly that your CV had lies of biblical proportions:
‘Good Team Player’ = Outsourcing and delegating is still valid team work right?
‘Highly Ambitious’ = Aims to come in 5 days a week.
‘Results Orientated’ = Takes only the tasks mundane enough to not warrant being fired when inevitably fucked up.
They’ll see you at your worst, hungover on a Monday. Asleep in meetings. Only able to type using one finger, your thumb. Incapable of even using Powerpoint. That despite being an ‘advanced internet user’ you still look up the HTML code for a link.
So what can you do? Well not much. Keep your head down, your breath minted and pray that no-one notices that you have no idea what you’re doing. They probably won’t, luckily. As they’re doing the same thing as you.
We should just stop this whole charade. Lets just stop it now. Lets celebrate mediocrity! We can’t all be trailblazers, out to reinvent the wheelbarrow. If we were, the fast lane would be forever clogged and congested with high flyer’s. Lets celebrate life’s great underachievers, its car park attendants, its festering middle managers, pulling kindly into society’s slow lane. If we did then we could write truthful CVs and covering letters like this:
Adam Fletcher
General Sales/Marketing Bullshit
Global Evil Big Corp Tech
19th May 2008
Dear Boss to be,
Hi! My name is Adam Fletcher. I was just on my way back from trading my last cow for magic beans, when I saw your positions vacant advertisement for the job of ‘General Sales/Marketing Bullshit’. Even though that sounds like the worst job since fluffing, my rent is due soon and I do require food for the cat. I was hoping you might hire me and allow me to sit around the office, calling some people occasionally and trying to sell whatever crap it is that you make. I’m not a world beater or anything but I’m definitely okay at stuff. I’ll try and be on time and stay awake in meetings. If you like i’ll let you take credit for all my good ideas, should I have any. I’m also willing to tell you that even your shittest, most hair brained ideas are wonderful, if you like. So if you didn’t already employ some other blind lemming, and I’m not the worst applicant to apply, then how about we give it a go?
Thanks for you time and I hope to hear from you soon, so we can discuss this opportunity further. Please take the time to reject me personally. Rejection offends. Ignoration scars.
But that would be too easy wouldn’t it?
The last few weeks have been a whirl of interviews as I’ve been knee deep into my job hunt. You either love interviews, or hate them. I’m an emphatic ‘love them’. Why? Well, in normal social interactions you have to take part in - polite conversation. Thats means that you are forced to show an interest in the person you’ve forced to stop and listen to you, talking about yourself to. So when they say ‘how was your day’, you’ll answer and then they’ll leave an unnerving pause. In this pause you’re supposed to say ’so anyway how was your day?’, they’ll tell you some crap your not interested in about how they don’t like Wednesdays, or bosses who don’t understand how great they are, bills they need to pay blah blah blah - this is polite conversation. In interviews I don’t have to ask any questions back, the spotlights are shined purely at me. I get to just talk about myself for an hour or so, its kinda like therapy only if things go well they start paying you and not the other way round. It’s an excuse to talk solidly about myself without pesky interrupts, from others wanting to tell me about themselves. What easier subject can there be than talking about yourself? If I go on Mastermind thats the exact specialist topic I would request - ‘The thoughts and feelings of Adam Fletcher’. Yet they let you have this one in the test of whether or not you can have a job and earn money. Makes no sense to me.
There was a feature on the news today about CVs and job hunting. They had done a study and found that 70% of people lied on their CVs! This taught me two things:
1. TV teaches you nothing you don’t already know.
2. When confronted, 30% of people are unwilling to admit lying on their CV.
The other great things about interviews is you not only get to talk about yourself for hours on end without people walking away, or saying nasty things about you behind your back (egomaniac, asshole, fuck me what a bore etc etc), but you get to make stuff up. You can invent a whole new, better you. Its like a mini-vacation from your own rubbish self, while you get to test out what life would be like if you weren’t a hopeless bum. During an interview I’m an enthusiastic, motivated, intelligent, commited team player. Outside I’m an unemployed, balding, bum. Intellectually stimulated by wheel of fortune and shiny things.
My interview to job offer ratio has always been pretty high, which means I’m particularly skilled at creating better sounding versions of myself in interviews. I put this down to the realization at an early age that I wasn’t as good at wrestling, team sports, or buildings things like other men. In order not to be thrown on the dateless darwinian scrap-heap, I had to evolve new skills. I picked words. Now I think I’m okay at wielding them to get people to like me, at least in small doses. You just say smart things that someone else already said that you’ve memorized. Or you can say cute things that make people laugh such as ‘cheese is terrific’ or complimentary untruths such as ‘no, you definitely don’t look fat in that’.
But then it all falls apart. You have to actually pick a job. After the thrill of the employment chase the courtship ritual has come to an end. No more free therapy, or new improved you’s. You’re whoring yourself out there to anyone who’ll listen to you days are over. The next step is mans great nemesis - commitment.
‘Interviews Pt. 2 - commitment’ coming tomorrow (for real this time unlike all the other orphaned pt.1s on here, I’ve already written it and everything)
Despite us regularly being reminded on our trip that Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, it was actually one of the most expensive we visited with accommodation costs reaching a dazzling (I hope you’re sitting down) $8 each a night! But is not poor in all aspects, in fact, if ants were legal tender Cambodia would be a world economic superpower! There’d be Cambodians buying up mansions in Kensington left, right and centre, moving in four generations of their family, with photocopies of the Lonely Planet blowing everywhere in the London breeze. Its also incredibly hot, I got my first ever dose of heatstroke and had to buy a little communist hat to cover the patches of my head where once instead of anxiety, hair grew.
Anyway in this post I wanted to introduce you to some of the people we met in Cambodia. While I’d say it wasn’t either of our favourite countries, I did have the best conversations here. I think that’s because speaking English in Cambodia is the fastest way to jump out of poverty, there’s little economy beyond tourism unlike in countries like Vietnam or China with economies not dependent on Tourism. So Cambodians speak very good English and it was great to be able to interact more with the people we met, travellers are obsessed with finding the “real” people or places within a country. In reality if you can’t talk to the people you meet there and find out their story then whats the point? That wasn’t a problem in Cambodia and I was fortunate enough to spend the day with this guy:
Onon. He was my guide for the day around Battambang for which he earned with tip and after gas about $6, not a bad days wage. He’s 27, the oldest of six children who all live together with his parents in a village outside of Battambang. He spoke the best English of almost anybody non-European we met, because he studied it for two hours every morning at College. This along with the brand new scooter we spent the day riding, was paid for by an Englishman who he called his Godfather. He said that a few years back he had taken this man out for the day as he and his friend did for me and Annett. They bonded, which I didn’t find hard to imagine as we both spent the whole day laughing and playing around, Onon was really good fun. He said that before he met this man he didn’t really like his life, but that after the tour they stayed in touch the man who works as an English teacher in France set him up with an email address, and started to pay for him to study English and brought him this moped so he could go out and earn money for his family. As the eldest son he is party responsible to help feed his brothers and sisters. Now he said he can make decent money and he really enjoys his life.
He also told me lots of interesting things about Cambodian life:
Sex before marriage is still heavily frowned upon, with 60% of people still virgins until Marriage. After discussing it he seemed in favour of the the rather more liberal European system so that he could change girlfriend every few years and see what he liked, in Cambodia he gets only one choice and if he makes the wrong one he’s stuck (divorce is heavily frowned upon, as it brings shame to the family and is extremely expensive).
They have devised a brilliant system for stopping unwanted pregnancies and casual sex - once you’ve had sex with a woman you’re obliged to marry her. If not she can go to the police and report you. It doesn’t matter that it was consensual, now that you’ve sampled the product you are obliged to purchase marry it.
Wait, you must be joking right? Nope, whats the alternative?
Prison.
3 years of prison or a hefty bribe (Cambodia is totally corrupt, they don’t even have roads apparently because the airlines bribed the government not to build them so tourists have to fly between the major cities or take the pain of gruelling bumpy 10hr+ car rides). So I asked him what happens if the woman sees a man she wants to marry, but gets rejected because God made only the smallest deposit into her personality bank. He said she can just go the police and say they had sex and he is refusing to marry her. There is no way to prove or not that they did or didn’t have sex (they won’t do a physical check or anything), so they just assume they did have sex and the guy is screwed (regardless of whether or not he was the first time), with a prison sentence, marriage (some would say there’s little difference) or a hefty bribe (part of which the woman gets as well apparently, adding a nice extortion business opportunity angle for the Cambodian fairer sex).
This does happen apparently, women can trap men they want to marry and there’s not much they can do to get out of it. Not the best start to your married life I imagine, but skips all that unpleasant period of early happiness and jumps you nicely on to the bad times. Might cause a few problems at dinner parties:
Friend: So how did you too meet?
Wife: Ah that’s an interesting story isn’t it honey! I went to the police and pretended that we’d had sex and that he didn’t want to marry me. So the police arrested him, beat him up a bit, tried to bribe him but found out he had no money. Anyway, eventually they convinced him that it would be best for everybody if we just got married. He thought he was probably too pretty for prison and so eventually he relented and agreed to marry me didn’t you sweety?
Husband: (mumbling) I’m going to kill you in your sleep.
Friend: Ah, what a cute story you guys are adorable together.
are we. Yep we’ve arrived after a gruelling three stage flight, and 48hrs without anything more than a stolen moment or two of sleep. Aucklands nice, very very clean or that could be just after Asia, the whole city feels like a dentists surgery.
Its strange to be back in civilization. The real worlds sobering after Asia. Asia is so absurd, so mental that its hard to summarize, you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to be entertained, as Steve said last night “I like it ‘cos you don’t have to go anywhere to see a freak show, you can just sit outside and be entertained for hours and hours”. Now we’re doing normal people things like flat hunting (saw 6 or 7 today) and job hunting (applied to 6 or 7 today). The good news is that Steve and Bron (our hosts) have said that employment amongst skilled people is 0%, that employment agencies don’t even advertise jobs anymore as theres no-one to fill them, this place is suffering from serious brain drain as most people have run off to Australia or Europe. Neither of their jobs were ever advertised, the agencies just know people in the companies and when a good person comes along the CVs get sent in and hey presto, a job appears. So employment prospects look good, and hopefully a small or non-existent pay drop. Living wise its pretty cheap, more expensive than Leipzig, but some parts of Asia were more expensive than Leipzig, that place is in a special little bubble all of its own. Way cheaper than England though, and you can live on works doorstep in some real nice apartments with views out onto the harbour.
I guess thats about it, not much else to report because everything here is sort of like it is back in England, only nicer, so there isn’t that much to say about it. I guess I’ll be better at picker up the subtle differences in a few days when we get out of the whirl of flat and job hunting, can get down to enjoying our new home and I can get out of my overdraft 
This is quite a serious post because I’m hungry and we’ve been running round the city all day. More interesting stuff to come later.
Crowded House - Weather with you
Asia’s old news, I mean who wants to live in a part of the world where its always sunny, there are empty beaches, you can rent a hotel room, buy three meals and alcohol a day, get a “special” massage and a tuk tuk home all for $20. Rubbish!
So we’ve made a decision, we’re going to emigrate for a year to New Zealand, Auckland to be more exact. Why New Zealand you might ask? Well we’ve researched extensively all the countries of the world and created a list of what we know and like about each country. Perhaps if I share with you, all we know about New Zealand you will understand why it was a clear winner in our minds.
- Its not one, but two islands!
- Its really far away.
- I have a friend there, an old buddy from Microsoft.
- Crowded House came from there.
Its not next to Indonesia (I know this because I thought it was, I was then disappointed when I couldn’t find a boat or some kind of asian channel tunnel across from Jakarta).
Need I go on? Yes? Hum, that would be tricky as thats all we know at this point. Armed with such rich detailed knowledge the following happened:
Adam: I’ll mail steve check about rent prices, unemployment, serial killers per capita.
(Steve replies - cheap, low, always room for one more)
Adam: Well I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about the place, so its a yes from me. How about you?
Annett: Yeah okay, lets give it a try. You can apply for a years visa online, pass me my credit card.
(48hrs later)
Annett: Woohoo my visa came through. You have to go online log in and check.
Adam: Oh wow that was quick (checking), oh I have mine too. So it looks like we’re moving to New Zealand then huh?
Annett: Yep seems that way.
Adam: You sure about this?
Annett: Nope. You?
Adam: Nope, but I’m sure it will work itself out, I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about that place and I mean Crowded House came from there right? How bad can it be. I’ll find us a flight
(an hour passes)
Adam: Okay theres one leaving on Sunday from Bangkok, ultra long, ultra cheap.
Annett: Okay lets take it.
Another extensively researched plan comes to fruition. We fly in 24hrs.
If New Zealands reading this we arrive on Tuesday, leave the door on the latch and hoover the red carpet.
I have a ton of posts that I keep meaning to write, but time escapes me. I’ve just spent the last 3hrs naming and sorting the photos from the trip so far. If you’ve been looking through going “thats nice, what is it” you can now look through and go “now i know what it is, its boring” and “why the hell did he take 17 photos of the same thing?”.
The end of the Vietnam had my favorite moments of the trip so far (Cu Chi tunnels and the Mekong Delta), the Mekong Delta turned out to be photo gold. Now I have photo folders and stuff you can jump directly to just those if you like:
All of Vietnam
Just Mekong Delta
I guess thats about it for now. I’m in Siem Reap looking at Angkor Wat, next on to Bangkok and exploring Southern Thailand.
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