Bring Your Passport

So a while back, I posted a little nothing about an old Nintendo game called Clu Clu Land. It didn’t generate much interest, but, occasionally, people find my blog by Googling something related to this old and largely forgotten game. A few days ago, somebody Googled “clu clu land bubbles gloopy gender” — which, basically, gets to the heart of what my post was about — and ended up on my on this very post. I noticed this through the service I use to keep track of how people get here and ended up clicking the Google search results page myself to see what else showed up. (Oddly, my blog itself does not seem to show up in the search results at the moment. I assume that this will be fixed in the near future.) It’s mostly what you’d expect, but one thing caught me eye: a match on the website TripAtlas.com.

This is funny because TripAtlas — which seems like some sort of travel-planning site — apparently just bites information from Wikipedia and various Wikipedia knock-offs and, consequently, was fooled into posting an entry for what it thinks might be a foreign country. You know, the Great and Exalted Nation of Clu Clu Land. England, Switzerland, Swaziland and Clu Clu Land.

The page itself doesn’t have much info that is helpful in planning my vacation in Clu Clu Land, but I’m hoping there might be a list of hotels and popular destinations for other trips I plan to take one day to Candy Land, La La Land, and Land of the Lost.

Rooftops of Brixton

My last day in London, back in 2003, I had to kill a few hours in Brixton while I waited for my Uncle Andy to pick me up. (As near as I can remember, this day occurred somewhere between this post and this post.) Lacking the time, money or energy to do anything else, a snapped a few photos of the buildings near where I had been staying. I didn't actually see the photos until more than two years later. This preceded my age of digital photography, you see, and the roll of film I had taken them on sat in the camera, untouched, until I finally finished it off with the Halloween photo of Kami and me that I posted a few days ago. The photos, Ive always thought, make Brixton look a little nicer than it actually was. Something about these photos seems sad to me, however, and it isn't the fact that not-so-lovingly refer to the neighborhood they depict as "the beaten prostitute district."

What do you think? Do these make you feel anything in particular?

Grotesque Fashion

While KrisDina and I were in New Zealand, we repeatedly saw advertisements for Icebreaker, a particular brand of wool-based clothing. There were advertisements in most New Zealand magazines and posters in the windows of clothes shops. These ads, to say the least, were eye-catching.

Here's an example:


As you can see, the brand hypes the pure Merino wool aspect of their clothes by dressing up two models — a wispy, fair woman and a brawny, tan guy — is some kind of strange sheep drag. The end result is something out of Greek mythology, though it more realistically came from Photoshop. (Honestly, I like that there’s such a great potential for overlap between the two.) But I can't help feel a little wrong to look at something that clearly exhibits sheep characteristics and then thinking sexy thoughts. Maybe that’s the point. These grotesque forms do nothing to dispel the notion that New Zealanders — famed shepherds — bugger their flock like it's going out of style. The two depicted, however model-pretty they may be, look to be the offspring of such matings.

Finally, the above image is, to me, frightening on a primal level. Not only does the sheep-man seem to be springing from the very soil, wool and all, but his lady friend is holding those shears in a dangerous place. I worry for him, my friend the sheep-man.

I managed to find a second ad picturing the same to models, though the image is of substantially lower quality. It also doesn't compel me to cross my legs in a protective fashion.


We get a better shot at the woman — who, it turns out, looks a little bit like Allison Goldfrapp — and her apparent leotard of wool. We also see that the man does in fact have feet. Now he's holding the shearing scissors and I'm a little worried for Mrs. Man-Sheep.

Strange people, those New Zealanders.

Bananafish and the Sea Robin

Okay, so I know. I’ve been in California for more than a week, and during this time my blog has sat here, unattended by its keeper and only experiencing a surge in traffic because people have been suddenly able to locate this one provocative picture of indie chanteuse Neko Case on Google image search that I posted some time back. (They don’t remain on the site long.) I guess I had to take a break from posting at this blog because for the past six weeks, it serves as a travel diary and a way for me to keep in touch with people I knew back at home. However, once I set foot again in my homeland, the blog seemed temporarily irrelevant and in need of a reinvention — or at least a quick change back to its form before I left: a web log, or a log of the silly and inconsequential things I do and find on the web. But here’s the problem. In light of the subjects of recent posts — surviving the terrors of the sea and hugging kangaroos, for example — the little things that would have been post-worthy two months ago seemed too trite to mention. It’s a bit of dilemma, you see. After a few days of deliberation, I’ve decided that the best way to continue the life of the Back of the Cereal Box would be to make one more NZ/OZ-related post to cap off the whole trip and close the book on this vacation portion of my life. Thus, I give you the definitive post for all manner of tidbits related to the big NZ/OZ. My ten most-played songs, according to iTunes:

1. The Features - "The Idea of Growing Old”
2. A-Ha - "The Sun Always Shines on TV”
3. The Clash - "Lost in the Supermarket"
4. Nada Surf - “Indochine”
5. Teenage Fanclub - “Cells”
6. Gorillaz - “Dare”
7. Scissor Sisters - “Laura”
8. Stephen Malkmus - “Kindling for the Master”
9. Father Bingo - “Ginger Prince Is Not Shirley Temple”
10. Aimee Mann - “Pavlov’s Bell”

And, as a contrast, my ten most-played songs before I left, according to an earlier post:

1. Scissor Sisters - "Laura"
2. The Bravery - "Hot Pursuit"
3. Stephen Malkmus - "Kindling for the Master"
4. Gorillaz - "Dirty Harry"
5. Yaz - "Situation"
6. Beck - "Bad Cartridge"
7. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra - "Some Velvet Morning"
8. Soviet - "Candy Girl"
9. Scissor Sisters - "The Skins"
10. Electric Six - "Danger! High Voltage"

Songs that I, for better or worse, will now always associate with Australia and New Zealand:

• “My Humps,” by the Black Eyed Peas
• “In the Summertime,” by Mungo Jerry
• “Wonderwall,” by any one with a guitar, apparently
• “By the Devil (I Was Tempted),” by Blue Mink
• “Knock Three Times,” by Tony Orlando and Dawn
• “Hooked on a Feeling,” by Blue Swede
• “Groove Is in the Heart,” by Deee-Lite, technically, but for the purposes of this list by the Kransky Sisters
• “Pop Muzik,” by M, but in the same manner by the Kransky Sisters
• "The Grapefruit Song," by Allen and Grier

Strange, Down Under-specific animals I saw while I was gone:

• Kangaroos
• Wallabies
• PademelonsA single platypus
• Three or four echidnas
• Three kiwi birds, plus one kiwi hatchlingMany, many koalas
• A quoll, which is not to be confused with the koalas
• A single cassowary
• a Maori wrasse
• The most horrifying spider I’ve ever seen
• My first-ever confirmed cockroach
• Dingos
• A wombat named Wilhelmina
• A tree kangaroo
• A joey — or at least the arm of one, grasping for life from within his mother’s womb

Animals I did not see, though I have ample proof that they were there:

• Bedbugs

Animals people asked me to bring back as a present:

• A duck-billed platypus (for Josh)

• A sloth (for Sanam, even though I don’t think sloths live in Australia or New Zealand)

• A sloth bear (for Hasan, even though I don’t think sloth bears live Down Under, either)

• A wallaby (for Kat)

• A kangaroo (for April)

• Not a sloth (for Nate)

[definitely not a sloth ]

• And for Spencer, the long-promised and long-awaited Wooliam

Here you go, guys. Enjoy. Animal I was most impressed with:

• The wombat, surprisingly
• Runner-up: the cassowary

Animal I was least impressed with:

• The bedbugs

Strange animals I ate while I was gone:

• Kangaroo
• Crocodile
• Emu (in burger form)
• Many types of strange shellfish, some not readily identifiable

Strange British-ish ice cream flavors (ice-cream flavours) I tasted:

• Wattleseed
• Lavender and honey
• Rum and raisin
• Carrot
• Sapodilla
• Jackfruit

Strange and amusing place names we drove by or through:

(North Island, New Zealand)

• Ramarama
• Tapapa
• Whakapapa
• Meanee
• Mangateretere
• Waipawa (Don’t say it out loud, you racist.)

(South Island, New Zealand)

• Hinds
• Geraldine Flat (who I think I may have gone to high school with)
• Beautiful Valley
• Middle Valley (neighbor of Beautiful Valley)
• Cricklewood
• Twizel
• Omarama
• Bendigo
• Lower Shotover
• The Forks
• Inchbonnie

(Sydney to Blue Mountains area, Australia)

• Parramatta
• Blacktown
• Emu Plains
• Lapstone (Think about it.)
• Blaxland
• Warrimoo
• Bullaburra
• Katoomba
• Zig Zag

(Around the Whitsundays, Australia)

• Proserpine
• Bird Island
• Black Island
• Dent Island
• Dumbell Island
• Dungarra Island
• Esk Island
• Fitzalan Island
• Long Island
• Lupton Island
• Perserverance Island
• Plum Pudding Island
• Titan Island
• Wirrainbela Island

(On the drive from Townsville to Carins, Australia)

• Magnetic Island
• Frosty Mango (not an actual town, but marked on the map as if it were)
• Paronella Park
• Mareemba
• Mossman (Batman’s long-forgotten archenemy

An amusing place name we did not, sadly, go by:

• Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu

Places I did not see, regardless of what geography challenged travelmates may have thought:

• Austria

Ten best things:

1. Scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef
2. Bungee jumping at the K Bridge
3. Hugging the kangaroo
4. Seeing cousins being more grown-up than I remember them being
5. Actually seeing things at the Sydney Opera House
6. Ankle-deep sand at Whitehaven Beach
7. Larry’s cat, Rat Baby
8. One word: “Zorb”
9. The stormy night on the Pacific Star
10. Mud bath at Hell’s Gate in Rotorua

Anything Can Be a Paperweight

"Act of God." Just writing it feels funny. I write that and I think of a plague of frogs or boils or immaculate conceptions of something. But when the Auckland airport is enshrouded in fog and planes can't take off and I get stuck in Cairns and I know that whenever I get to Auckland will be too late to make the connecting flight to San Francisco and I have to extend my travels for one more day, "act of God" doesn't quite cut it. "Act of Satan," maybe. Or possibly even "act of Zeus, the storm bringer," but I feel like "act of God" is just too archaic a term to account for the horrors of airport delays and compounded travel weariness.

You'd think getting an extra day of vacation would be a good thing. I would have thought so, too, but right now all I want is clean clothes, a decent shower, a clean bed and cup of fucking coffee without foam. Keep your flat whites, you miserable continent. Haven't you taken everything else from me?

The Alias That You've Been Living Under

A quickie: Back in Townsville, we went to the Billabong Animal Sanctuary. No relation to the surf company. I hugged a kangaroo. I saw a single, naked foot emerge from a mama wallaby's pouch. I played with small rain forest kangaroos called pademelons. I saw squirrel gliders. And, yes, I finally saw a cassowary. Turns out they're a bit of a road hazard here and occasionally you'll see a road sign depicting the silhouette of one of these massive birds against a yellow triangle. According to our travel book, they can disembowel with a flick of their toenail.

We drove up from Townsville to Cairns, fording a river Oregon Trail-style in the process. In another Nissan Pulsar, no less. Tomorrow: Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation. And the day after that: the long flight home.

Wish me luck.

Apex

I'm standing at the front of a catamaran built when I could barely walk and my daily routine consisted of Legos, playing astronaut and a very special daily event called "juice time." Ahead of me, black meets black and the only way I can tell the sea from the sky is by looking for the whitecaps that rush forward from this void and crash onto the ship's deck. The horizon — or at least the subtle distinction between black and black that I'm guessing is the horizon — bobs five feet above my head and then quickly drops out of sight, and every time the boat sweeps downward, I feel like all of us — me, Kristen, Dina, the two Canadian girls, Giacomo from Lake Como and the two guys from London, who, incidentally, have dressed up like pirates — are going to be digested by some pulsating dark-fleshed organism not unlike the giant clams we saw earlier in the day, during our first scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef.

The crew of our ship, the Pacific Star, seems rather blase about this whole scenario. They tell us that we're welcome to remain at the front of the boat provided that we cling to the rail with two hands. (At this point, I note that the London guys' hands are occupied by (a) a rubber cutlass, (b) a can of Victoria Bitter beer, (c) a toy telescope, and (d) another can of VB, and I imagine how ashamed their families will feel when they hear that their sons were found drowned in the waters off the coast of Australia, dressed in pirate drag.) Regardless of the crew's attitude, however, we rail-clutchers have realized that a front-row seat for barrage after barrage of underwear-soaking waves is the absolute best place to be on the boat at the given time.

It's simple, really.

This being our last night on the Pacific Star, we've all been drinking, a fact generated by a choice rendered poor when the boat crossed into a stormy patch marking the place where tall, incoming waves meet an ebbing tide and the run-off of several rivers that empty into this region of the Pacific. The waves peak here, when they might not have anywhere else in the ocean, explains our skipper. As such, standing anywhere inside the boat will make even the sober passengers walk like drunkards. Queasiness ensues. And the best cure for seasickness — which, by the way, I'm just starting to get — is to look to the horizon, however obscured the current meteorological conditions may make it. Who cares if the rain is cold and stinging and may have just evolved into hail? Each large wave that hits us is as warm as bathwater, making our precarious position as figureheads on this vessel the warmest and therefore best place on the boat. We tip forward again, the water splashes and I once again hear that automatic, uniform amusement park squeal. Only when it's done do I realize that I helped make it.

- - - - -

We boarded the Pacific Star on Wednesday night, shortly after we arrived in Airlie Beach. We had initially planned for the day to have been spent at Magnetic Island — the local beach attraction near my aunt's house in Townsville, which we may well leave Australia without having seen — but whether conditions have left "Maggie" stormy enough to warrant looking elsewhere for entertainment. Not wanting to waste a day of our last week down under, we Greayhounded it down to Airlie Beach, the best place to catch a pleasure cruise around the Whitsunday Islands, a scattering of green spots that contrast nicely against the teal of Australia's portion of the Great Barrier Reef. The names of the islands are too whimsical and beautiful to seem real: among them, Daydream, Dumbell, Plum Pudding, Perseverance, and Double Cone — the last of which being "Dina's spiritual homeland," one writer points out to me.

Previous tour groups and abroad study programs have taught me that approximately ten percent of any travel party I move with will be piles of shit encases in human skin. This, however, proves not to be the case with the Pacific Star. As I systematically approach the boat's twenty-some twenty-something passengers, I find each to be remarkable tolerable — personable, even. And entirely attractive, if in a whitewashed Bunim-Murray kind of way. We're like a floating United Nations, if the United Nations actually got along together and consisted solely of Australia, South Africa, Canada, France, Italy, England, and the United States. (Like I said, whitewashed.) My favorites were easily the French couple — friendly, but withdrawn, and looking like Adrian Grenier and Mayim Bialik, respectively. (Also, you have no idea what a big part of our trip Mayim Bialiak has been. Love you, May-May. It wouldn't have been the same without you.)

So in the midst of a good travel group, Dina, Kristen and I konked out in our room — the only above-bottom level cabin and, thus, the one place on the boat where you didn't have to sleep in the smell of sewage. That next morning, we woke up to Whitehaven Beach, the nicest spot on Tongue Island and, if we're to believe what our divemaster told us, "the second-most photographed place in Australia." (He did not specify what was the first.) The sand here is ninety-eight percent pure silica, so dropping a camera on this beach effectively ruins it. That didn't stop us from taking pictures, however, and as soon as I get back to California I'll be uploading the photos from this last leg of the trip. The water was great, though full of sting rays, and those sting rays being the kind that can actually stong you — definitely not the touch tank variety. We stayed long enough to sunburn the tops of my feet — the right somehow worse than the left — before continuing to our first dive practice.

The beach they dropped us at was about as far from Whitehaven as we could get while remaining in the Whitsundays. Think Monterrey peninsula: not much sand to speak of, rocky, cold and fraught with crashing waves. Top make matters worse, the water was also littered with a fine, brown substance that our skipper identified as coral spawn — essentially the little coral gametes washing around in search of a receptive lady coral to make new life. It's here that nature first bared her nasty teeth to me and a particularly strong wave washed me over some coral and, stupidly, instinctively, I put out my hands in order to stop myself. I grazed the tips of the coral with my right hand. Bad move. Not only is sea water rich with foreign-to-landwalkers bacteria, but the coral itself, as I learned, secretes a mucous that can irritate skin. Soon enough, I was back aboard the boat. And slightly less soon, so was everyone else; the conditions proved to bad for diving, what with the coral cum clouding the water and reducing visibility to only a few feet.

We spend the night on the boat back in a cove, where out skipper turned the deck lights on. The light reflecting off the water beneath us drew moths, which in turn drew schools of small white fish. The fish proved prey for a squadron of squid, which glowed orange. The whole nature-versus-nature show climaxed with the arrival of three of four dolphins, which frolicked, lept and then ate as many squid as they could. Me: delighted. Me: awed by nature. Me: more aware than ever that even the pleasant looking nature can be vicious.

The next day, Kristen, Dina and I had our first real dive. Following a simple skills test, we floated down to the bottom of a relatively safe area of the reef. I've never before had the sensation of standing ten meters below the ocean's surface and still walking on sand. What we can't see when we above water truly is beautiful. Alien, colorful, delicate and all those other Steve Zissou adjectives. I must admit, however, that being around coral that's seen millennium after millennium roll by is slightly off-putting. As a newbie diver, I was faced with moving in a full 360 degrees of motion, as well as having plastic flippers extending the clumsiness of my body enough that I was in constant fear of kicking something that would, in turn, bite me back. Despite the divemaster's warnings, I also sliced my hand on a barnacle while gripping the rope we used to pull ourselves out from the ocean. Drew: zero. Nature: two.

After that morning, the Pacific Star sailed far out onto the reef. Far enough, in fact, that we couldn't see a spot of land anywhere on the horizon. I had never before experienced the bare curvature of the earth like this before. Our skipper told us that the area we were over was a place most diving outfits don't take tourists to. He called it "The Cathedral," though I have no idea why. See, while the certified divers took a big kids trip out, we snorkled about. I was enjoying marine-gawking at a forty-five degree angle when I felt a strange burning sensation on the small of my back. "Can't be a jellyfish," I told myself. "I'm wearing my stinger suit." So such luck, however: I quickly felt another sting on my shoulder. Fearing immediate death by the irukandji, I hopped out of the water. I had apparently fallen victim to the little fire jelly, a cute little fucker who, when agitated, sends off stinging cells that can pass through even high-quality stinger suits. I was not amused. Neither was the girl from Buffalo who took one on the neck.

I had nearly given up on becoming a man of the sea when I had a chat below deck with Heena, a Briton who had opted against venturing into the water again after the bad experience at the pseudo-Monterrey Peninsula. She reminded me that I wouldn't have the chance to dive on the Great Barrier Reef again. Somehow, she made more sense than Kristen or Dina. So I went, fearing the worst. Forty minutes underwater, breathing through that awkward mouthpiece and treading around a host of fluorescent creatures who could on a whim string, strangle, immobilize or otherwise maim me. It didn't look good, especially considering my track record, but I dove anyway.

I had a great time.

And that's as far as I'm going to attempt to write about it, really. I didn't get hurt, so I can't write about that. And as far as words in my personal vocabulary go, nothing can really come close to describing the beautiful freaks I saw on the reef. I had a great time. I don't regret it. I had a great time. I saw stuff. I had a great time. Fuck you, ocean. Take that. And I had a great fucking time.

That night, we endured the tossing about at sea I described earlier. It's all basically how I said it, even if I neglected to mention that Heena's fiance, Shaun, spent the night hurling off the back of the ship. But you don't need to know that. We survived — poor placement on the deck aside — and now the worst of it all has become a good story to tell.

The night after we returned to Airlie Beach, a handful of us met up at a bar to celebrate Dina's birthday. We commiserated with all the "I still feel like I'm on a boat!" and "Look how sunburned I am!" and reveled in the fact that a bunch of kids from different spots on the globe all know the lyrics to "Wonderwall" backwards and forwards. We drank (heavily). We danced (humorously). I went to bed (early).

For me, this was effectively the end of the trip. After returning, we had less than a week left, just enough to drive up to Cairns to catch our flight back to Auckland. But as a climax, I think it works rather well. Or is it bad luck to deem what you're doing falling action before you're done with it?

[ you snooze you lose. well i have snost and lost ]

Laugh, Kookaburra — You Smug, Twitty Little Motherfucker Kookaburra

By traveling up the coast from Sydney to Townsville, we've finally made Australia look like Australia. High-rise apartment buildings and posh dance clubs are nice, but no more iconic to Australia than they would be Germany, England or any other country I've already been to. No, Townsville is a special place in that it abounds with what I want from my Australia.

Last night, our plane landed and my Aunt Judy drove us to her house. It sits on the edge of the city, in the kind of underdeveloped development where you'd expect people to live if they're used to rural digs. It sits in a forest of gum trees and brush and sticks and green. We're not to step outside without shoes on, Judy tells us, since some of the most deadly snakes in the world — full-fledged black adders, even — live in the grass. We sleep with the windows open, since the humidity just steams your body, even a body at rest, in a way that I can only recall Harper Lee even coming close to describing. To use a cliche, it's stifling. If I wanted to attempt something more flowery, I'd say the world outside is breathing, hot and wet, overwhelming this little house and seeping in through the cracks in the windows.

That statement doesn't seem like much of a stretch, however, when I note that as I type this I can hear a host of animals chattering and shrieking in the trees just in the yard. Frogs that sound like dogs, cicadas that sound like birds, and birds that sound like they're laughing, laughing, laughing at the funny American sweating through his underwear as he types at a computer covered in small moths that think the monitor is the sun or a fire or Jesus or something. The outside is alive, and it's making its way in.

If I wake up tomorrow morning, I can go see wallabies that just hop around in the fields while Judy and Tom walk their dogs. If we make it to the ferry, we get to see a place called Magnetic Island. And if this dial-up connection doesn't fail me, the best of my photos so far — Auckland through Sydney — will be posted on my Flickr page by the time you read this. Just images so far.

Context to follow shortly.

Tipsy Imperial Concubine (Parentage Unknown)

Yesterday, the sun was hot enough that we could justify spending the day at Bondi Beach, a famous surf spot with infamous riptides. We did not surf. I only toed the water and found that it was as cold as it is in Santa Barbara, though the temperature here would be measured in degrees Celsius, which makes me think it was even colder. Today, it's raining again and I think we will go to the Sydney art museum.

The only point I have worth noting is that the bus ride home from Bondi afforded us an opportunity to overhear and obnoxious American tourist -- the kind that defames all Americans away from their homelands -- loudly discussing her personal life, much to the chagrin of everyone on the bus. Topics overheard include that her boyfriend looked "just like Justin Timberlake, like his twin or something," that said boyfriend lost a ton of weight after this dumped him ("he looked anorexic or something"), that her friend's ring was "cute, but maybe too cute," that "it's totally crazy that they call bell peppers 'capsicum' here," that her friend is not a big enough bitch, that her iPod broke and she's mailing it back to her parents to get it fixed and then sent back again so she can listen to music, because "it's way hard to find good music." The then countered her previous statement by repeatedly singing the first line form the chorus of James Blunt's "Beautiful."

All statements were voiced in the stereotypical sorority rasp. Chatter was constant. I prayed that she might somehow die of kidney failure before my stop. My prayers were not answered.

The Fish Are Back

Since Kristen is presently mailing a bottle of New Zealand wine to her parents, I'm going to round out my posts from the Antipodes with a summary of food-related learnin' I've gleaned so far.

1. The New Zealanders refer to bell peppers as "capsicum," though KrisDina and I can't help but pronounce it "capiscum." It's a far uglier word either way.
2. From my time in London I learned that the default flavor for purple candy is blackcurrant, not grape. Upon trying a Skittles machine in our hostel lobby, I found that green here is apple, not lime.
3. Coffee is strange here. A generic cup of coffee is a "flat white," and is buried beneath an inch of foam. I, for one, hate foam. I have tried ordering simply black coffee but can only get espresso, or, worse, a double shot of espresso.
4. Tomato sauce, the condiment that best approaches American ketchup, tastes of cloves.
5. "Kiwi" is an odd word when ordering food. I've frequently not known whether a dish bearing that name contains kiwifruit, kiwi bird or is simply something characteristic of the Kiwi people.
6. Two words: hamburger rings.
7. On the subject of burgers, it's not uncommon to get a slice of beet on burgers here.
8. Pavlova is wonderful angel kibble imported from the nicer districts of heaven.
9. A thing exists that is called ginger wine. And it is a good thing.
10. A popular beer here is Monteith's, the brewery for which is in Greymouth, which we actually drove through two days ago. They have more varieties here than most mainstream American beers do. Two of note: Monteith's Radler, which has lemon zest in it, and Monteith's winter brew, which has a cinnamon aftertaste.
11. The Minus 5 bar made several of its drinks with a variety of Absolut vodka that I had never encountered before: Absolut Pepar. And that's in the sense of jalapeno peppers, not peppermint.
12. And, finally, Kristen was very pleased that the McDonald's apple pies here are fried, not baked as they now are in the United States. I, however, find the pies to taste like shit no matter how they're cooked.

I feel really full, to put it bluntly.

Jungle Japes

We fly out in a few hours for Sydney. It's the last leg of our trip, though it's larger than the previous two combined. This may be bad travel math, but I'm nonetheless set on breaking the trip down this way.

The previous post glossed over our time up the west coast, I feel. Frankly, the area was one of the most beautiful I have encountered and I enjoyed it, despite the considerable handicap of having no source of music until I finally broke down and bought an iPod radio transmitter in Hokitika. In lieu of any other entertainment — we had already realized that we didn't know the lyrics to sing-a-long mainstays like "Wonderwall" and "I Think I Love You" as well as thought we did — we devised a rudimentary game of shouting out the names of the area's many creeks as we crossed them. Whoever didn't notice the little yellow sign first had to echo what the primo shouter said, not unlike the last few minutes of the Parliament Funkadelic's "Flashlight." We crossed over countless creeks, and, adorably, each one is named, likely because the grazing and agriculture economies depend heavily upon riberian rights. Stoney Creek. Viney Creek. Drunkard's Creek. Drowned Man Creek. Friends Creek No. 1. Dizzy Creek. Dismal Creek. Kiwi Creek. Doughboy Creek. Dicks Creek. Kaka Creek. Dry Creek (which had water). Water Creek (which didn't). Rocky Creek (which could have easily been any of the preceding creeks). Flowery Creek (which wouldn't have fit any of them, especially in this early autumn weather). And, of course, Cripple Creek.

Though we passed through Franz Joseph Village in the quick manner than Californians often flee cold climates, we spent enough time in Hokitika to get a feel for it. It reminded me of Twin Peaks, if that fictional town had depended upon marine enterprises instead of logging. I feel like the people there could have all easily known each other in the quaint, folksy way that only exists when it's a town you don't have to live in. The town is also known for its jade and opal markets, though I neglected to buy a carved tiki, freaky though it may have been.

At Hamish's suggestion, we drove through the farm country to the Hokitika Gorge , which he had accurately described as surreal. The river here too glows an odd turquoise color, though even more brightly than previous bodies of water had. As if to add to the strangeness of the place, the gorge was deserted — no tourists, no bugs, no fish and only one bird that we actually saw. I felt like we were trespassing on something special.

That night, we tried to get dinner at a restaurant the guide book touted as serving a surprisingly good possum broth soup. We ran though the rain and arrived at a wholly different restaurant where the kind waitress showed us a better route for driving to our last tourist destination in New Zealand — the Pancake Rocks — and then back to Christchurch, where I'm typing this now. The food was good, maybe even the best I've had so far, and when I signed the guest book, the waitress explained that I could write as large as I wanted, since the place was closing at the end of the week. She said that she didn't mind us keeping her late, way after the dinner rush usually dies down in Hokitika, since she would not get to spend more time there in the future.

The next morning, I found that the Pancake Rocks looked exactly like you'd expect them to. Words can't really relate how rocks could look like pancakes — even rocks carved by the ocean from the most badass, most supafly mineral in the funkosphere, the one and only dolemite. Wait for pictures, I suppose. I can't help but think that the Maori name for the Pancake Rocks, "Punakaiki," is a transliteration of the word "pancake."

Tonight I'll be in Sydney. Wish me luck in the penal colony.

Please Be There

Hey.

Upon being asked the very relevant question "What have you been doing, anyway?", I realize that I've been remiss in saying exactly how my time down under has been spent. Besides KrisDina, the Moleskine and some chatty waiters and waitresses, no one but me can say whether I've actually been spending this vacation well or merely sitting in the Auckland airport, thumbing through travel pamphlets of places I'd like to go but won't on account of this country being all crazy and backwards and funny shaped and who really needs two islands, anyway? In that light, I thought I'd share.

I guess I've been just a little reluctant to do so when the occasional internet kiosk affords me the opportunity because I feel guilty. You're there and I'm here and I didn't want to rub your nose in it. But I care and since I did leave, I thought you should know that I did so with good reason: to take advantage of the opportunity to see a new place and see it well.

(And, please, note that I'm doing this writing in none-too-cheap internet time. So while I will spare no detail, you must afford me the opportunity to lapse into stream of consciousness ramblings, commas and homonyms be damned. Also, the constraints of this computer have forced me to change my writing style slightly. For example, I cannot figure out how to type an em dash, and only you could fully understand how much that it presently killing me.)

Days zero through three: The Land of Auck

Despite a little research, I actually have no idea what the "auck" in "Auckland" means. It's an odd little syllable, and, in a way, Auckland is an odd little town. It's not the capital of New Zealand, though I think most people would bet that it is. And though it's a fairly large sprawl, complete with the skyscrapers and ethnicity-centered suburbs you'd expect from a large town, you can drive too far in the wrong direction a bit and suddenly find yourself in rural territory with sheep and cows and rhubarb and the like. In any case, the day after day zero -- the one I spent on One Tree Hill getting the full Auckland panorama, KrisDina and I went searching for this little breakfast spot her boss recommended. Trouble: the Atomic Cafe no longer exists. In its place was a still fully good restaurant called One 2 One, which served fejoia smoothies the likes of which I've never encountered. We walked up K Street, a central thoroughfare, past this weird shopping arcade that seemed entirely devoted to hipsterware. Had Brenna seen it, she would have had a happy little seizure, for sure.

We caught a ferry to Devonport, the part of Auckland that lies on the other side of the bay, and walked around in its suffocating quaintness and then hiked up Mount Victoria, which boasts a cannon that the Kiwi government installed to fight off the oncoming Communist Russian army, which never came. Odd place. A little man like a hobbit came by and showed us into an old bunker, which the Aucklanders have turned into the meeting place for the local bluegrass music players association. Like I said, odd. It rained like it hasn't done again until today, actually, and we decided that the safe, dry option for the night was to catch a movie.

The next morning, our Larry took us to Cousin Francie's strawberry farm, which sounds like the hokiest thing since taking your scoliosis-suffering cousin to a barn dance, I know, but was actually quite nice. I met a cousin of whom I had previously only seen photographs. Francie also let us pick as many strawberries as we felt like, which was enjoyable in that city kids-doing-farm-work-as-a-novelty, Marie Antoinette-playing-peasant kind of way. The we caught a bus to this tourist trap called Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater Experience, where we gawked at penguins and sting rays the size of a Mormon family dinner table. Then we saw Auckland's harbor district, which is called the Viaduct Basin for reasons I do not understand. We wanted to go be all looky, but we ended up having one of those monumental ice breaker dinners, where everyone tells personal stories and becomes best friends. We ate mussels, but the things had little crabs buried inside their shells. Later, someone explained that the crabs were being digested by the mussels, which would account for the little guys' soft shells and blanched coloring. (We did not eat the crabs.) Funny thing about dining out in a country where tipping is not customary: the waitresses think nothing of letting you wait forty-five minutes for your bill.

It being dark enough at that point, we hiked over to the Sky Tower, Auckland's fairly new iconic structure, which lights up in neon green and purple at night. Picture the Space Needle as designed by a ten-year-old with a Buzz Lightyear complex and you get the idea. The deck has glass floors, which allow you to see the city your hovering over. We took lots of pictures. The snooty French hostess rejected us from the revolving restaurant at the top, so we had to settle for drinks at the cafe just below. There, we discovered L&P, a New Zealand-only soda that tastes like a deeper, more mellow lemonade.

Days four through six: Rotorua, the geothermal city

After Avis rejected us, we turned to the only car that Budget could offer us: a lemon yellow Volkswagen Polo. An ominous color, I know. The car's lameness was compounded by the fact that it essentially looked like a rolling Easter egg. The drive to Rotorua included a stop in Tirau, which bills itself as the corrugated metal capital of New Zealand. This lofty title is evidenced by several corrugated metal statues -- a sheep dog, a sheep, a shepherd and then a praying mantis, I presume to break up the monotony -- though I couldn't help but look at them and think of Ruffles potato chips.

The first morning in Rotorua, we went to a hillside reputed as a prime site for zorbing, that ridiculous extreme sport where you roll around in a big plastic ball. It was actually quite fun and well worth the $45 it cost -- kind of like falling, but roughly twice as pleasant. After that, we went down the street to the Agro-Dome. I remembered liking this place from when I saw it as a kid, but KrisDIna didn't seem all that stoked on seeing what essentially amounted to a sheep show. They quickly realized the error of their ways. I don't know how they do it, but they make sheep-rearing seem flashy and fun. A negative: the sheep do not stack up into a pyramid cheerleader-style like I remembered. Turns out they merely line up on a pyramidal stage. A positive: the sheepdogs they have do run up and down the sheeps' backs in an entertaining fashion.

We also went to a place called Kiwi Encounter. I finally got an up-close look at a real-life kiwi bird. They're bigger than I remember, but still essentially a potato with feet and a long beak. The people there help breed the kiwi bird and then release them into the wild, so we even got to see a one-day-old kiwi hatchling. Fun fact: the egg grows inside a female kiwi bird until it's roughly half her size, rendering her immobile, vulnerable and in a great deal of discomfort. I also found out that my beloved cassowary, relative of the kiwi bird, is native to Australia and now I want to see one, ride it, steal it, take it back to California and name it Charlie.

That night we went to a hangi, the Maori version of what is called a luau in Hawaii. The whole deal had this air of inauthenticity, however, since it was held in a hotel. The food was good, especially the kumara, which are tubers that taste like sweet potatoes should. However, I felt oddly guilty during the cultural performance afterward. Like the Native Americans, the Maori kind of got a raw deal. And they totally have the right to pedal their culture to tourists as much as anybody else, but I felt like they kind of sold our to these busloads of Canadian and Korean senior tour groups kind of in the same way that I feel like Chumash sold out every time I see their name affixed before the word "casino." The performance included a love ballad duet that told the story of a Maori youth and maiden you fell in love despite being from opposing tribes and thusly sang to each other from the opposite shores of a lake that separated them. But although the male lead was played by a suitable Maori man, the female part was played by a menopausal-looking woman who could have easily been his mother. I got kind of sad when I characteristically overthought the situation and guessed that this particular troop couldn't find a young Maori lass talented or interested enough to play the part.

We woke up the next morning and set out for Hell's Gate, a geothermal spa that had a good, proper Maori name until George Bernard Shaw visited and noted that the place looked too much like the afterlife his atheist soul was doomed for to be called anything else. The sparse foliage and bubbling gray mud has this allure that I guess I have to attribute to its otherwordliness, for lack of anything else. The best part was the mud bath and sulphur spa we took after. Supposedly the stuff has medicinal properties. I think it gave me blackheads. Fun and dirty, all the same.

Too late in the day, we found, we set off for Lake Taupo and then Napier, the city known for its art deco architecture. So well known, in fact, that they nearly didn't have any room for us. We chanced upon a hostel with a vacancy just before we would have had to push south to Waipukurau, luckily. Our first tase of down under nightlife. Bar music doesn't suck here, it turns out.

Days six through nine: Waipuk, where everyone's a Mackie

Funny how everyone in my dad's hometown looks like him: my dad fatter, my dad taller, my dad wrinklier, my dad balder, my dad as a lady. This whole stay was exactly what you'd expect from any occasion in which a relative from out of the country comes to visit. We pinballed from one relative to the next, for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, tea. All very nice. I got to see my grandmother, whom I hadn't seen in eight years. Everyone prepared me for her not remembering me -- she's in a home now -- but she did and I was very happy. Oh, also we got to ride four-wheelers around a sheep farm and eat lots of red meat.

Days ten through twelve: The aptly named Christchurch

We flew from Napier to Christchurch on the south island. This city has more houses of worship than I could count, and all of them looked a few centuries older than they possibly could have been. We stayed right near the central Anglican cathedral, however. We also overslept and only had time the next day to go see the city's art museum, which had lots of contemporary stuff I really liked, though the names of the featured artists all escape me now. That night, we ate at my cousin Hamish's. I don't remember meeting him, though we apparently did the last time my family came through Christchurch. It's so odd to see cousins not too much older than me living in the suburbs with a wife and kids old enough to have some concept of what "the cousin from America" means. They named their daughter Skyla, after the Minnie Driver character in "Good Will Hunting," so there's still a flair for pop culture-addled youth in them. He took us up to an overlooked called "Sign of the Kiwi" -- and yes, there actually is a wooden sign with a kiwi bird on it -- and the city looked nice from all the way up there.

Day fourteen through two days ago:

We picked up our second rental car, a tan Nissan Pulsar. There is not sadder phrase in English than "tan Nissan Pulsar." It was cheap, though, which was good since a rock cracked the windshield of the Polo and we had to pay through the nose. Kristen claimed to have actually compiled a list of the Pulsar's pros and cons, and the cons truly win. Worst of the worst: no functional tape deck or CD player.

In our shit-colored car of shittiness, we drove all the way down to Queenstown, which took nearly all day. Pretty country though, and finally stuff that doesn't look anything like countryside in California. Queenstown is this awesomely quaint little ski town and adventure sport mecca. We stayed at a hotel named for the owner's cat, which blew, then spent the next day testing our propensity for extreme intensity by taking a gondola to the city's overlook. It's quite beautiful. As with the rest of the glacier-scarred south island, sediment in the lakes makes the water a pretty teal color. Also, Queenstown is framed on nearly all sides by mountains, the most craggy of which are one of the only ranges in the southern hemisphere to run from magnetic north to magnetic south. Their name: the Remarkables, which sounds like a Motown group, I think.

Easily the best day we've had in the whole trip was the second one spent in Queenstown. We went over to Shotover Canyon, where we rode a jet boat through this seemingly dangerous rocky stretch. The drivers get off on making the boats veer as close as possible to jutty rocks and then pulling 360-degree spins. Quite fun and not as soaking as you'd expect. We did this when my family came through eight years ago.

Then we bungy jumped. At the place where the sport was invented, no less, a bridge with a long Maori name that commonly gets abbreviated to "K Bridge."

I'm not sure, but I think the drop is 43 meters, though that measure doesn't really capture how steep it feels when you're standing on the ledge. The girls went first, since they weigh less, and I had to stand up there alone, save for the bungy nuts who work there. The think about bungy jumping that's really scary, however, is that the harness isn't as comprehensive as you'd think. It's really just a few scraps of fabric cobbled together. Part of it is just an ordinary bath towel. And yet somehow this thing is supposed to prevent you from falling to your death.

So I'm standing there, listening to "Dyer Maker" play with its "Oh oh oh oh oh oh / You don't have to go-o" and when the guy finally counts down from five, I just stand there dumbly. So he tells me to look straight forward and then he counts again. And I step forward and as I start to fall, I see that there's this random sheep on the hillside opposite the bridge where I'm jumping. And it's nowhere near a grazing area and I my mind fixates on this sheep and the last thing I can remember thinking is "Oh look! a sheep!" And I've been in New Zealand for more than two weeks and I've seen more sheep than I've seen people and I'm bungy jumping for the first time and all I can think to say is "Oh look! a sheep!" And then I'm hanging upside-down at the bottom. I couldn't tell you what the fall was like. I think I blacked out.

That night, sore and dazed, we went to the Minus 5 bar, where everything is made of ice and you can only stay for a half-hour. They give you gloves, since the glasses are also made of ice. Things get blurry.

Whatever day I'm on now:

So here I am in Hokitika. I guess I won't see the glowworm dell, though writing this letter to you has been more fulfilling than that would have been, I think. The past two days have consisted of a lot of being in the car, driving though this lush scenery that looks like the backgrounds from Donkey Kong Country, though I don't think that will mean much. It's nice. Rain forest imposed on glacier country, with quaintness abounding. Franz Joseph Village was cold and the view of the glacier was obscured by this kind of low-lying cloud that hugs around mountain midsections and looks like moustaches. We're flying from Christchurch to Sydney on Wednesday, and it's hard to believe I'll be seeing a whole other country before I'll see you again. I hope, if nothing else, this letter proves that I've seen a lot and been making good use of my time.

Write back. Tell me what you've been up to. Go into great detail. I care more than you know.

And, now that I think about it, don't be surprised if I take up your post-as-open letter trend and put this on the Cereal Box. I don't think I can bare to trudge through all this again, at least not on a keyboard.

All my love,
Drew

Dizzy Creek, Hostel Creak

Just found out how to post my bungy pictures. Please to look.

Not big, I know, but it's all I got so far. Yes, that's my green polo taking the plunge. My green polo! You can see what the bridge I jumped from was like by seeing the AJ Hackett page here.

Dum Daro Dum

I am not dead, contrary to what the level of recent blog activity might indicate. I'm writing this from a tiny, cold place called Franz Joseph Village. Glaciers and all that. We left Queenstown, the self-proclaimed adventure sport capital of the world, yesterday morning, when we were all just a bit sore from bungy jumping and a jet boat outing on a river named "Shotover." Grammatical note: people in New Zealand spell "bungy" however they feel like: "bungee," "bunjee," "bunjy," bunjie," "bungie." Who's even in a position to say they're right?

In three days, I'll be in Syndey.

The only one of us to successfully get photos online is Dina. I suggest that you all visit Dina's Flickr account here. It's not much yet, but it documents (a) me with short hair and (b) what the whole Shotover experience looked like. More to come, I promise.

The Young Americans

I’m currently in a dingy email den in Christchurch, within full view of the very cathedral that gives the city its name. The carillon is playing loudly enough that I feel like I’m at the old office under Storke Tower again, and I can’t tell you how powerful the combination of nostalgia and homesickness can be.

The following is what I wrote in my handy-dandy travel-sized Moleskine journal only hours ago:

Somewhere over New Zealand, leaving the north island and quickly approaching the south. Mid-island, one might say. I might even say it. I’d say it before I’d write it, since I’m not sure if “mid-island” should be hyphenated. (I did hyphenate it, as some sharp-eyed readers have noted, but I’m not really sure if that was the right way to go about it. Like this, as it stands now: “mid-island.” See?) I saw a sign in Waipuk that hyphenated “ice cream.” Now that’s crazy.

Internet access has been infrequent — and when it’s available, it’s been either expensive or the slow, dial-up variety and on a sticky-keyed family computer. Or in some café in some hostel where some lanky Nordic type has been using it to watch silly Flash animations and then leaves the area immediately in front of the computer smelling like a cross between Brut and maple syrup. Anyway, you may note that I haven’t been blogging all that much, especially since I left Auckland five days ago. The good news for you, dear readers, is that they’ve invented a new sort of non-electric bloggery that utilizes a mashed, bleached wood fiber and some sort of non-digital writing implement. And believe me, it works loads better than the waxen cuneiform tablet I’ve been trying to take photos of whenever the writing mood strikes me.

In short, KrisDina and I have completed the first leg of our journey. (With three legs, apparently our journey is the Manx triskelion or one of those dogs that suffers an accident only to bravely hop along on his remaining appendages and consequently make me stifle inappropriate laughter and the desire to touch his stump.) In a short time, we’ll be landing in Christchurch, the largest city on the south island and the most British in the entire country. After spending three nights in Auckland with Cousin Francie, we drove south to Rotorua, the geothermal wondertown whose faint-to-overpowering sulphur smell I found pleasant and familiar. We then drove south through Taupo, the north island’s Lake Tahoesque resort city and into Napier, which is reputed to be the southern hemisphere’s art deco capital. After a night there, we went east to Waipukurau, my dad’s hometown for a few days before returning to the Napier airport.

That’s it so far. We’ve seen everything worth seeing between here and there, but I just don’t feel like delving into the smaller details quite yet. In lieu of them, please accept the following alternate synopses for our trip.

My trip so far as measured by my hair

The morning before I flew out of SFO for Auckland, I asked my mom to cut my
hair. Short. With clippers. Like the kind of way that negated more than nine
months of growing it out and which could have been done six months sooner and
allowed me to escape the stress of windy days, over-shampooing,
under-shampooing, cross-conditioning, trans-conditioning, hat hair and the
nagging thought that having my hair long and all in my face made me look like an
aging hipster trying to grow his hair in an effort to combat my hairline’s growing
fright and dread of my forehead. Post-cut, my hair has grown slightly each day.
Most tests predict that it will continue to do so. I appear no less bald, I’m
glad to say, then the last time I cut my hair like this, which was two summers
ago. (Not a good synopsis, I know.)

My trip so far as measured by potato chips

On the second day in Auckland, Larry took us to the grocery story and I bought a
bag of lamb-and-mint potato chips. Lamb with mint sauce is a popular British
dish, hence the availability of it as a flavor for potato chips. (Following that
logic, one most conclude, then, I suppose, that Americans most commonly enjoy
meals including such dishes as pizza, barbecue, cool ranch, spicy chili Cheeto
and salt.) I first encountered this particular flavoring (flavouring) when I was
in London a while back and I came to enjoy the strangely fruitful marriage of
meaty-umami (uumami) and cooling-refreshing (coouling-refreushing). Everyone
else hated it. In an act of either revenge or competition, KrisDina bought packs
of ham-dijon and Greek-tzatziki, respectively. I found the ham-dijon chips to
taste only like the kind of ham flavoring found in Top Ramen packets, with only
the unnatural yellow color to account for the dijon mustard. The Greek-tzatziki
chips were good enough, but I was irritated by the redundancy of the name of the
flavor. (Again, an act of competition or revenge, depending on how you look at
it.) We thought we had found a uniformly agreeable flavor with the fourth bag,
garlic-feta, but the chips proved brittle and the flavor weak. A devastating
loss. The remaining lamb-and-mint chips, I should add, were eaten by a peacock.

My trip so far, written in a false and surreal manner

Dina, Kristen and I rode a whale to Auckland, which is made out of butter and
lizard scales. We became loaves of bologna that could fly, which was helpful in
escaping the many dragons that live in New Zealand. Trolls traded us rubies for
our eyes, but with the rubies we can see through walls and into your soul — yes,
specifically yours and no one else’s. Then we dined on sea food and rubber
trees, which cried a lot.

My trip so far, as marked my various relatives’ pets

At Francie’s we enjoyed the company of an as-of-yet unnamed Tonkinese kitten.
Its tendencies led me to name it “Nibbles,” though the Russian half of KrisDina
called the cat “Rat Baby” on account of its sleek appearance and short hair.
There was also a scabby tabby named Tiger, of which little to-do was made.
Though Rotorua was without Mackies — and, thus, Mackiepets — we did meet a flock of peacocks in the parking lot of a natural hot springs called “Hell’s Gate.”
Many pictures were taken, and I mentally assigned the name “Miss Queenie Maria
Muffinmush” to the flashiest of the males. Upon entering Waipuk, we made the
acquaintance of Claude, a fourteen-year-old terrier mix belonging to my cousin
Kurt. Claude liked me enough to ride with me on a four-wheeler during a tour of
my uncle’s sheep ranch, but his chronically shaky legs gave out on a sharp
corner and he flew off the bike. Claude seemed okay, if a little dazed, though
he declined to speak to me again for the remainder of my stay in his home. We
spent the following day, yesterday, with my Aunt Jeannie, whose Jack Russell,
Buster, attempted to swallow his tail and momentarily became this perfect
dandruff-ridden canine version of the Oroboros. On the way out of town this
morning, we stopped at my Uncle Doug’s. Pets of note include a Border Collie
puppy named Dot, which I particularly enjoyed since my folks adopted our Border
Collie a good six months past his puppyhood, and a “pet sheep” called Dolly.
Yes, like the cloned sheep or world renown but decidedly not a clone, lest there
be two contenders for the title of “world’s fattest sheep.”

My trip so far, as marked my often-heard music

I listen to my iPod when I can. As I write this now, I’m listening to Guided by Voices' “Everyone Thinks I’m a Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking).” More often, I've been listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and the album by Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins. I’ve also been using the heretofore underutilized “on the go” feature to build a playlist of appropriate songs for my folks that I can burn to CD when I return. As we lack the ability to play the iPods over the car speakers, however, I’ve purchased two roadtrip mixes from gas stations: A ’70s summer mix, as the cover states it, and the “Ultimate Bubblegum Pop Collection.” Just for your edification, the following songs inexplicably appear on both albums: “In the Summertime,” by Mungo Jerry; “Spirit in the Sky,” by Norman Greenbaum; “By the Devil (I Was Tempted),” by Blue Mink; and “Knock Three Times,” by Tony Orlando and Dawn.

You’ve heard all four and you don’t need to hear them again. Believe someone who’s heard them enough to know.

The flight is now descending on the Christchurch airport, and I realize now that I haven’t even related selected which journal passages most deserve to be posted online, which was where I was initially going with this whole entry. Then again, this post is long enough as it is — I’ve been writing the duration of this entire ninety-minute flight — so perhaps any conclusion is a sufficient one.

Rest assured: I’m seeing things and taking pictures and will, shortly or not-so-shortly, relate them in future writings.

[ Ka mate koe i te kai hikareti — Liam E. Tenrental. ]

What They Call Summer Love Is Happening in Spring

After dinner I walked to the end of Rangitoto Avenue, where my dad's Cousin Francie lives in an understatedly nice house that flows around corners and up and down and in ways that the building's outside appearance would lead you to believe were impossible. It's where I'm staying tonight.

I walked in a neighborhood strangely devoid of street lights, with only the glow of happy Auckland living rooms reflected beyond the front yards and to the sidewalk allowing me to differentiate between one house and the next. Though it was warm enough for people to be up and about, the street was deserted and I wondered if the humid last breath of this late summer day had perhaps driven everyone to sleep early. The one clue that anything else was alive in the neighborhood was the noise of crickets, which I noted sound exactly like they do in California. In the daylight, New Zealand affords travelers a different soundtrack altogether, what with a Darwin's rejects chorus of unfamiliar songbirds and abundant cicadas — or at least, what sound like cicadas or what sounds like how I think cicadas ought to sound. But at night, as near as I can tell so far, it's just crickets — New Zealand crickets, sounding exactly like American ones.

I had to remind myself that, for the purposes of my travel itinerary, today didn't count. Day zero. Our twelve-hour flight from San Francisco arrived in Auckland at about 5:15 this morning, and Francie's boyfriend Larry picked KrisDina and me up, a noble act appreciated all the more since the trip had reduced my body to a state not unlike that of a walking corpse that was quickly disintegrating into liquid. (Such a thing doesn't exist, I'm sure, but the comparison is nonetheless apt, believe me.) We slept immediately after getting here and I woke up at 11 a.m., initially not knowing where I was. Cousin Francie's house. In Auckland. New Zealand. On the other side of the world. I could have slept the clock around and I assumed KrisDina would be already dressed and waiting on me to get ready. Jet lag does funny things to your internal clock.

When we three were finally all equally awake, dressed, fed and conscious — and yes, the four states were achieved in that order — Larry took us on a drive through Auckland, a city I don't remember being in before though I know I have. The city is beautiful, and though it's genuinely unique — a special meeting of British colonial and Polynesian melting pot — it reminds me of California. People here move at the relaxed, picture postcard pace they do in Santa Barbara. And the city wraps around the ocean like how I imagine San Diego does. (Like Auckland, I have no real memory of San Diego, but I know I've been there.) Larry even took us to an overlook and former Maori hub called One Tree Hill, which tragically lost the one tree five or six years ago. In the end, he dumped us at the Auckland museum, where we learned only the info we could absorb into tidbit form. (At ten feet tall, the extinct moa, a large flightless bird similar to an ostrich or an emu towered over other New Zealand land dwellers.) We finished the city wandering around the Parnell area before returning back to Francie's for a Kiwi-style barbecue.

And though it isn't much, I'm particularly impressed with what we were able to do on our Day Zero, considering we were working on a minimum of sleep and could easily have spent the day in bed, prolonging our adjustment to New Zealand time. We hadn't planned anything for today, so the very presence of something that I could write about in this post pleases me.

What stands out most, however, is the crickets, which I can still hear, since it's warm enough that all the windows in the house are still open. I find that familiar electric drone of scores of chirping crickets very comforting at a time when I'm stinging from the desire to be with what I miss most. Cousin Francie, a woman I had heretofore known as "Francie the Berry Lady" is friendly and hospitable and wise in that she helped me realize how important this trip may be, in that it's my first chance to see where my dad came from with an adult eye. I'm ready and I'm genuinely excited.

Tomorrow, at least for what the itinerary needs to know, is day one.

End typing. Cue crickets.

She Didn't Know What She Was Saying

I'm in Auckland. I'm also exhausted because an angry little girl on the plane kept yelling "I don't want to be New Zealand." It could have also been "I don't want to Zealand." Not sure. I would have gladly shown her the door, but that's all behind me now.

See you in 39 days, California.

Where Women Glow and Men Plunder

i know it's late and it's for the best, since i won't be able to sleep on the plane anyway. this will be my last entry written in california for six weeks. it occurred to me just today that this trip has the potential to extend beyond a mere vacation and turn into one of those huge deals where a person goes on his own to the place his family comes from and learns something about himself. and that makes me want to gag and cry at the same time. (only, yes, kris-dina will be there too, but i can't pretend they're not, if i chose.) i can't believe how much i'm leaving on hold here in california and i'm pissed at how much i didn't get to do before i left. i guess you will all have to wait to hear my fun stories about the duck pond or how spencer and i veronica marsed our way into a tour of the hollister ranch. maybe i'll come back at those nagging little errands won't matter anymore. maybe i'll appreciate california more. maybe i'll appreciate life more. maybe i'll never watch "lost" again because i'm scared the plane will crash and who cares about claire's stupid baby anyway? and what of it if half of my loyal readership will be traveling with me? and what if i can't bear to be away? and what if i miss the lynx kitten more than i would have ever guessed?

wish me luck.

Variations on a Castle Theme

I'm going to miss home more than I expected, rough and rural and rocky as it may seem.

I Was Talking to Peachy Peach About Kissy Kiss

The next time you see my little pink mouth, expect to notice something special on it: a big fat smile! Things are looking up for your old friend Drew!

As of this morning, I am officially slated to be boarding a plane bound for Auckland, New Zealand on March 4. Somehow, I never thought this trip would ever be more than a vague wish wrapped in longing and hope and tied in a bow of anticipation with a card signed to me from desire. But, with my dad’s help, all this imaginary present has actually materialized into a plane ticket — or at least a PDF file depicting a plane ticket, which I can’t actually hold in my hand but I’m sure will still get me on the flight. (In the meantime, I’m caressing my laptop screen.)

The trip won’t be as long as I had initially envisioned, but I’m okay with that. It’s long enough that I can appreciate the there and then be happy about returning to the here. Trusted associates Kristen and Dina will be accompanying through New Zealand’s north and south island for about two-and-a-half weeks before fly over to Vienna, Australia. It’s funny, I always thought Vienna was in Europe or something, but the confirmation email I just read said we’re flying from Christchurch to Vienna, so I guess Australia has a Vienna too. Also, it’s extra weird that the flight would be on Lufthansa, because I don’t even know what that word means, but I’m sure my dad figured everything out okay.

Anyway, I think I’m just not going think too much about this whole trip, now that the hard part is over. I’ll just sit back at let the departure date creep up on me and assume everything will be perfect. Because it will! When I’m this happy, I just know that nothing could go wrong!

Auckland, New Zealand and Vienna, Australia better watch out for me!