Days 6 and 7

Travelogue Days 6 and 7

Days 6 and 7 were more pretty easy days. Unfortunately, Libby contracted some travel funk, which set in around our third day of travel and still hadn’t let up by the seventh day. In fact, both the sixth and seventh days she was pretty wiped out by it. Molly and JF came into the first flight feeling similarly, and JF was still suffering slightly from it even by the seventh day also, so it’s possible that Libby got it from them. However, since we spent nearly a day aboard a plane with around 200 people with god-knows what ailments, it’s impossible to specifically lay the blame on Canada. This hasn’t prevented us from trying, though. She also passed the funk on to Karen, and since she was our events coordinator, this considerably slowed down the pace of the trip, though I don’t think anyone complained about it one bit.

The upside is that I’ve finally, more or less, adjusted to the time-zone. I’ve been able to stay up until midnight and, remarkably, on Day 7 I slept until 9:30 in the morning. Everyone will also be glad to hear that my bowels seem to be functioning normally again. I have conquered the bathroom a few times now and put a few into the Win column. This makes me feel like quite the accomplished traveler, believe me.

On Day 6 we managed to get out into the city for the afternoon and see a few of the sites available, such as they are.

The first was Queens Park, which is a quite impressively large public park in the middle of town. It is, by American standards, a fantastic park. It is spacious and verdant and filled with public activities including new park equipment for children that is so spectacularly dangerous it would never have proceeded beyond the conceptual stages in the States. Obviously, pointless litigation has not reached the desperate level it has back home, and hopefully it never will here. But, lawyers being lawyers, and people being people, I doubt that will be the case.

Sara works at Queens Park taking care of the winter gardens, which are located in an impressive greenhouse. This greenhouse had several exotic plants and I was able to see my first living Venus Flytrap (not the one from WKRP, though, which would have been equally memorable to me). There were also many other wonderful and exotic plants that I’m sure I should have cared about. Unfortunately, I am not a plant person and they almost completely failed to make much of an impression on me beyond the fact that a few were fabulously ugly.

Also in the park there is an aviary (pronounced “a-vir-ee” here) filled with many colorful local birds: parrots, pootafoots, cocktrices, dongilmongrenals, whooping ducks and many other strangely named (as all things are down here) birds. It would appear that I’m also not entirely interested in birds either. As was stated in an earlier days’ log, though, New Zealand has a variety of birds that should be incredibly interesting to the right type of person, and many of the ones that are still alive were available for viewing in the aviary. I, however, found myself interested only in what the birds might taste like after a nice rub and an hour of slow cooking on the grill, but since many of the birds were endangered, I sadly won’t get the chance to find out. Damn the European settlers for not considering what their ancestors might want to taste.

After the park we visited the Southland Museum, which is adjacent to the park. The Southland Museum is a curious collection of uncommon things. Have you ever looked at an object and wondered: “What is that? Where did it come from? How did it get here?” Have you seen something and simply thought, “Wow! That’s Amazing!”

Yeah, OK, I can’t continue on with that. It’s verbatim from the flyer I picked up while we were there because I couldn’t remember anything of particular interest being in the museum. It had a gift shop that had a nice selection of jade jewelry—at least Libby thought so because she picked up a few more pieces there. I didn’t do much more than scan over the things in it. The museum itself, by small town standards, was quite large, pretty well done and it had a few interesting exhibits. I’ve always loved the idea of museums—places where old things are stored so people can see what things used to be like. History, culture and how society works are all very interesting ideas and lord knows people need to study more of it. In application, though, I find myself walking around from one exhibit to the next, reading about one out of twenty randomly selected cards about how the adz was an essential tool or how some people were miraculously saved from freezing to death in Antarctica or some other supposedly non-fictional land and I find myself, sadly, unengaged. This, it should be noted, is not the fault of the museum, it is my own. I have been equally unengaged in the Smithsonian. It is a fault of my character, I am sure, and I do not wish to detract from the enjoyment that people who love museums would receive from visiting this establishment. Just don’t bring me along, please.

This museum did have a living display of tuataras, a strange lizard that I’ve been told has a third eye when it is young. This eye, which undoubtedly sees either into the future or straight into the souls of other tuataras, is eventually covered up by skin. I guess this happens when the tuatara is old enough to not care what the future brings or it has no further need of reading souls. Nature is truly a mystery. To me at least it is.

After the museum we walked over to the Invercargill Brewery, because we hadn’t learned enough about how local beer is made yet. Actually, we were hoping for some free handouts, and we weren’t disappointed one bit. The owner, whose name escapes me, was a very friendly bloke who welcomed us into the brewery for a “tour” roughly an hour before closing time. The tour consisted of us walking in from the street into a surprisingly not large room where the brewing took place. He pulled out three, liter bottles of beer (they make four different beers but their run of one of them had run out) and poured us a cup each. Then he went back and grabbed some more liter bottles because what he had brought would have only given us a taste, and he wanted to supply us with a solid half-glass of each sample.

We spent the hour in there tasting all of his beers and hearing how he made and marketed his beer. We also learned how he came to set up his brewery, which started outside of town, and how he made the move into town. It was, to me at least, much more interesting and applicable than the museum tour had been. Interesting because, even though I don’t have much of a personal taste for beer, I appreciate much of what alcohol has to offer and applicable because that word sounded good when I wrote it in there a little while ago (it’s not like I have any ambitions of opening my own brewery, so where would I “apply” what I found out?). After the tasting we went into his small sales room and bought $100 or so worth of beer, so his time wasn’t a complete waste. I also experienced, for the first time, the refillable beer container. Liquor stores also have this feature, where people can bring their own containers—usually two liter bottles—and fill them with beer straight from a tap instead of paying extra for bottles or cans. It’s really quite an ingenious idea, if the beer can be drunk before it goes flat (which would probably be fairly quick).

It was during Day 6 that we began to make fun of some of the New Zealand pronunciations of words. Well, we had made fun of them before, but from this point on we had Ami to make fun of individually. The language might take a little getting used to by American travelers, but I’ve really not had much trouble at all except when hearing people talk on the phone. This, I doubt, has anything to do with the people talking on the phone and everything to do with the fact that I am a bit deaf and have difficulty hearing even American English speakers on the phone many times. I do watch a fair amount of British television, which I think makes my ears a bit more used to deciphering accents than many people, but I’ve really had no problems understanding what people are saying otherwise. And compared to British, Australian or Irish English, New Zealand English doesn’t seem to have as many strange words and phrases that need to be deciphered (it also helped that we had expat residents along with us if problems arose, I suppose).

Within a day or two I discovered that my name in New Zealand is Pet. Actually, it’s a bit more like “Peyt,” with the “y” acting more like a diphthong (I think that’s right—it’s been ages since I took a linguistics course and I’m sure Molly will correct me if that’s not a proper usage of the word). JF usually comes out “Jiyff,” which I’m betting sounds exactly like the pronunciation for Jeff. Usually when we watch the morning news I sit there repeating amusing words back, trying poorly to imitate the accent. I am not, however, much of an actor or voice impersonator, so I’m sure plenty of fun could be had at the expense of my attempts.

I have also come to personally love the way almost any concept can be slanged with the addition of the simple word “as.” This is a rather common phenomenon and even made an appearance in an advertisement circular while we were here. For instance, say it is very hot outside. The clever observer could say, “It’s hot as.” Naturally, those unfamiliar with the slang would be inclined to ask “Hot as what, milady?” (because people unfamiliar with the slang are, naturally, butlers). This answer, however, is entirely up to the listener to supply. It can be as hot as whatever. The circular I kept was for a camera store and it says on the front page (Fat As Deals at Skinny As Prices). We have become quite enamored with the concept of As-ing anything we could over the past few days. Jamie, I think, has come up with the most colorful so far. When describing food, he said it was “yum as.” I am fully planning to take this habit back to the States. I might also allow my students to use slang in their papers, but only if they As them up, just to try and spread it around as much as possible. So, in a few years, if people in North America start using this often, I am the one responsible for it, for better or worse.

Mostly, though, I have been trying to get Ami, who is a native Kiwi, to say comical sentences including the word “deck.”

“Ami,” I would say conversationally, “say ‘I like to jump up and down on decks of many sizes.” To this the entire family laughs because we are, apparently, a group of perverts who like to laugh at the expense of others. I always knew that I, personally, was, but I am always surprised when others have my same sense of humor. And the humor lies entirely in how they say the word “deck.” It usually sounds like “dick.” “Ami, say ‘I like to erect decks in people’s backyards.’” “Ami, say ‘I love to bounce around on big black decks.’” And on and on. I am really quite hilarious. So far, she has completely failed to participate in my juvenile attempts to make fun of her language, and I can hardly blame her. It is truly a remarkable aspect of the American persona that I, a foreigner, could come to another country and make fun of their language instead of them making fun of my language. But things are as they are, I suppose. And it is funny, I don’t care what country you are from.

Later that night and, embarrassingly, through much of Day 7, I did something that I honestly never thought I would spend a significant amount of time doing: playing a role playing card game. Pete is an avid collector and player of Magic: The Gathering cards, and late on the fifth day he talked JF into playing with him. JF played a game and then spent several hours in a little world with Petie creating a good deck for himself. The rest of us spent our time drinking wine and laughing at how clever we consistently were—which, in fact, we often were, this family could make a fairly successful reality program, I think. Eventually, we four international travelers went back to our hotel. Libby and JF were still not feeling well, so it wasn’t very late at all.

The 6^th day I found myself sitting around the house all morning and early afternoon waiting for the John and Sara contingent of the family to show up for the day’s activities (Jamie and Ami were staying with them). The night before, they had stuck around, drinking, until fairly late and then went home to carry the party on. They were supposed to show up around 9:00 to take me out for pie for breakfast.

Ah, pie. The New Zealand pie, as it is in many English speaking, non-American countries, is a staple of the food industry. Here use pastry bread (or dough, whichever it would be) filled with various concoctions that usually follow the gravy, meat and cheese line. There are other, non-meat and more creative options available, but the traditional meat dinner in a bread roll pie was what I was most interested in trying. Being a farmboy, I like my meat and potatoes, and my favorite dinner foods tend to fall into these categories. Seasoned only with salt and maybe a little pepper, covering the full spectrum of browns available and gravy-y is exactly how I like my foods whenever I have the choice, and the New Zealand pie falls exactly into this category.

So I was up and over to the Loves’ house (it’s only about three blocks away from our hotel, so we’re able to walk there and stumble back drunk, or at least tipsy, as we usually are, without needing a vehicle) by 8:45. Since I hate talking on the phone in America, I was trying to avoid using the one here in New Zealand entirely (considering it, like not having to drive for two weeks, a luxury of being on vacation—or holiday as they call it here), so I mentally refused to call over to John and Sara’s house to find out what was going on when they still hadn’t shown up by 10:00. With time to kill, I let Pete and JF talk me into a game of Magic.

Pete set me up with a deck that, I’m convinced, he knew sucked hard. Using his carefully constructed deck, he systematically destroyed and embarrassed me. JF lasted a little longer the first game but eventually suffered the same fate. It was short and, for Pete at least, sweet. We played another game with a slightly different strategy. Well, JF had a strategy, I suppose, but mostly I just died quickly again. He, however, was able to use my distraction to beat Peter, which made him “bored” with the game and we quit (this, we found out, was always Pete’s response to losing pretty much any game—he would be “bored” with it and quit, but, man, if he’s winning, he could play all day).

Later that evening, after the guys’ activities fell through (Libby and Molly went back to the hotel to sleep and Ami and Sara went out clubbing—and, to make our nerdiness obvious and in the name of complete disclosure, I suppose I should admit that we were planning to go LAN gaming, which involves all of us sitting around computers in a lounge playing the same game together, but the lounge was booked for the night so we had to go back to the house and occupy ourselves), the five of us—Pete, John, JF, Jamie and myself—decided to play a game of Magic.

After spending a little time getting a deck together for John, Jamie and myself (I wasn’t going to play with the stacked-against-me deck Pete set me up with before—he called it his “what were you thinking?” deck, since that’s what someone would ask the person using it after that person was completely and embarrassingly destroyed, and somehow he thought this was a fair deck to give me as someone just learning the game), we broke up into teams to help Jamie, John and myself who had almost no experience playing the game. We decided it would be fair for JF and Pete to be on a team. Even though they both knew what they were doing, we figured numbers would give us an advantage.

This was entirely not the case as they soundly whooped us twice.

This was all well and good. We had nothing better to do that night and Pete loved the fact that he was able to play his favorite game with his family (he especially loved the beating us badly part and, being the youngest, I suppose I can see why). Had we left it at that, it would not have been something to make us the potential target of ridicule—from people who have no experience with these types of games or who did not grow up mildly addicted to role playing games as I was (and still, I suppose, am in many ways since those are mostly the video games that I purchase to play at home).

On Day 7, we were really at a loss for anything interesting to do. I did finally get to start my day with a pie, so that made me happy (it was everything I hoped it would be and more—steak and cheese with plenty of brown gravy oozing out the sides with every bite, it was like a brown, greasy jelly donut and wonderful). We had to stay near the house to receive a package that was being delivered for the big party we were having the following night (salmon that we had shipped from the salmon farm covered earlier, which we knew couldn’t sit unattended on a porch while we were out of town for the whole day), so we had to plan our day accordingly. Since Karen was starting to feel ill herself, we decided that another day of doing mostly nothing sounded just fine. “Mostly nothing,” in this family at least, means shopping. Those who decided this sounded like a splendid idea (obviously not including me), thought hitting the second hand stores, here called Op Shops (which stands for Opportunity Shops), would be fun. So everyone but John, Darrell and me headed out around 10:00 and stayed out for three or four hours.

Again, this left us, John and I, with nothing to do, so we pulled out all of Pete’s Magic cards, convinced that we could come up with a deck and strategy that would allow us to beat him and JF, finally. I should be embarrassed to admit that John and I sat at the table for the entire time they were gone sorting through and reading cards, trying to figure out what would work best against them. Of course we were already at a disadvantage because both Pete and JF had already gone through all of the decks picking out the best cards, but we figured we could make up for that with sheer numbers again.

After three hours of deck creation (we kindly fixed Jamie’s deck too, even though he was so lame as to run off to shop with the girls instead of staying behind to play with cards) everyone came back and it was established that the boys had a score to settle in the kitchen. A “No Girls Allowed” sign was put up on the door to complete the ambience (and which was totally ignored) and we set about our business.

Eventually, the girls decided to go shoe shopping since we were doing stereotypical boy things in the kitchen, which was great because it gave us a few hours of uninterrupted time. We used that time to, once again, get trounced by Peter and JF. We put up a better fight, though, and finally decided to separate the teams differently. JF and Pete would have to be on different teams, and, since Pete had the best deck, he would get one of us on his team. This, unfortunately, didn’t work out so well for Pete. Without JF there to tip the scales in their favor, Pete and his partner (remember, John, James and I all still sucked at this game, so we were more cannon fodder or, at the very least, shackles than anything else) lost twice. After the first time, Petie was bored with playing, but we forced him to play another game. By the end of the second game, he had pulled out his handheld Nintendo and started playing it before he was even dead, so we called it a day.

Nothing much of note happened the rest of the day. We made another attempt at the LAN gaming, to cap off our already thorough nerd-fest, but quickly tired of it because the people who worked there kept jumping into whatever games we were playing and kicking our butts. Lame as.

All in all, it was a great day. I would say it was like reliving my childhood but, sadly I suppose, I have never left my childhood that far behind, so I only need to slow down slightly for it to catch up again.