Setting up shop in Auckland

Holy cow its been a long time since I’ve updated this! Sorry, but the past month and a half have been incredibly busy, and each time I sit down to write up a post I don’t know where to begin, there is so much to cover. I have added a few goodies though. On the right there is a "Where am I now" link with a google map of where I've been so far on this trip, and a close up of where we are living and working at the moment.

Alright, so lets pick up after new years then. On Jan 3rd me and Terra walked over to the Auckland Zoo which was just a few kms away from our place in Morningside. One thing we forgot to check before we left was the weather… it started pouring rain right when we got there. It actually ended up making the zoo experience that much better. Most people left so we pretty much had the whole place to goof around. We happened to get there right as they were showing one of their Kiwi birds. The zoo only had 3 kiwi’s which I thought was strange, since we’re in kiwi land…

After the kiwi we saw the zoo regulars; seals, monkeys, giraffes, big cats and birds. The Giraffe enclosure was really cool, there was a walkway all the way around it about 20 feet off the ground, so you were face to face with a giraffe if he came close enough. It also seemed to be feeding time for most of the animals too. We saw a lion munching on a huge slab of meat only a few feet from the glass which was pretty cool. One of our favorites was the Meer cats. There are tunnels running under the display and you could pop your head up in different spots and get a closer look. I’m pretty sure the tunnels were meant for kids to crawl though, cause they were frickin tiny. Terra is about the size of a small kid anyway and I wasn’t going to miss out haha. So we crawled around these tunnels with all the other kids (there werent any adults in there for some reason).

After getting our fill of animals we made our way home through Western Springs park, which was really beautiful and full of all kinds of birds! Terra chased a couple of strange birds that were making a racket into this bush and as soon as she turned around (laughing at the scared birds) two of these birds shot out of the bush and chased her away, and I got it all on video! Haha hilarious. I got those birds back though...We came to an open spot where hundreds of birds were chillin out. I couldnt resist it, I charged into the crowd of birds screaming and flapping my arms so that they all took off in all directions, well the small ones did anyway. The big swans held their ground, so I kept my distance from them haha.

The next day our flat mate Jason offered us his car for the day as long as we picked up Aaron (other flat mate) from the airport that evening. It was the first time we had wheels in NZ so we took off to Piha beach. Its a black volcanic sand beach about 40mins west of Auckland. On the ride out there I was just a little nervous... the road was pretty fast and narrow with lots of turns through the hills on the wrong side of the road in my roomies nice car. Once we finally made it to the other side of the hill we suddenly came upon the coast and could look down on the beach. It was such an amazing view! Once we got to the beach the waves were huge and crashing hard. This is one of the most dangerous beaches in NZ, they even film a show called Piha Rescue and could see the camera guys running around with the life guards pulling people out who got too close to the rocks. We chilled out on the beach working on our tans and then running into the waves to cool off for a few hours. It was a beautiful day, and it was really nice to get out of the city and see a bit more of the country.

A few days after the beach trip I finally heard back from a recruitment agency and had an interview set up with them. I went in and was grilled for about 30mins. I think it went pretty well, by the end of it we were showing each other pictures of our dogs haha. The next day I heard back and they had set up an interview for a tech support position at Hewlett Packard! That interview went pretty good too (no dog pictures though). I nailed all the technical questions they threw at me and a few days later I was offered a 1 year contract with them starting Jan 27th! The office is right in the harbor and when I look out the window I can see the water and massive yachts parked in the docks. I was also pretty excited to finally get a paycheck again, watching my bank account shrink for 3 months was getting a bit depressing lol.

So now that I had a job lined up Terra decided to start applying for jobs too (with a little persuasion). She dropped about 4 resume’s at some pubs that afternoon in the harbor, and heard back from one about 30mins later. They wanted an interview that day! It went pretty well for her too, because she got the job! We both ended up getting jobs on the very same day haha. She is working at a pub called ‘Degree‘. It's a few blocks away from my office and right in the harbor. Not too bad eh! One day and we both have jobs!

Next thing to sort out was a place to live. The place we were staying at in Morningside was just temporary over Xmas. Plus it was a little ways out of the city, and we were getting really sick of always having to catch a bus or train any time we wanted to go into the city, then worry about getting home after a night out with friends. We checked out about 5 different places and most were the size of a shoe box with a tiny bed inside and a tad on the scummy side. For over a week this is all we could find that was in our budget… Then the same night Terra started her first day at work I came across a place online that was close to both our jobs in Freemans bay and in our budget. Finally something promising! We walked over after Terra finished up work and we were blown away! The place was huge compared to everything else we had come across. We were given a quick tour and then told we had to wait 4 days to find out if we could get the place or not. We didn’t want to get our hopes up too much, but those were the longest 4 days ever. Finally Thursday rolled around and we heard from the guy that we could move in on Tuesday Jan 20th!! I was jumping up and down and running around like a little kid who just found out he was going to Disneyland. Finally we had a permanent place to live and it wasn’t a shoe box!

Now that all the important bits were sorted it was time to party! On Jan 16th we went to a concert called the Big Day Out. Its a yearly gig held at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland. It’s a huge showground that had 8 different stages scattered all around the grounds and about 30 bands playing throughout the day. Each stage had different kinds of music playing from hip hop, rock, jazz, and dance. We got there around 2pm and its was nuts, there were about 30,000 people there who came from all over NZ. Some of the bigger names playing were Neil Diamond, The Prodigy, sneaky sound system and Serj Tankian. There were a few others that put on an awesome show, including some local NZ bands. The craziest thing that happened though was running into Steve and Toni! They were the kiwi family that I lived with in Sydney in 2007! They live in Christchurch now (on the south island in NZ) and I had no idea that they were going to be there. They happened to be sitting in a row of seats right behind us at one of the 8 stages there. Completely random! We talked for a few minutes and arranged to meet up for coffee the next day. We ended up getting out of there around midnight and unfortunately the only busses running from there were going into the city. We had to take a cab home and it cost us about $40. One last waste of money before we moved into the city.

The next day we met up with Steve, Toni, and their 5 year old daughter Charlie, who was a little shy with me at first, but after 10mins she was back to her rambunctious self again. It was awesome to be able to catch up with them again and talked about meeting up again when we get to the south Island. By the end of our visit Charlie was wearing my flip flops, so I put hers on(she's 5..) then she wanted to racie each other up and down the side walk. It was a really good laugh, but after a few races it was time to go. Hopefully we can catch up with them again soon.

On Tuesday we packed up all our stuff at the place in Morningside, and took a quick video tour of the place so we could remember it. We found this huge black spider just before we started the video and thought it was dead. During our little video shoot we showed it on camera only to have it start moving! Scrared the crap out of both of us, and its all on video too... haha. Later that morning I had to go into the city to sign the contract with HP, and while I was there they wanted to know if I could start at 8am the next day! It was a week earlier than I had planned, and only had one good shirt and one pair of pants that I could wear to work. Tuesday was a bit of a mad rush. I had to find some work clothes, move out of the old place and into the new place, buy sheets for the new bed, and also get my phone fixed (the screen quit working) and only a few hours to do it. Way more stress than I wanted the day before starting a new job. We managed to get everything done, and even got my cell fixed and back in my hands the same day for cheap cheap.

The first 3 days of work were pretty laid back just learning the ropes, and a good way to ease back into working life again. On Friday a buddy of mine from work in Saskatoon - Jeff and his wife Annalyn, had just finished touring NZ for the past 3 weeks arrived in Auckland. We were hoping to meet up with them on their trip and travel with them, but we both ended up getting jobs a bit sooner than planned. We showed them the harbor, where we worked and a tour of our new place, then went out for dinner in Ponsonby just down the street from our place. It was good to catch up and hear stories about their trip.

To help the ease back into work I was in need of a getaway haha. On Saturday (Jan 24th) we went to Piha Beach again with two of our new roommates – Cornelius (german) and Jeremy (kiwi). We checked out a few different spots this time. The waves again were huge and we had a blast swimming and getting thrown around in the waves. Just as we were coming out of the water we noticed the lifeguards in a panic and pulling a young guy out of the water. His body was completely limp and they started doing CPR on him right on the beach. I’ve never seen someone get their chest pumped in real life before, and they were working on him for a good 20mins before the ambulance showed up. I think the guy was ok, we saw him moving his arms as they drove away… for a few meters anyway… but ambulance got stuck in the sand and had to get pushed out… nice. After seeing this go down, we were done with the swimming for the day. So Cornelius took us off the main beach and showed us a few trails he found in the hills along the coast. It was a bit of a hike but the views of the coast were breathtaking! To finish off the day we got home had a big bbq with our new flat mates.

That same weekend happened to be a long weekend, so we went to another beach on Monday called Bethells beach. It’s on the west coast like Piha, only a bit further north. Again the scenery here was amazing. the beach was huge, and the black sand seemed to go on for ages. We found a good spot on the north end and tossed around the football for a bit before we went swimming. The waves were massive again and we spent quite a bit of time getting tossed around in them. After we had enough of the beach we did a little bit of exploring again. A local we ran into told us about a lake up this stream that was running into the ocean. We followed the stream to these huge sand dunes, the first edge of the dune was about 25 meters high and it ran for about a kilometer to this lake. Me and Jeremy tried to do some sand boarding on some cardboard that we found, but it didn't work so well. After we trekked along the hot sand for 30mins we reached the lake and did some cannon balls to cool off. It was actually really warm! about 25 degrees or so. We chilled out there until the sun started to hide behind the hills and the sand finally cooled off a bit.

So that was life in January. It was a pretty hectic month and it was awesome how many things fell into place perfectly so quickly. I’m going to end it here and get this posted because there is way too much to cover for two months, and its taken me a week to find time just to update this! But don’t worry, I’ll get Feb up asap!

Bye for now!