Dodgeball, Live At Long Bay Beach

Here is a photo from the day trip Yves and I went on to blowy Long Bay Beach with the Korean Salvation Army today. The game being played is dodgeball, although I think the picture looks more like a spot-the-ball competition. There was also plenty of free food. I got interviewed for everyone's benefit, and asked if I could perform a song, which meant a third performance of my usual.


Photos: thanks to Aram.

Ice-Hockey

This afternoon became one of those sitcommy days when JP, Amy, and a big crowd of us from ACB all coached across Auckland to play ice-hockey.

And yes, for free!

We dressed-up in all the gear, spent about an hour falling about on the ice, and occasionally even managed to whack a put away.

I'm disappointed in myself though – I grew-up ice-skating. Not brilliantly, but enough to get by. I even took it as a PE option at school, but now I've so lost it.

Sat in on a radio show at NewstalkZB tonight to see where everything is. Also met a bishop!

Read Me

Jamie at church got me a gig helping to teach illiterate kiwi kids to read and write using phonetics for a week.

It's not really my kinda thing, but in trying to let my life be guided by God, at the moment I'm just accepting every opportunity that comes my way.

Imagine my surprise then when a few days before, Jamie told me that I was actually required to spend the whole week videoing it!

(I love film-making!)

Thus, at 11:15am last Saturday morning, I climbed off the coach at the AD Focus car park on the corner of Kapia and Totara Streets in Dargaville, and realised that my lift the rest of the way to camp was nowhere to be seen.

It turned out that the lady in the local photo shop actually knew the organiser, so after I'd made some calls on their phone, a car drew up and I met my latest new friend Mark, who was a fellow Weird Al fan.

Mark and I had both arrived a day early to help set things up, but first we went shopping.

More and more I've been relying on God to provide for me lately back at the hostel, but out here I realised that I needed more faith, which I just didn't have. So I got out my money, and we stocked up on provisions.

When we arrived at the deserted camp in Arapohue (pronounced "A-rap-a-hue-ee"), we went into the kitchen and found duplicates of everything that we had bought already there waiting for us. Except the junk food.


That first day was bleak. It was cold. We were in the middle of nowhere, painting signs and moving pig-troughs in the rain. The main hall was strewn with twigs. I stayed in a wooden hut. Outside my window was a field containing two pigs and three sheep.



I wasn't looking forward to this.

However once the kids and other leaders arrived the following day, the empty desolate place was imbued with a real warmth.

As well as teaching them, we also took the kids to see some sheep-shearing, up a mountain and through the woods, or "bush" as they call it here.

And I got to wrangle the camcorder at it all.


Each evening, a leader had to stand up and present some piece of entertainment to everyone, even if it was just talking about themselves. So on the evening of my turn, I talked a bit about the travelling I've done, and recited a song I know, which pretty well lists every country in the world. This went down quite well, so of course on the last day – when all their parents were present - they insisted I do it again. Unprepared for this second stunt of course I forgot verse 3 and sang verse 2 twice, not that I think any of them really noticed.

By the end of the week, I found that I myself had had a real holiday.

And I almost got to achieve my ambition to sleep a night in a corrugated iron box...


What it's all about – kid reads book!


Even all the leaders got given certificates!

For He Is An Englishman

1. NZ is hot and sunny.

2. Emptied someone's trash the other morning and found an unusued Super 8 movie film mailer envelope! (I use these!)

3. HMS Pinafore has just transferred to the Civic Theatre one minute's walk from where I am staying. It's the same theatre where I saw those Buster Keaton flicks with the live orchestra recently. Guttingly, the UK tour's Colin Baker is no longer in the production, otherwise he might have, he just might have (i.e. never in a million years) been staying here, and I'd have got to take out his trash each morning. Instead his role has been taken by some newcomer calling himself Timothy West. I dunno – Colin always gets replaced! :)


I'm personally hoping that, half way through, Timothy West might turn to the audience and remark "Where does that music come from?"

Sign On Noticeboard In Hostel's Reception

"LONELY PLANETS FOR SALE"

George W Bush And The Aliens

Had an exciting dream this morning.

President George W Bush was on the space shuttle, being watched 24/7 by a reality TV show. On the show, Bush disobeys instructions, and so is ordered to do sit-ups. At this point the shuttle encounters a group of pretzel-bodied aliens, whose race is dying-out due to having depleted their home-planet's reserves of bread. Bush therefore promises them 5 billion pounds of bread in humanitarian aid.

When I woke up, not one single newspaper had covered this story.

George W Bush describes his aliens, this morning.

Walking With Gannets

Last September Tiger, Kan, Wei and myself all went along to one of the Salvation Army's Korean-language church services.

Well, Kan is now gone, but some of us from the hostel are still attending.

And it's a bizarre experience. Listening to apparent gibberish for so long, including standing-up as though you're joining-in with the crowd and singing.

Afterwards they serve a free Korean meal, and after that there are sometimes games. That's even more bizarre. Standing watching all these people tear up and down the hall, with no idea why they're doing what they're doing with those large props, and also knowing that in moment, the team will be depending upon you to do likewise, with no idea even what exactly it is that you're supposed to be trying to do!

It's full of surprises, in a good way.

Today, after the service, I learnt that everyone was to be driven half-an-hour outside of town to a farm for a BBQ.


A lovely afternoon spent taking photos of people, many of whom I didn't really know, and getting a chance to remind myself of my quad-bike riding skills! ;)




Afterwards we went for a walk down at the black-sanded Takapu Refuge.


Now this is the sort of scenery New Zealand is known for.


Gannets. Well-organised. Spot the egg.

NZ Mould

Given NZ's size, it's extraordinary that Steve Goble was allowed back on the radiowaves again tonight.

Hope City FM plays "good-time Christian rock'n'roll", and is inspiringly broadcast from the station-manager's house in New Windsor. In a Wayne Campbell-esque way, everything is actually broadcast from a studio under the staircase. I was supposed to be presenting the first edition of Goble On Friday in the 7-10pm slot, however I had to wait for the guy to get home from work to let me in, so it became the 10-10:30 slot. Most of the rest of the schedule is covered by 2x 10-hour DVDs which put in alot of time.

On the bus going there, inevitably my mind drifted back to the good old days of Radio Cracker. What had happened to the rest of my team? Why weren't they here with me?


Well, Brian the weatherman couldn't make it due to bad weather. And Elvis didn't record anything after 1977. Tim Harrison was represented in the studio by his microphone - the same one we'd broadcast the very first show on way back in my day on Dec 1st 1991.

And as for that no-good coffee-guzzling lackie Hosko, I never even asked. For crying out loud, I'd swear that his coffee was just everyone else's dregs collected up and slopped into my mug. It's almost as if he was protesting about his working hours...

Still, at least Gary loyally flew over to join me for it. Really – he even took this photo:

All the same, as it was Guy Fawkes night, which, yes, they do celebrate here, I couldn't help listening in my head to how it all perhaps should have been...

Steve: "And it's time to go over to that action man among action men, Richard, who even as I speak is about to set the Auckland Firework Display in motion."

Richard: "Hi Steve! Well I'm just about to light the long fuse now, but in this light I'm having trouble distinguishing between the fuse and the microphone lead. Oh I know, I'll just light both of them..."

(Actual clip of tonight's show here)

Only When I Bath

When you run a bath, you want it to be hot.

Everyone loves a hot bath. That's why the hot tap was invented. Anything less, just doesn't satisfy us.

Equally, people hate a cold bath. You never hear anyone say "Boy, I've had such a day – as soon as I get home, I'm gonna run myself a nice, big, cooooold bath!"

They're two extremes between which, we as a society, have left no room at all to compromise. If some crazy fool comes between you and your freshly-run hot bath, what's the one thing that you always say to them? "I don't have time for this – my bath's getting cold!"

On New Zealand's South Island, they make an even bigger deal out of this, charging everybody to come and take their baths in their fresh HOT springs – outdoors! In public! Just in case you hadn't put those two facts together in your head yet, that means you're paying good money to take off your clothes outdoors... with complete strangers!

The rest of the world have cottoned-onto this madness too. Slovakia, Canada, you name it – wherever there's hot water, there's someone charging a lotta dirty people a lotta dirty money for it.

After all, only a fool would set up businesses hoping to charge people for taking baths in anything less.

Garfield – The Movie

I saw Garfield - the Movie on Saturday.

It was quite nice. Apart from Nermal not being the cute one, it was quite faithful. And totally unexciting, as one would expect of Garfield. Strangely, Garfield was the only one who looked like himself though - all the other animals were animated to look like real animals. And there wasn't a single line of swearing anywhere.

Having missed the very start of the film, a coupla days later I found they had the whole movie on hard drive at the internet café I was using, so I caught-up on what I'd missed there. Usually I disapprove of this sort of thing, but the thing is, I had actually paid full-price for my ticket, and I just couldn't weasel out of that reasoning.

(Review of Garfield 2 here)