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)

Despite unemployment

Goble still does all the work.

Yes. Thanks, Mister.

Until I was 4, we lived above our shop in Ruislip. I used to look out of our first floor window and down at Ruislip Manor High Street. Across the road there was this ice cream window, and sometimes I would see people buying and eating a double-cornet. But I never got to have one of these.

When I was 6, after we'd moved house to a residential neighbourhood across London, the ice cream van used to come down my road and park right outside my house. Father used to give me 5p pocket money a week, so when ice creams went up to 6p, so did my pocket money.

There was this one time when I wanted a 99 - the ice cream with a Flake stuck in it - but I couldn't remember what the brown chocolate thing was called. So I told the ice cream man that I wanted one with "some of that brown stuff in it." He gave me an ice cream with brown sauce or something squirted all over it. It wasn't what I wanted, but I took it and ate it anyway. What I'd really wanted was a Flake.

Today I stood outside Mr Hippy's van (at half-past midnight). I watched as he took a double-cornet, filled both halves with ice-cream and stuck a 99 Flake in each one before kindly handing it down through the open window to me. "There," he said, "is that what you wanted?"

The Girl With Kaleidoscope Pizzas

I have a lovely friend who I call Pizza Girl.

I call her Pizza Girl because she works at Pizza Haven around the corner from the hostel, and is always bringing free pizzas back with her after her shift. She gets these when people phone-in an order, but then never show up to collect it.

It occurred to me that, hypothetically, one of us could ring up an hour before the end of her shift, place a bogus order, not collect it, and then an hour later she could bring us home our free custom-made pizzas, but obviously I don't know of anyone who could ever even conceive of cheating the system that way.

Tonight, I was waiting outside the hostel for a lift from Mr Hippy, (as I shall now call him) when Pizza Girl turned the corner with a whole tower of pizzas! She's a lovely girl – cute, pretty, fun - but I guess I really like her for her pizzas.

She gave me three of them, and then, just when things couldn't get any better, Mr Hippy showed up in his ice cream van.

He drove me, with Pizza Girl's pizzas, to New Windsor to meet his friend Patrick.

Y'see Patrick runs a Christian music radio station from his house, and I was keen to get on the air again. The pizzas were a handy gift to take with me, until I learnt that Patrick was a vegan. Whoops.

Nonetheless a great time was had by all present, and Mr Hippy even opened-up his ice cream van for business for us all!

Free pizzas, free ice creams, and free radio – does my life get any better than this?

Getting Whipped

Trev, as mentioned elsewhere, drives an ice-cream van. When he bought it, it was a bright shining MR WHIPPY van. He got it's W.O.F. (M.O.T.) approved, and for 6 months successfully sold ice creams from it to all the kids around the suburbs of Auckland. Then the evil accountants at MR WHIPPY got wind of what he was doing, and determined to put a stop to him. They told him that MR WHIPPY was extremely displeased at his name being used without his permission, and insisted that Trev stop. Trev was outraged, incensed even. But when all was said and done, Mr Whippy was after all right. And so it was that, after much prayer and soul-searching, Trev reluctantly got out his paint-stripper, went to his ice-cream van, and scratched-off the letter 'W'.

Church camp

It was a cunning bit of misdirection.

I was to spend the weekend at Willow Park Christian Camp and Convention Centre, off Eastern Beach in Howick, at my church's annual retreat. On the plus side I'd been kindly given a substantial discount due to my current unemployment. On the negative side, everyone had to bring their own bedding.

Sure, I had bedding. But it was about 10,000 miles away.

Of course, the youth hostel had lent me some bedding, but that was presumably for use on their premises, and I reckoned that they might not take kindly to my asking if I could borrow some to take away with me for a few days. What to do?

I turned this over in my mind at the hostel yesterday while I was making my bed with clean sheets before leaving. It would be so easy to just rip these sheets and quilt off of the bed and stuff them in my bag, but anyone who spotted my bed's nakedness while I was away would quickly put two and two together. There was nothing else for it.

Leaving my bed neatly made, I closed the door behind me, and caught my lift with Dean to Howick.

Once there, obviously, I opened my rucksack and unpacked the duplicate sheets that I had stripped from my hostel bed immediately prior to making it with clean ones.

Heh heh heh, the perfect crime...

It was great to have a weekend away, even though, technically, every day of my life was spent away now.

And yet, as I lay on my newly made bed in Howick just relaxing in the daylight, (daylight! In my bedroom!) I discerned a pattern in the differences between British and kiwi cultures: one or two people here didn't understand that I was happy just lying on my bed relaxing. There was the assumption that that meant that something was wrong with me.

Like the recent weekend down in Hamilton, these two days were another great chance to spend some time getting to know my friends better, and I had to reflect on God's grace in providing me with people to be my friends while I was so alone on this side of the world.

And there would be tons to do here. Crazy golf, tennis...


... table-tennis...


... football...


... table-football...


... pétanque...

... the list goes on, even though there was sadly no table-pétanque.

After the evening service, Trev the ice cream salesman and I headed out through the darkened streets to Howick town centre, where we located the local Pizza Hut. Trev has a ton of stories, some of them about punching people. But hey – that's why he's the tough-talking no-nonsense ice-cream salesmen with a heart of gold, right?

Sunday

Slept in my bedding. Ahhh...

This afternoon, being on the coast, people were getting baptised. They'd taken preparation courses and things, and so for at least some of them, this day had been a long time in coming.

I gotta say, baptism is one of those things that I've never quite 'got'. In fact, I don't think many people quite 'get' it. In my experience, everyone I've met says that Christians should get baptised, but that they don't have to, but that they should. Whoa - which?

I guess I've always assumed that I myself would get baptised one day, but I figured you'd want your public declaration of your faith to be done properly, y'know, with your family there and all.

But I knew that, if I was waiting for those circumstances, I would simply never ever get onto to it. I also knew that I had thrown my lot in with God, for better for worse, so I should really get baptised. To not do so, I felt, was backing away from embracing that.

So I sat on the shore, watching all those who'd prepared for this afternoon, wading into the sea, getting dunked, exchanging words with the leadership team, and wading out again as live music was played and singing floated across the sand from the assembled church standing around. It looked like this:


I wanted to go in and get baptised too, but I hadn't taken the course, which of course no-one in the Bible seemed to have taken either. I guess I was hoping that someone would invite me. I even had my towel with me, just on the off-chance.

Then they finished. The last person had been 'done.' So that was that.

And then one of the team in the sea called to the crowd, "Does anyone else want to get baptised?"

I seized my moment.

I thrust my camera into a stranger's hands and asked them to take a picture.

I strode into the sea. Mike looked at me in surprise. I said, "I've been a Christian all my life, but I've never been baptised. But hey – I'm here, you're here, let's do it."

So they got me to place my arms across my chest in a cross, as they took hold of me on each side, ready to lower me down.

Mike asked me, "Do you acknowledge your need for Jesus Christ in every part of your life?"

I think I replied, "Yes, I do."

At this, they dunked me under the surface, my hair floated briefly up in that way that it always does when your head goes under the water, and then they lifted me straight back up again.

Mike and the others prayed for me, a thrilled Mike saying "Lord, you've brought him all the way around the world, just to be baptised!"

Then suddenly I was one of those people striding out of the sea to the cheering crowd.

Afterwards I showered all the sand away, and actually did feel kind of energised, but this may well be just because of the shower.

I didn't know where my camera was.

Later that afternoon, Nathan (who's a window-cleaner by trade) had some ropes strung-up the side of one of the buildings, and was giving guests the chance to try to climb the side of the brick building. So of course, I had a go.

The 2-storey building was made out of big bricks and cement, and had an abseiling rope attached to it, me and Nathan, who was on the ground taking the strain at the other end in case I fell.

The first few steps up the sheer drop were quite easy, but as I got higher, I found that there were fewer and fewer gaps in the mortar for me to place my feet and hands. Grimly hanging on, I found that I had blood running out of my finger-tips and down my hands, but I kept on going. I got most of the way to the top, certainly above the second set of windows, before deciding that the remaining stretch was just too smooth, so I decided to call it a day there.

Way below, Nathan yelled up to me what a great job I'd done. So I yelled down that he'd done all the work taking my weight at the other end of the rope. At this, he flicked the slack rope at me to prove that I'd climbed the whole building without him supporting me at all.

Whu...?

I mean, if I had fallen, then the rope would have caught me, but I thought the rope had been taking my weight the whole time, but it hadn't. The rope had done nothing. So I could actually have climbed it with no rope at all.

The rope just enabled me to have faith that I could do it.

Was this an analogy for my baptism?

Monday

Found my abandoned camera again.

Timeslip (in color when available)

I read TV Zone in Borders today. It has an item on the ATV series Timeslip from about 1970 - just as colour tv was coming in.

The first six episodes were set during world war 2, so they made them in black-in-white, probably in truth to save money. Then the rest of the series was made in colour, with the intention of selling the whole lot to America, who were into new colour shows.

Then there was a union strike. The union refused to let any of its members use the evil new colour tv equipment. So the final three episodes (set in the silver-costumed future of 1990) had to go back to being made on the old black-and-white equipment again. So the Americans never wanted it. So the second series was axed. So the series was wiped.

Today of course some of the episodes have been recovered. All except one of the recovered colour episodes now exist, you guessed it, only in black-and-white.

The thing that I have to do in London on Monday has been cancelled. Literally, with less than a day to go before getting on the plane, I've moved my flight back. New flight-date is just before Christmas.

Dog Gone

Barking movie about a police dog who comes back from the dead to see his assassin brought to justice.

It's all tremendous fun, mainly because it's been written by someone who clearly 'gets' how silly the whole premise is, and is enjoying milking it for all it's worth. The doggy jokes just never let up, and the levels of ridiculousness just keep on escalating.

Great fun. This film should win a lot.

TV Remote

I guess it's all down to my mate Bill.

Back in March he told me all about a local Christian TV station, and even pointed it out to me in town. This had been a personal revelation to me – community TV? Really?

As both a long-term low-budget film-maker, and a community radio broadcaster, that idea fitted me like a glove.

Bill subsequently showed me their front door, but I felt as though it would be imposing of me to ask him to hang on while I went in for a - possibly lengthy – look around.

Even the morning that I had left NZ I had silently wanted to go and make contact with them on the way to the airport, but for the same reason felt bad about holding-up my driver.

Today, however, it was different. Today, I had made contact with one of the directors over the internet, and set-up an interview. Thus today, I walked from the coach-stop to the front door myself, and boldly determined to take the world of local TV by storm.

It was locked. And all the lights were off. Even the street was utterly deserted.

Apparently they'd forgotten that I was coming.

I left my heaving rucksack in the doorway and headed-out to find him. There's something intangible about that town that reassures you your stuff will be safe.

I located him in the church across the road, where I think he'd naturally assumed that I would come to find him when I arrived. A fair enough supposition, for a man who ran a Christian TV station.

The service was just finishing, and there was much debate about the sermon, which had – controversially – not been based on the Bible. Was that liberating the truth, or an abandonment of it? As I tucked into the free barbeque afterwards, I couldn't decide.

Seeing around the deserted station was fascinating. It was being run by computer-equipment similar to the one I'd already seen round up north, but which had been plundered from secular stations who had been throwing it all out.

I watched the start of a shopping show, and then the middle of a cookery one. The latter was weird. The presenter was from somewhere in the UK with an incredibly thick regional accent, which immediately made me feel as though she was an old friend. We were both, after all, a long way from home.

Afterwards the guy invited me back to his house for the afternoon. We actually did some baking together before he piled me up with food in preparation for my long journey back to my cupboard.

As I'd promised to, I dropped-in on Bill, but sadly he wasn't about, so I never got to thank him for giving me the contact. I did manage to finally drop-off some chockies and other European souvenirs for him and his family though, not to mention some photos I was asked for. Sheesh, they've been burning a hole in my fridge for the entire three months now!

Two more old friends later, I retook a few photos that had originally been damaged at the Kodak lab in Austria, and caught the coach back up to the city again.

And the position at the TV station? They offered it to me, on one condition: that I honestly believed that God wanted me there.

Out of the 100-200 applications I've made here, it's the only offer I've had.

And it's been yet another entire day that I've spent getting fed for free.

And They Have Lunch At Midnight

It's a well-known fact that water goes down the plughole clockwise in New Zealand.

What's less well-appreciated is that it gets hotter as you head north, NZ is in the centre of the world atlas here, and the maps of South Island have north flapping around at the top-left-hand corner somewhere. (It's easier to fit it on a page if they tilt it)

And did I mention that they reckon down is up too?

Churching

Awaking once more in Hamilton, I had naturally intended to go to Gateway Church again this morning, but somewhat pushed for time, in the end I climbed up a winding path off of Victoria Street to drop into St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral instead.

I was there for just ten minutes, but I don't think I'll ever forget them.

As I slouched in with my huge rucksack hanging off my back, initially I was alone. The service hadn't started yet, and it didn't look like it was going to until after I had left.

Next I met the priest - a grinning fellow - who invited me to join a small gathering in the little foyer there. I duly deposited my rucksack, and gratefully took-in a lovely cup of tea.

They began their gathering. The priest welcomed their guest for the morning (me), and promptly began to interview me in front of the group. Suddenly we were forming an impromptu double-act, as I told him where in London I was from, and he revealed that he had a relative from a nearby town there. We were joking and bouncing off of each other, and then it was time for me to go.

Everyone wished me well, and as I heaved my belongings onto my back again and returned down the winding path out into the great big world again, I reflected how these people – much older than myself – had just done church really well.

In a faraway town, I'd met a group of complete strangers who had all become my friends for ten minutes.

You can't do it better than that.

Leading With Excellence

As things stand at present, a week from today I will be touching-down at Heathrow Airport back home in the UK once more. (I have something fairly important to do in London the following week)

To round my three-month trip off then, I accepted an invitation from my church to join them on a retreat down to Gateway Church in Hamilton for a Christian teaching weekend entitled "Leading With Excellence".


I'm not sure how I wound-up pursuing a subject like Christian leadership skills, but my plan all along has been to just go through the doors that God opens, and to refuse the opportunity just seemed like turning away from that.

So after the drive down with Nev (during which we spotted a car with the numberplate EIEIO, which we both really hoped belonged to a farmer named McDonald) the motel he dropped me off at turned out to be a lesson in experience.

When I learnt that there were no padlockable lockers to stash my gear in, I sagely booked a private room. I knew I was going to be out most of the time, and leaving my stuff on display for anyone to pinch seemed a bit inviting.

Or was I – a novice backpacker - just being paranoid?

After I'd locked the door of my private room, I peeked into the much cheaper dorm that I'd turned-down, and quickly ascertained that no-one was staying there. Oh well, what else had I been going to spend my last remaining NZ dollars on anyway?



The course was inspiring. It was a good chance to get to know some of my new friends better, and I was genuinely pleased to find myself sitting down outside to eat sandwiches with my pastor, and chatting about something as trivial as football. (a subject I know little about) I also made one or two other new friends, and found myself delving quite a bit into 1 Samuel afterwards.

By coincidence, my co-pilot from my first trip down under also lives in Hamilton now, and I was aware that it might hurt their feelings if I went home without having offered to catch-up while in town. So having fulfilled the obligation to offer, and been charged by said amigo to keep in touch, I took the opportunity to re-explore the town centre alone. It was sloshing down with rain, but when you only have one night, you take what you've got and swim with it.

And Hamilton town centre is long. New Zealand's fifth largest city takes much longer to walk across than Auckland's CBD, but there were a heap of places that held prior meaning for me. As the raindrops splashed down, and I and my course-notes got soaked, I took some comfort in the knowledge that, since I returned to New Zealand three months ago, I have honestly given living in Auckland my best shot.

The North Shore

With the end of my three months in NZ looming, colleague Leanne kindly insisted that I couldn't return to the UK without having seen Auckland's North Shore.

So it was a nostalgic evening, and reminiscent of my time down under in February / March, as I got shown around by a local, and once more got to listen to a kiwi girl's voice chattering a heap of Maori place-names.


The first point-of-interest was a lamp-post opposite Auckland railway station. And only a local could point this out. Can you see what we stopped to look at? The answer's in the picture. Clue: ho-ho, the shadow knows...


Next we caught the ferry across to the North Shore, taking some time to admire the Harbour Bridge (above, obviously) and other surrounding features such as Rangitoto Island.


One Red Dog in Takapuna provided the most awesome pizzas I've ever enjoyed. When their advertising describes them as "gourmet pizzas", they ain't jokin'...

Then it was off to see the city from a distance at night. Alas, vehicles aren't allowed to stop on the motorway, so I knew taking a time-lapse was never going to work...


North Shore: done!

Found 4 slices of bread, a packet of butter, an apple, a 300ml carton of milk and some parmesan cheese today. And some crisps. And spaghetti.

Free Everything

Everything in this photo, I got for free, including the bed.

I now have a NZ Fly Buys card (to use at New World supermarket), a VIP card (for money off backpacking things like transport and accommodation), an ANZ card for my NZ bank account, and this morning I received my One Card to use at Woolworths and Food Town. All this is in addition to my Subway card, on which I am collecting stamps for a free baguette (I found a free stamp in the internet café this morning). And people keep leaving free drink vouchers behind in their rooms, which I use to have orange juices with my free pizza on Wednesdays.

Tonight, in a moment of some irony, I got some sandwiches at the Kwikimart and gave them to a homeless guy.

Otherwise no news. No jobs have come up, so nothing is pending. I have some more applications to make this week, and then I’ll probably call it a day.

I’ve started taking driving lessons again, which seem to be going quite well, although learning to drive in a busy coastal city centre, with lots of ups and downs, is quite challenging.

Go God.

Auckland Yachting Catastrophe

Part 1 of 8: Prologue

So I went to the bar under the youth hostel tonight where they serve free pizzas every Wednesday, and was delighted to get away with 4 slices of top-quality Pizza Hut joy! Mm-mm!

Anyway, after Tiger, Kazu, Paolo, Mickala, Kirsty, Ross, Wei and myself had finished our pizzas, the bar, in its desperate secular attempt to be exciting and rebellious, normally holds a goldfish race. This week however, the goldfish were not available. (maybe they were just being koi) (sorry) Anyway, to replaice (even sorrier) the lost soles (hrrrrrmmm…), someone in authority had actually decided to instead hold…a build your own yacht contest!

NNNOOOOO!!!!!

Flashbacks from my shameful yacht-building past immediately returned to haunt me...

Part 2 of 8: Flashback

That night – September 20th - in Crete last year...

Paul, Angela, Carmel and myself had slumped back to the Bali Star Hotel exhausted after a tennis session, only to be faced with having to take part in a far-too-cerebral Mastersun quiz night. Cerebral in that we weren't answering simple Q&As, ooohhh noooooo, we had to... construct a yacht.

Just a small one, mind, y'know, out of a sheet of paper, a couple of paperclips and a few other odds and ends. Dazed, we sat and looked at it. Our tired brains weren't even up to the task of naming our team, let alone writing our sea-shanty that we also had to sing, and certainly not building a regata-winning model yacht-race.

However, once Anna-Lisa had ingeniously dubbed us "The Dream Team," we made a token effort at fitting the bits and pieces together to build a yacht.

Today, as far as I know, there is no surviving photographic evidence of the tangle of wreckage that we 'constructed.' What I do remember is that it wouldn't even stand-up on the table, so I advocated unbending and straightening the paperclips to support it, which we did, sticking them both through the hull, as though this would help. It remained there on its side, utterly useless, like a dead pet that had been cruelly stabbed twice.

Time was up, and the other teams were already presenting their witticism-laden sea shanties. One team's tune was a parody of Queen's "We Are The Champions." Another seemed to have a many-versed tribute to ABBA going on. We looked down at the four lines we'd managed to scrawl:

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Uzo,
Come and join us on our cruise-o,
Out of the port and across the sea,
Chucking-up 'til half-past three.


Seriously, that was it. And we didn't even have any music. As the team before us crooned onward to their no doubt firework-enhanced conclusion, we looked at each other with an honesty of inadequacy that I've rarely experienced, even from close friends.

Trying to think how we might best salvage the situation, I said "I really think that just one of should just read this out as a poem."

Paul was quick: "I'm not reading it out."

Angela: "I'm not reading it out either."

Carmel: "I'm not reading it out."

Beat. They were all looking at me.

"Well I'm not reading it out, I've just told everyone here that I want to be a writer."

We knew we had only seconds left until the other team finished their masterpiece, and then our credibility would be blasted to pieces. Forever.

We looked at each other. We looked at the other team. We looked at Anna-Lisa and Wing-Commander, our quizmasters. We looked down at this dilapidated naval jalopy, still lying motionless on its side with two unwound paperclips spiking out of the bottom of the hull garrotting it, a mass of crumpled paper that could neither float nor stand up, let alone race.

On some subconscious level, we grimly realised that that barbed tangle of Greek stationery represented... us.

There was another beat, as we all four locked eye-contact with each other, and four minds shared a single thought.

We bolted for the door. And then we didn't stop running. Not until we were far, far away...


That night was a lesson to never, ever be unlearnt. Never again enter a yacht-building contest. Ever. Never! Never... never... never...

As my mind returned to the Auckland nightclub tonight, I still shuddered at the memory of the sheer derision and ridicule that Paul, Angela, Carmel and myself would have faced if we had gone through with mumbling our abysmal 4-line sea-shanty, followed by presenting our 'boat."

Inevitably I had to ask myself the thought that I did not wish to form into words:

Was history about to repeat itself? Or was this my once-in-a-lifetime chance to redeem myself and heal the memory of that terrible night?

Part 3 of 8: Hello Tiger

In the end, Tiger decided for me.

Tiger (who’s Korean): Steve! You come with me. We build boat.
Me: You don’t know who you’re talking to.
Tiger: Come. We build boat.
Me: I’ve done this before. I’m rubbish at it.
Tiger: No you not. You good. You clever. You come with me. We build boat. We win race!
Me: The last boat I built was so bad we all had to run away in shame. We didn’t go back for hours! Such was the effect of this boat on the local population, that in some parts of Crete when they find a dilapidated piece of flotsam or wreckage, they now actually call it a “Dream Team boat!” I have a stamp in my passport refusing my re-entry to the EU for contributing to such a poorly constructed piece of refuse! No! There is absolutely no way I am going to help you build this boat!
Tiger: Great. We build boat over here.

Part 4 of 8: Everybody's Building

It was pretty straightforward stuff. Rather than recklessly issuing each team with paper, paperclips etc., we had all actually been given a box containing a cellophane bag, which itself contained a really simple model boat to construct. We had a solid wooden hull, a wooden mast, a plastic sail, 2 rudders and stickers. That was it, apart from an instruction sheet and a scalpel. As usual, nothing else was allowed to be used in its construction.

This was going to be all right. We could just build a simple bog-standard boat, exactly the same as everyone else’s, and then any subsequent shame would surely fall on everyone else with their identical boats too. My pride was safe. Unless we sank at the start of the race, we could only look as bad as everyone else with the same wait a minute. Instruction sheet? Hang on, that was a bit bigger than the plastic sail we’d been provided with. And if it was bigger, then surely it could catch more air and…and…and…it was too late. I had been sucked in, and was even now foolishly running-up to the 3-metre water-track to measure its width (about 9cm) to determine how big our new sail should be. Bugs on the motorway are probably in a similar frame of mind when they decide that an approaching windscreen looks quite interesting.

So after I’d torn the instructions in 2, plotted where the holes should go, punched them, rolled the paper up to give it a curl, joined it with the excellent work that Tiger had done on the rudders, used the stickers to reinforce it to the mast, and mumbled the world-record-breakingly stupid suggestion that we call ourselves The Dream Team (Tiger, thank goodness, turned it down in favour of the “HMS 2 Fast 2 Furious”), we had built our boat!

As mentioned earlier, the water track in which we would be racing was approximately 3 metres long, and about 9cm wide. There were 2 of them – enough therefore for 2 boats to race at once.

Tests went well! The sail made out of the instruction sheet just fitted into this narrow-track. If it had been a bit lower, then it would have knocked the sides, which would have minimised it drifting from side to side during the race, and kept it going in a straight line, but one can’t have everything. It caught the wind admirably (no pun anywhere, please don’t look for one), and it was only when someone blew it really ridiculously hard that it went over, as everyone knows all real boats are designed to.

Quickly fishing it out (still none) I handed it back to Tiger and headed off to the toilet to get some tissues to dry-out the instructions cum sail.

In the toilet, I bumped into Andy - a local kiwi guy I know from a rival team. He said something along the lines of:

Kiwi guy: G’day mate, ‘ow’s it goin’, ‘ow’s yer boat mate, ay? Ay? Aaaaaay? (Kiwi-isms toned-down)
Me: Yes, thank you, as a matter of fact it’s all going rather well. In fact, I do believe that we are going to win.
Kiwi guy: Awesome mate, awesome. What modifications have you made, ay?
Me: I’m not telling, I’m afraid that you will just have to look very quickly as we speed past your vessel and through the finishing line.
Kiwi guy: Take me head off and paint me green, mate. We split our hull in two and made a catamaran. Ay? (Ay added gratuitously by me, as I’ve finally figured out what happened to all the A’s that are missing from the locally-produced boxes of “Weet-Bix.”)

This conversation did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. We had a simple boat with one improvement. None of the over-complicated stuff that would look nice, but ultimately make a yacht top-heavy. Things were looking good. Earlier on I had even gone out to get my camera. Oh, we might not win, but we were darn well not going to come last. At last the secret pain that I had been harbouring (still no puns) for almost 12 months would finally be healed.

Part 5 of 8: Sail Now Off

When I got back to Tiger, I was appalled to find him and Mickala re-attaching the original plastic sail.

Me: (hysterically flapping my arms) What! What do you think you’re doing?! Why have you removed our instruction-sheet sail and replaced it with the smaller plastic one again?!?
Tiger: Oh. Paper too wet. It not dry out before race. We use this sail.
Me: (hysterically flapping arms and jumping up and down) No no no no no! This instruction sheet is our EDGE! It’s what makes our boat better than the others! It’s our EDGE! It catches more wind! It reduces drift from port to starboard! If it’s a bit damp, it’ll still catch the wind and work as a sail! (brief pause) It’s our EDGE!
Tiger: You want to blow?

Clearly the only way of communicating just what a foolish path they were obviously heading down was to wrench the thing off them, break the plastic sail and reattach my paper one. Except that they had beaten me to it. In removing my sail, they had damaged it, and now the plastic one really was the better option.

Mickala offered me the straw. It was time for the first race, but this crewman was jumping overboard. My connection with this boat had gone.

Part 6 of 8: Fight Or Flight?

There were 8 boats, but only 2 tracks, which meant 4 initial heats, 2 semi-finals and 1 final. One member of the team would blow through a straw to get their boat all the way along the track to the end, where the straw would be passed baton-like to a second team-member, who would blow it back for the second half of the race. The HMS 2 Fast 2 Furious was scheduled for the 3rd heat.

I mentally sat on the fence and agonized over whether I was still a member of the team or not. The solution was simple enough. If we won, then I was. If not, then I reiterated my EDGE argument.

My stomach gave me an uneasy feeling. I mentally asked my stomach why it had decided to give me this discomfort, after I had earlier treated it to so much pizza. It replied by referring my attention to the first boat in the first heat. Oh.

For a start it had three sails. A plastic one, a paper one (ingeniously made out of the instructions) and a cardboard one, made from the box it had all come in.

Yes, I recognised this feeling. This was the feeling of watching Dangerous Brian and others singing many brilliantly-written verses, whilst The Dream Team had only 4 unfunny lines. The feeling of fear induced by the subsequent team’s rendition of “We Are The Dancers,” a subtle parody of a well-known Queen number. By the time Ailsa, Felicity and others had begun singing their many witticism-laden verses about Wing-Commander, the 4 of us had realized that everyone had done outstandingly. Everyone but us. In the circumstances, we had done the only mature thing, and run for it.

Now I was faced with that same choice again. I eyed the doorway.

I stayed.

Part 7 of 8: Two Heats


The 3-sailed vessel had quite a close first heat with its competitor, another magnificent tribute to ingenuity. I can’t remember who won. Then came the 2nd heat, and 2 more finely-crafted tributes to maritime. And they really looked like boats. Surely they couldn’t all be this spectacular? Surely someone else would have just made the model as it had come in the box? And then it hit me.

This was Auckland. They proudly call themselves “The City Of Sails.” They’re all into boats.

There was the odd moment of encouragement. One of the 2nd heat teams had beaten me to the Guinness Book Of Records’ title of World’s Most Defeatest Team Name by guffawingly calling themselves “The Wet Dream Team.” Their boat obviously lost. With a name like that, they really should have got out earlier.

So this was it. Heat 3, and the HMS 2 Fast 2 Furious (Mark 2) was up against a very small vessel with “only” two half-size sails. Clearly whoever had made it was avoiding any risk of it toppling over. It looked decided nippy, and I wasn’t thinking about the water.

The race began.

Part 8 of 8: They're Off!

Blowing through the straw, Mickala got the HMS 2 Fast 2 Furious off to a brilliant flying stop.

Straight into the port side of the water-track, poor Mickala had obviously had too much to drink and no longer had much puff left in her. At the far end of the track, Kazu watched helpless as he wondered if the boat would reach him before his indefinite visa expired.

Meanwhile the competitor’s boat was surging ahead like a dynamo. It fact, it probably had a dynamo. Let’s be honest, these guys had probably made one by shearing the wax off the box and turning it into a solar panel or something.

My conscience pricked me. I don’t drink, and I like to think that I have a pretty healthy set of lungs. If I had taken the straw off of Mickala when she’d offered it to me, then we probably could have made it to half-way by now. But did it matter? The prize was a bar tab, and I don’t drink. Sure, the orange juice would have been nice, but wasn’t this a matter of pride?

I glanced down at my camera. No, I didn’t want a picture of any of this. It was a picture of failure. And it wasn’t even my boat, since they’d de-rigged my sail. They were losing. THEY were.

Then suddenly, the competitor got into trouble on the side too, just as Mickala got her breath back! Unthinkably, the HMS 2 Fast 2 Furious was actually taking the lead!

Mickala got to the end, gave Kazu the straw, and he began the 2nd half…while the other boat was still stuck! We were SOARING along! There was no stopping us! Hang on a second…”We”?

Darn it, if we were going to win just one race, and with the other boat almost a length behind our speeding one in a 2-length course, then yes, I darn well was a part of the team. But this was it. If I committed myself now, there was no going back. Everyone would know that I was responsible if any unimaginable embarrassment unexpectedly befell us.

“GO KAZU!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “GO KAZ! GO KAZ! GGGGOOOOO!!!!!!”

Suddenly our boat sank.


The whole room seemed to slow-down. Everyone was moving in slow-motion, their eyes slowly closing and opening as they blinked, their cheering several octaves lower than immediately before. And I could hear my heart beating really really loudly.

I looked around me. There was Kaz, desperately attempting to coax our boat back up again. Way behind him was the competitor’s boat, just reaching the end of their first half. They handed over their straw, and their second “blower” expertly took over. And there was the Bali Star Hotel in Crete, and those steps outside, and that blasted walkie-talkie I’d left behind to avoid being contacted.

And there were other memories from my life too. Entering a school fancy-dress competition as Long John Silver and falling over, to be laughed at by the entire school and all of their parents. Feeling really shy when meeting Father Christmas. Cutting my own hair and stabbing myself in the eye because I forgot that mirrors work backwards. Actually I think that must have been someone else’s memory, but whoever they were, their pain was very real.

And sailing through them all was this little boat with 2 small sails, which won hands-down while we were still dead in the water.

I had quite literally gone down with another sinking ship.

Someone once said that the true test of any choice in life was having to make it twice.

If I ever find myself in a home-made yacht-building contest ever again, I’m stuffing well going to win it this time!

Street Fighting

Amy and I went 'street fighting' today.

It sounds exciting, but it was just a fancy term for giving-out leaflets.


Afterwards I got given a free ticket to Paihia in the Bay of Islands to say thanks.

Ironically, I had to walk a long way home afterwards, although that did give me the chance to tour, on foot, a bit more of Auckland city...


Nearby I found a tranquil place called "The Railway Station." It's actually a completely disused station that now spends its days and nights as a hall of residence for Auckland Uni.

Entering it was beautiful. So, big, echoey, and airy. Somewhere in the distance I could hear Brooke Fraser's Arithmetic bouncing off of the hard surfaced walls around me. It was a cool oasis in the middle of an otherwise noisy day.

Goble vs Krustofski: International Uno, Simulcast Live From NZ and the UK

Found a way of playing Uno over email with my klown friend Herschel in the UK...

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 11:46
To: Herschel Krustofski
Subject: Uno

... As for playing Uno, I have bought a pack and dealt myself 7 cards from it. I figure that you can deal yourself 7 cards and we can still play over email. I'm sure we can trust each other to be honest.

By the way, the 8th card I dealt told you to pick up 4.

Herschel Krustofski wrote:

Okay, so I've now got 11 cards in my hand and it's your go. (please put down a yellow... please put down a yellow) "Misssssster Goble..."

I brushed passed a member of "The 5, 6, 7, 8s" - the all girl Japanese pop group from Kill Bill vol 1 - on Friday. She looked lost. I appreciate this may mean nothing to you but tell people and they will be impressed.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 11:55
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

Pick up another 4.

Herschel wrote:

Man alive! That's my passenger, you putz.
So, I now have 15 cards in my hand to your six. Sigh.

Herschel wrote:

PS - do you have plans to return to UK? Any idea when?

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 11:58
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

I have to be back in October sometime. Of course, that might not happen, so I'm not advertising my return too much at the moment.

PICK 'EM AAAAAAAPP.

Herschel wrote:

Pick up more??? That's 19 cards I'm holding. I'm not an octopus, you know!

Well, it'll be nice to see you. And, where are the postcards, huh?

Actually, have you been up to anything nice over there? Seems a while since you said much.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 12:07
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

There's nothing really to report. I've applied for several jobs, made promising progress on 2 of them, and have just received a standard rejection for one and seen the other being re-advertised. And I have a cold.

Pick up another 4.

Herschel wrote:

Pick up another four? That's just an exceptional start. So, I now have 23 cards to your four, right? Wow! I can't help feeling I AM playing with a full deck here, as the saying almost goes.

Sorry to hear about the cold.

Sorry to hear the job search is a struggle too.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 12:16
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

(long pause, goes to pick card up, stops at last moment and says) Pick up 4.

Herschel wrote:

Cheat, I say. Cheat! That's FIVE pick-up four cards. Impossible!

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 12:21
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

Oh I'm sorry, I was confused because here in New Zealand we have different denominations. Pick up another 4.

Herschel wrote:

This is crazy! I have ALL THE CARDS now! And no marbles.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 12:22
To: Hercshel
Subject: Uno

UNO!

Herschel wrote:

Have 'em!

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goble
Sent: 06 September 2004 12:25
To: Herschel
Subject: Uno

I win, and you're picking up another 4. How many are we going up to?

Well I'm off to bed now, and I'm certainly not staying here for a million "just one more game"s.

Goodnight.

Herschel wrote:

Eurghh, tough crowd.

Learning Japanese I Think I'm Learning Japanese I Really Think So

Helped my Japanese friend Kazu to write a letter tonight. In return he taught me some words of Japanese!