Ari's Planet

Not having schistosomiasis parasites running around has made the day much fuller of time and energy. So what goes on? Well, not too much really. There's life in a quiet suburban hostel. People come and go. Some stay for months, giving a chance to get to know them. Every evening the kitchen fills up. We take turns, or not, commandeering the one gas stove. This is the preferred cooking area, as the electric stove has two settings on all its burners: off and burn-your-food. One of the most fun things is watching people from different cultures concoct their dinners. Everyone has their own way of eating, Asians use rice flower, Europeans cook heavier dishes in pots, I cook my own measley cuisine (I call it "Ari Cuisine", which isn't saying much). Unfortunately for the continent, Europeans don't know how to make pancakes. They make these thin things without any fluffiness and are sorely deprived of maple syrup and blueberries. Hmmph, I think it is quite obvious why they all want to come to America! Now we're trying to watch the Olympics, but after the opening ceremonies I wonder if anything they show is based on true events.

I'm staying at Oaklands Lodge in Mount Eden. This is a pleasant suburb of Auckland. There are several shops just around the corner: a butcher, a seafood store, a few cafes and restaurants, convenience stores, a couple of pharmacies, banks, bookstore (complete with cat in window). There's even a low-cost pool 1 km away. It's about 15 minutes and $1.60 by bus to downtown and the same in the opposite direction to full supermarkets. The hostel sits in the shadow of Mt. Mangawhao, a dormant volcanic cone almost 200 m high, one of many that make up this part of NZ. The hostel is quiet, comfortable, and clean. It comes with an orange cat named Cosmos. He got a shower in honor of the arrival of the owners. Sometimes it gets a bit cold as the central heat isn't turned on much. The kitchen starts out clean each morning, but by evening it can be a bit messy as some guests are too lazy to put their dishes away. They keep costs down--mutually--by having guests do most of the daily cleaning. The guests get free room, and the hostel gets cleaned up. Mostly the guests do a good job of cleaning. The hostel has a small garden in the front and back, a clothes line (nearly useless in the winter since it rains so much), washer/dryer ($5 for wash/dry), an ironing board, a well-equipped kitchen, dining area, and TV area. The kitchen has plenty of cups/dishes/pots/pans/utensils and stainless steel counters, which makes it a good place to prepare food.

My main complaints about the hostel are: the radio in the kitchen, the toilet paper dispenser, and slow expensive Internet. Also, the shower sometimes can't decide if it will burn your skin off or train you to be a Navy seal in the dark. Having a radio might seem nice, but the problem is that it is not possible for everyone to want to listen to the same thing at once--that's why they sell so many headphones. The music ends up filling up the whole 1st floor, it's just plain distracting and terribly annoying, as such things go*. Now, the toilet paper dispensers can be loaded in two ways: one is correct and the other is incorrect. If they're loaded wrong, which happens very often, the paper turns to confetti, making wiping your bottom rather tedious if celebratory. This just points out how important it is do design things so that either there is only one way they can be put together, or so that it doesn't matter how they are put together. The hostel has two Internet computers and wireless access. Both are overpriced and slow. Internet is $4/hr and wireless is $4/hr, $10/day or $30/week. The Internet is abysmally slow and I prefer any of the cheaper ($2/hr) Internet shops in town. Internet is a pure money maker for the hostel; if a new PC cost say $1000 back in the day, and if Internet is used only 2.5 hours a day ($10) per PC, it takes only 100 days to recoup the cost of the hardware. Internet access costs are covered in the first few days of each month, while everything after that is pure profit.

* Oh, that modern crap the youngsters of today listen to! "I kissed a girl and I liked it". Me too. Big deal. They are so overly sincere and put way too much sound in their overmixed cries for attention. Heck, I can't stand most stuff from the 80s, 90s, or today (as the overworn jingle goes). The pathetic thing is I have to go back to the 60s and 70s to start finding anything they'll put on the radio worth listening too. At least they knew what to do with a guitar back then, just before smashing it on the stage. This is not an indication of my stodgy old age, it's an indication of the crappy radio. Check out last.fm instead, where you get: static free music possibly matching your tasted but at least more creative than the complete garbage that people who have money to run radio stations put up. Did I mention TV ad breaks in NZ are 3.5 to 5 minutes long? Oy, "I turned off the radio and I liked it!" There was a terribly dull biopic about some black musicians on the tube. Now, we all know how back in the 50s blacks in the US couldn't make it into white living rooms, even though their music was super amazing, so they'd get these white kids to ruin their music--they had some white kid steal this group's song on TV, and it was just like the pathetic crap they play on the radio here today. "I found music on the Internet and I liked it!".

I'm staying in a small dorm with three beds. Costs just NZ$110/week. So far I've had roommates from Germany, England, the US, and Thailand. My current roommate is a traveling carpenter from Germany. He belongs to a carpenter's guild with a unique old-style uniform. He gets up every weekday at 6 am, and I've ended up going to sleep a bit earlier as a result, not that I complain, sleeping earlier I feel better the next day. Other common nationalities include Dutch and French. We even have a few Chinese at the hostel. Very few Americans come through, which is sad because America is prosperous and has one of the highest populations in the world. You'd think Americans would want to get out of their country a bit more often. Update: we have a Mainer for a few days! Go America!

There seems to be an infectious disease that spreads in the hostel, though so far only a few of the guests have shown susceptibility. The main symptom is bread making. Several of the guests make bread on a regular basis. I try my hand at it occasionally. We are all put to shame, though, by the French chef. Who doesn't speak any English. Said chef comes in with buckets of cheap ingredients--we haven't been able to figure out where he gets them, though we have our theories--and spends hours making feasts. He has taken over most of one of the fridges. We all watch him with a mixture of respect and envy. You can stand there and watch him make a loaf of bread, which invariably comes out perfect, only when you try the same yours comes out a sorry flat dense brick. Asking him a question elicits a stream of incomprehensible French punctuated by suitable arm waving.

Every morning, the line up of food lockers could change. Name, room, departure date. A few of the names seem permanently affixed. Departure dates of "?" or infinity, or never, always mean plenty of time to get to know that guest. There are the occasional 1-2 day stays, those you know you will likely never see again. There is a set conversation with most travelers: where are you from, what are you doing here, where have you been, how long will you stay. At some point some interesting tidbit escapes, and the conversation veers off to new horizons. We are always looking for a tip: where to go, how to get there. At bottom, we're all doing our time, just like prison, condemned to lives out of lockers.

In the evenings we gather round the TV. Or we don't, because the TV is total crap. Sometimes they run a half-decent movie, the main benefit being that their 4 movie channels do not have ads. I can't even watch anything on the Discovery or History channels. Why Discovery has to break every 5 minutes to spend 3 minutes telling me about upcoming shows on their own channel is beyond me and only serves to keep me from watching anything on their channel. Guests from the UK seem to like the incredibely dull UK channel. There's a large contingent that likes the Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. I can think of nothing more annoying on TV than Marge Simpson's voice. Last night we watched The Marsh. I know, we hadn't heard of it either. We all agreed it was total crap.

The other day I was interviewed for a local free backpacker's monthly. This is a little paper that is distributed to all the hostels in NZ. The interviewer asked a standard set of questions and then we had my photoshoot. I felt like such a star. Then I got to answer the silly questionnaire, including who my favorite celeb is (if you know me you already know who it is!). Should be coming out in mid-September. I almost made a switch today to my career in modeling. A guy asked me if I was from Britain--I guess I should have said I could be. They were looking for visitors for some photo publicity from Tourism NZ.

When I do get out of the hostel it might be to go downtown and use cheap(er) Internet or take out books from the public library (oh, yawn). Even tourists can get a library card. I paid a $70 bond, of which $40 will be refunded. I can take out 5 items at a time. They don't have many books in open stacks, but any item can be requested either from the basement or from any other branch library. The library is overrun with Asian students; in this, it looks a lot like some colleges in the US.

NZ has this amazing no-fault coverage administered via the national Accident Compensation Company (ACC). Anyone injured in NZ, tourists included, is covered. I hurt my knee and saw a sports medicine doctor at Adidas Sports Medicine Center, got a diagnosis and a referral to a physiotherapist. For the next 4-5 weeks I saw the physio 2-3 times a week. Every day, I did stretching and strengthening exercises. The result has been rapid improvement. I even got a 1 month trial membership to a fancy gym. Now, I spend a few hours a day going to the gym, swimming, cardio, weight training, stretching. It's great. After months of suboptimal physical activity my body is really benefiting from some proper conditioning.

Auckland needs more color. The streets are clean and straight. No one honks. They follow the traffic rules. Walking up and down the streets, everyone is in the same uniform: gray and shades thereof. Black is the most popular color, complemented by white and gray. A pair of dark bluejeans is daring. A dash of color is a dark burgundy scarf on a lady. Oh my god, please please please can someone wear some color! Help me! I am drowning in a sea of suits, please, don't let those 5 gay guys dress Auckland, they already look the same, we need someone with a flair for color and taste, maybe an Indian? I don't know, but something has to give.

Auckland seems to have the same idiotic law about panhandling as some cities in the US: you can't panhandle. (These laws are retarded because people should be allowed to ask for help and at least in the US we have the illusion of free speech.) There's a guy who stands along Queen St. with a blue yukelele. He strums the strings, but no music comes from it. He has a hat in front of him. So much for panhandling laws. There's another couple who stand out on the street singing for Jesus. Sometimes there are even Mormon Elders--i.e., 20 year old kids, and even Hare Krishna recruitment drives. Almost a proper city. Albert Park has a wonderful statue of the Queen Victoria; she is not cracking a smile, but if she tried the statue would shatter in two from surprise. There's a dude who seems a bit out of it who wanders up with a piece of paper and mumbles something; he has a green swastika tattooed between his eyes, but I don't know what specific meaning it has here. The biggest sigh of relief was given by Kiwis when their government finally got the balls to not send one in seven young men to die in some stupid war that had nothing to do with them, like Iraq. They are very proud of their soldiers and not entirely impressed by others. I would like to breathe the same sigh of relief, but Congress is so full of old farts I dare not stop holding my breath.

Friday I got down to the fish market. Somehow, I expected something as exciting as the Tokyo fish market. Instead, it's a nearly sterile building most of which is closed to the public. There's a shop out front that sells fish. I need to find out which species are being sustainability harvested before coming back for some. The auction starts at 6 am, so I'll be coming back to watch. On the way out I got into a chat with the guy at the coffee stall. He recommended several day trips, so looks like my no-sightseeing period is coming to an end. Before buying fish, check out this list of better and worse fish in NZ.