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Back home, my siblings are out of school for the summer, and the mercury is hanging out in the 90s. Down here in Christchurch, New Zealand, we’re throwing snow balls. Heh. My friend who took this picture is from Singapore (I think) .. he’s never seen snow before in his life. What a crazy world.

Numb fingers in May is a new, and somewhat novel experience. Things have gotten quite chilly down here, and my instincts are a bit out of whack — there’s something not quite right about the seasonal switcheroo mother nature’s pulled on me. I dream of sail boats and late summer nights, but wake up to frosty, dark mornings. At least, I would if I woke up before 10, but I’m an arts student and I can’t be bothered to do such terrible things.

Regardless, May has been pretty good to me. I have a couple of projects cooking up nicely, school is going reasonably well, and I’ve been able to avoid terrible mishaps as a general rule. There’s only been one big disappointment, but I’ll get around to that later. Good news should always come first!

First, my extra-curricular projects. I’ve found a studio space so that I can get back into photography, but it needs a bit of work … and stairs. It’s above the indoor paintball arena I play at, but it’s only accessable with a rickety step ladder, which makes it a bit of an adventure. The space is huge, as it used to be an aerobics gym, and there used to be stairs, but the owner of the building sawed them off because they were inconveniently placed. Or something. It may have been for fun. It’s hard to tell. Regardless, as soon as I get my studio lights shipped down here (and find models who aren’t afraid of step ladders), I’ll be back in business.

The second project I’ve been toiling away at is a completely rewritten “groupware” system for the community server I run. Specifically, it’s a system with forums and other such tools that help me and my friends stay in touch. It’s the biggest hunk of software I’ve ever written, and it currently weighs in at about 4,500 lines of code (in 6 different programming languages, none the less). Not terribly big, but still sizable. If anyone reading this is a PHP guru who’s looking for an interesting way to kill some time (and get free hosting), drop me a line and we’ll figure something out. Anyhow, I think it’s about two or three weeks away from it’s first major release.

School is progressing well, although I’m starting to get a bit nervous about tests — my math and linguistics tests in particular. Math was one of my strong points back in elementary and middle school, but after going to an arts school I sort of lost interest … and now I’m essentially an idiot when it comes to anything other than simple linear algebra, and I don’t enjoy it at all. On the other hand, linguistics is a fantastically enjoyable subject, it’s just unfamiliar and there’s a lot of memorization of strange terms and a new alphabet, so it’s a bit difficult.

My philosophy-based classes are kicking ass. Human Nature and Art Theory are my two favorites, and both are taught by my favorite professors, which I don’t think is a coincidence. Strangely enough, they’re both Americans. Or maybe it’s not so strange — I can understand why a well educated and intelligent person would want to work in a pleasant and beautiful country like New Zealand.

My Art Theory prof, Denis Dutton, is the editor of Arts & Letters Daily, an interesting collection of editorial articles from around the web, which has been nominated for a Webby. Good stuff. He has a tangental, ranty, and humorous lecture style that makes being locked in a hall for two hours an enjoyable experience.

He may also have good taste in music. I ran into him at a performance of Ligeti, Prokofiev, and Dvorak a week-or-so ago. That was quite enjoyable, and considering student tickets for performances cost about five U.S. dollars, I think I’ll be going more often. The New Zealand Symphonic Orchestra is quite good, and the Christchurch Town Hall performance center is quite nice — cozily small, and it sounds great. They also have a gigantic organ, which I’d like to see in action some day.

The university library has quite a few CDs to loan, so I’ve been listening to a lot of Prokofiev. He’s the man, as far as I’m concerned with classical music. His piano concertos are amazing, and his score for Ivan the Terrible is pretty damn thrilling. Better than the movie, in my opinion. The only other soundtrack I can say that about is the Mortal Combat series, all of which were “inspired by the movie,” even though none (except for a couple songs off the first album) were featured in it.

Oops, there goes my credibility as a music critic. Heh.

Oh, and one more thing related to music: one of my good friends might get the opportunity to play with The Stoutfellows, the kick ass Irish rock band I’ve mentioned previously. That would rule. They also seem to need some good photographs, so I think I may approach them with an offer they can’t refuse. So to speak.

If you’re a sports fan, you may be interested to know that the international Super 12 Rugby cup was won by the local boys, the Canterbury Crusaders … who also happened to be completely undefeated the entire season, and managed to get 15 players on the All Blacks. What can I say. Rugby is religion around here, and it’s kind of contagious. Sports appreciation doesn’t run a very strong streak in my family, but I have to say that watching rugby over the past couple of months has been a good time. Some of the skeptical among you have noted that cheap beer may be an influencing factor in my appreciation of rugby, but all things considered, it’s a hell of a lot more enjoyable watching a genuine rugby match than it is watching sports where advertising companies can call timeouts (coughfootballcough).

With all that in mind, it’s hard to be in a bad mood, but I’ve spent a good portion of this evening being more than a bit grumpy about circumstances revolving around the mutual exclusivity of spending a day with the Dalai Lama and passing my Human Nature philosophy class. Here’s the low down: Tomorrow, the Dalai Lama will be hanging out in Nelson, giving talks and doing interesting things, as he tends to do. I’ve been planning on the trip to see the Dalai Lama for several months, and the ticket was bought for me by my best friend’s mom. Unfortunately, I’m also scheduled for a test that makes up 25% of my philosophy grade. I proposed taking a make-up test in addition to writing an extra essay, in exchange for the opportunity to hang out with the Dalai Lama (an altogether philosophical pursuit in it’s own right), but they turned me down. Everyone I talked to said it was a reasonable trade … even the professors, who eventually referred me to the Dean of Arts. Unfortunately, I was shot down. Something about fairness to the other students, although I’m not sure how that works, considering I’d be doing more work then them in the end. Bah. Frustrating.

Regardless, I’m ready to kick ass on the test tomorrow. It’s my strongest subject, and I’ve been studying hard, so I’m not too concerned about it. Just disappointed about not getting to see the Dalai Lama.

So, that’s the month in review. I’ve been a slacker about posting to my website, so I’ll try to do better in the upcoming weeks. As always, I hope all is well in whatever part of the world you happen to be in, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you if you’re so inclined.

This letter is long overdue, so I’ve made it extra long. I hope you don’t mind! Things are well down here in New Zealand. I’m healthy, I’m happy, and everything’s just peachy.

The first term finished on Good Friday, and now I’m in the middle of a three week holiday. The holiday schedule is a bit odd. I’m not sure why they chose to give us a three week holiday after only five or six weeks of school, but I’m not complaining. The past few days have been quite exciting: Poncho and I had a five day tour of the north half of the south island and the southern tip of the north island. Lots of fun.

I’m currently staying in Poncho’s friend’s roommate’s room, who’s out of town visiting family. The dorms wanted to charge me $20 a night to stay over the holidays, which is a terrible deal, especially considering they wouldn’t even be serving dinner. I think I like the flatting lifestyle better anyway — I don’t think I’ll be staying in the dorms next year.

Anyhow, the vacation has been quite good. The first couple of days were spent being terrifyingly lazy — wake up around 1pm, spend the day lounging about in the living room with my temporary roommates, have a few beers with Poncho and friends when they show up late in the evening, wander off to bed around 5am, wash, rinse, and repeat. After a few days of that, we felt a road trip was in order. One of our good buddies, Blair, was having his 21st birthday up in Wellington (on the north island), so we thought it would be nice to stop by and say hello.

The trip started off easy enough. Poncho showed up at the door around 10am, and we went over to another house to pick up our friends Danny and T (short for JT). They needed a ride to Richmond, which was a bit out of the way, but would provide for an entertaining detour. Instead of leaving town immediately, we decided that a quick game of paintball would be a nice way to kick off the trip.

Paintball is an interesting game. The basic rules are really simple — don’t get hit by marble-sized gelatinous balls of paint, fired from pneumatic “markers” carried by the opposing team. Everyone gets a marker and a mask, and the games are organized around familiar themes such as capture the flag, or elimination. The exciting part is that paintballs move at around 300 feet per second (roughly 200 miles per hour) and leave impressive welts that look a lot like ringworm. It’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Anyhow, I decided to document the game, so I brought my camera with me and wandered around the filed, managing to snag a few action shots of my friends diving for cover, getting “bunkered,” and generally having a good time. Photographing paintball is almost as exciting as playing it, because trigger happy people have a tendency to open up on anything that moves. I think I’ll be building some PVC armor for my camera in the near future.

Paintball finished after a couple of hours, and we hit the road. The first leg was rather nice — we went through some pleasant New Zealand country side before driving up along the eastern coast. The coastal drive was a little slow going, because the road had been washed out in several places by some big storms in the past few days, but it was still quite beautiful. The coast was made of big, jagged, black, volcanic rocks, with rather large waves crashing over them. Very impressive looking.

Our first stop was at Poncho, Danny, and T’s friend’s house. His name’s Ben. He dropped out of university this year, because he’s making quite a bit of money importing pearls from China and selling polished shark jaws. Oh, and he also snapped both of his wrists and a leg last year in separate freak accidents, which made it rather hard to get to lectures, and impossible to take notes or write essays. Ack. If there is a higher power in the universe, I can’t think of a better way to tell someone that their life doesn’t involve university studies. Regardless, he’s a great guy to hang out with, and he enjoys paintball, so I think I’ll probably be seeing him again in the future.

After chatting with Ben for about an hour, we continued onwards towards Richmond, by way of Picton and Nelson, a good three or four hour drive. By the time we reached Picton, night had fallen, which made for a long but exciting high speed ride along the twisting mountain roads to Nelson. Nelson is an interesting place. From what I could discern, it’s a small rural town with a bit of a tourism business. We didn’t spend much time there, because Poncho hates Nelson with a passion. I’m not entirely certain why, but I think the story had to do with asshole rednecks with remarkably unfashionable haircuts. Regardless, Richmond is a quiet suburb of Nelson, and is where Danny lives.

We dropped Danny and T off, and headed back to Picton. On the way, we encountered a possum. Not an opossum, but a real possum. They bare very little resemblance to one another, as the possum is a very cute little animal with silky brown fur, but both seem to enjoy wandering out onto highways at odd hours of the night. Unfortunately for possums, New Zealand folks consider them pests, and drivers are instructed to hit them instead of swerve out of the way. However, we decided to swerve, and swerve we did, into the oncoming lane on a blind curve in the middle of the night on a particularly convoluted stretch of road which happens to be favored by logging trucks. But, we saved that confused possums life, so I suppose a few heart stopping seconds of terror was worth it.

We arrived safely at the Picton ferry terminal at eleven o’clock. The ferries don’t typically run after 9:30, so we were expected a cold night camped in the car, but as it turns out, the previous days’ storms had caused a large backlog in ferry traffic, so a high speed ferry was leaving at 1:30 in the morning. We bought the tickets, hid the car in a nice residential neighborhood, and spend the next few hours on a big boat with nothing to do except make up stories convincing the crew that we were Important People and trying to get cheap drinks.

Armed only with our devastatingly good looks, some impressive looking camera equipment, and Poncho’s “I can sell ice to eskimos” wit, we easily convinced the crew that we were a couple of journalists traveling through New Zealand on assignment. We were doing a follow-up story for “Worth Magazine” on three American dot-com millionaires who had taken their loot to New Zealand to start new ventures.

Apparently, flashy American journalists can get away with almost anything here in New Zealand. We took group pictures of the entire crew, including the ship’s captain. We played our music on the ship-wide music system. We ran amok and had a great time. Considering this was a rather large boat, with room for several hundred passengers, and a few hundred tons of cargo (not including passengers’ cars), we consider our venture a success. Even if they were laughing at us behind our backs.

The next few hours are somewhat hazy. We hadn’t slept or eaten much in the past few days, and after having a bit to drink on the ferry, we were a bit temperamental and befuddled upon arriving in Wellington. In the middle of a nice breakfast, we somehow managed to get into a huge argument about subjectivism and logic. Some time later, we were in a very nice office building, trying to convince a receptionist to let us use their posh bathrooms, under the guise of having some sort of appointment with their director or marketing (which actually did the trick). After that we caught a bus to Blair’s house. My last memory in the city is riding past the Beehive, the New Zealand parliament building … and then the bus driver was shaking us awake at our stop. Nice fellow. We owe him a lot. Anyhow, to make a long story shorter, we finally got to sleep around 6 in the morning, after Blair’s mom found us trying to pass out in their driveway (we didn’t think anyone was home).

Blair’s birthday party was great. His parents cooked up a huge amount of food, and played embarrassing tapes of him singing “If I Only Had a Brain” from when he was five years old. Blair’s a third year chemical engineering student who likes to talk about things like thermodynamics, so hearing him sing “if I only had a bawwwaaain” was quite enjoyable.

The next day, it was back to the south island. We slept most of the way across the Cook Straight, then hoofed it back to Danny’s place where we did some more sleeping. The next morning, having recharged our batteries, we went out for Nelson Paintball’s club day.

Imagine this: you’re a reasonable guy (or gal, as the case may be), and you enjoy a good clean game of paintball — that is, people yell “HIT” when they’re hit, everyone plays by the rules, the teams are split up evenly according to skill, and after the game everyone gives advise and accolades where due. The “Team Terminator” guys up in Nelson are not reasonable people, by any measure. They’re a bunch of testosterone pumped hicks who think that they’re hot shit because they have scary looking paintball guns and wear camouflage. Yay. It was Team Terminator against everyone else — 12 jerks who train together and have superior equipment, against 13 of us with rental guns, eight of whom had never played before. You can guess who won. I can handle loosing, but when they started bragging about how they kicked our asses and how we should “learn to play good” and use better equipment … well … that’s just not cricket, as they say down here.

It sucked, so we spent the night bitching and watching kung-fu movies. The next morning, Poncho and I were on the road again, on our way back to Christchurch. We took a different route back, through the West Coast. Absolutely beautiful. A few hours into it, we stopped for lunch at a little roadside store. That’s when I realized I had left my shoes at Danny’s house.

The lady who was working at the store was a nice woman, although we think she may have been a bit lonely. She talked, and talked, and talked, and talked. Wow. We heard all sorts of crazy stories while eating our pies (and being eaten by insects). Apparently, she’s originally from Hungary. When I mentioned I had spent some time in Budapest, she went on and on about corruption in the government. As it turns out, she went to England for college, and spent a fair amount of time drinking with the fellow who ended up being the current president (or whatever) of Hungary. Who would have thought we’d be meeting the Hungarian president’s drinking buddy on a backwater highway in rural New Zealand? Then she gave me a pair of her husband’s shoes, which fit just fine … but they have a terrible, terrible funk to them. Still, it was a very nice gesture.

Anyhow, the rest of the trip was pretty inconsequential. We arrived back in Christchurch in time for dinner, and things have been pretty easy going since returning. We’re heading back to school in about a week, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, although I’m a little worried about getting “rivered” for my birthday. It’s a tradition in the hall to chuck birthday boys and girls into the Avon river, which really isn’t much more than a very cold stream with a whole bunch of beer bottles and duck shit in it. I can’t wait.

On a completely different subject, I started taking jiu-jitsu classes about a month ago. There’s no particular reason why I started studying jiu-jitsu. I’m not a very aggressive person, and I’ve never been in any real fights, but there was a good deal at a club in town, so I thought I’d try it out. Now I’m hooked. Twice a week I hike down to the dojo to get thrown around, choked, kicked, and punched by my fellow classmates. Of course, I also have the opportunity to return the favors — in fact, just before the road trip, I managed to give some guy’s knee a good bashing with my eye, which promptly swelled up, went a funny shade of purple, and made me severely nauseous for about ten minutes.

But it’s not as bad as I make it out to be. I’m hooked because it’s fun. You feel like a super hero the first time you do a basic throw, and your 250 pound partner is easily and gracefully lifted off his feet and deposted at yours. Even better, when you do things right, it’s easy to avoid the painful stuff I mentioned earlier — the incident with my eye was an outstanding exception to what I’ve found to be a generally safe sport. I leave each session excited to return, and it’s a real work out.

A few bruises and a couple bucks are worth it.

Anyhow, tomorrow is my birthday, and I need to track my friends down and figure out what we’re going to be doing. I hope you’re all in high spirits and good health, enjoying nice weather, and investing lots of time and energy into my birthday presents. Heh heh.

Life in the wooly land of New Zealand continues to be quite decent, even though Winter’s waking from it’s blissful slumber. I’m not entirely certain I’m happy to be experiencing two soggy autumns in one year, but my optimism continues … after all, winter means snowboarding, and snowboarding means a good time. Especially now that I have my insurance straightened out: It was touch and go for a bit, but thanks to full coverage for lost baggage, mental anguish, and “kidnapping” ransom, I think I’ll be able to afford a fairly luxurious lifestyle this year.

Bishop Julius Hall, where I live, continues to be an adventure. For most people here, the sweet taste of freedom is still a new and exciting flavour, and the ruckus of youthful corruption continues into the wee hours of the morning, seven days a week. Thankfully, my bedroom is not on the ground floor, and my close neighbors are respectably quiet – they don’t complain when twenty of my good friends descend upon my room with libations and good cheer.

The only adventures I’m not particularly keen on are of a culinary nature. Even though we’re a relatively small lot to feed, the cooks are of an institutional mind set: boil everything, and cover it with remarkably bland sauces. Boring would be a pretty good way to sum it up, which is a sight better than disgusting, but it still wears a bit thin. They don’t even stock such necessities as Tabasco sauce – apparently, some people might think it’s too hot. I was under the impression that it came in optional, easily avoidable, startlingly red bottles for that very reason … but I could be mistaken. Thankfully, there are a few cheap and tasty restaurants within a few minutes walk from the hall, and my good buddy Alex has a kitchen where we’ll be whipping out thai curries and other such flavourful things.

Meat pies are probably the most remarkable food I’ve found which are distinctly absent from the American diet. They’re hand holdable pies filled with hot meats, cheeses, and vegies of questionable origin … but they’re delicious, cheap, and filling. Roadside convenience stores (known as “dairies” down here) stock them at all hours, and they make for great snacks in the middle of the night, on the way to the skate park, on the way to a friend’s house, between classes, after paint balling, pranking, sleeping, rock climbing, drinking, or any other activity which hasn’t impeded one’s ability to mumble “pie” and scrounge up a dollar. If you’re interested in trying one of these delicious creations, but you don’t happen to be in a British commonwealth, they’re sold under the brand name “Ausie Pies” at Costco. Highly recommended.

But enough about food. University is about learning, not eating, and I suspect you’re somewhat interested in the sorts of things I’m learning about. At least, I hope you’re interested.

Out of the six courses I’m studying (mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, art theory, economics, and management science), I’d have to say linguistics is the most fascinating, followed closely by art theory, both of which happen to be taught by amazingly intelligent and humorous professors (and I’m sure that’s not a coincidence). In general terms, linguistics is the study of how we communicate each other: how we make sounds, how we form them into words, and how we string our words in coherent ways so that our fellow human beings can understand our (hopefully) meaningful thoughts. The kicker is that I’m going to have to develop a perfect kiwi accent if I want to have any hope of passing the class – a particularly interesting challenge, with a surprising twist: the rural kiwi accent is extraordinarily similar to the “down east” Maine accent. Go figure – I have to travel to the opposite side of the world in order to learn how to decypher what people from my birth town are saying.

Art Theory is fascinating in that it doesn’t seem to directly address art. It’s a philosophy class, and somewhat redundant to my formally titled philosophy class. The professor has assured us many times that we will eventually get around to an art-oriented discussion, however I’m not too picky – he’s an absolutely marvelous lecturer. Not only does have an extraordinarily engaging presence, but he’s a bit of a non-conformist, and gets quite worked up over how political correctness has ham-strung modern philosophic thought. He doesn’t pull any punches, and has a lot of things to say about almost everything. He’s also an American – and while I don’t particularly care about his native origin, he seems to cater to a lot of Kiwi stereotypes about loud Americans with questionable opinions.

The classes I could do without are my mathematics and management science classes – but I’m going to stick with them through the end of the year. I’d feel like a real idiot if I couldn’t finish a 101 maths class, and I think my biggest problem with the management science class is the lecturer – she’s the antithesis of my art theory professor … amazingly dull. But, the course material is interesting. It’s about studying, evaluating, and designing socio-economic systems. The most obvious application is business, but I think a lot of the principals apply to government and some of the social sciences. It’ll add an interesting perspective to my economics course as well.

Anyhow, all things considered, things are going quite well down here. I hope this letter finds all of you in good health and spirits, and I suppose I’ll be writing again sometime in the next few weeks. Now I think I’m going to go scurry off and find something to eat.

Mm. Pie.

Life down here on our planet’s underbelly is good, very good. The weather’s warm, the people are nice, school’s getting started, and I’m rapidly getting accustomed to the kiwi swing of things. This place is like Portland in a lot of ways – very green, temperate climate, blue skies, lots of parks – but the pace is a bit slower, and the people are friendlier. Even though New Zealand is famous for it’s sheep infestation, I can honestly say I’ve only seen three of them since I arrived, which is a bit dissapointing.

Adjusting to the culture isn’t too hard, although for the first few days I was having a tough time with the accent – I was surprised to hear it every time I talked to someone, because there isn’t really anything omnipresently weird enough about Christchurch to remind me that I’m not in some quiet Portland suburb.

The three things that have really different are the toilets, table etiquette, and driving style. The toilets are odd because they don’t have a couple of buttons instead of levers, and I haven’t been able to discern which direction the water drains because they’re the super efficient type which do a whole lot of wheezing and spraying about.

Table etiquette is a little strange. The proper way to eat is with the fork in the left hand, and the knife in the right, at all times. When I was buying some items for my dorm room at the local shopping center (“centre”), the checkout clerk asked me why Americans don’t eat with their knives. I hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out, but everyone here eats in a two fisted style that would probably be considered impolite back in the States. Regardless, I’ve been building up the manual dexterity to wrestle food about the plate with both utensils, and I expect I’ll probably be giving demonstrations when I get back home.

People in Christchurch are terrible drivers – and I don’t think it because they drive on the wrong side of the street. They’re actually terrible drivers. It’s almost funny: if people here were any more laid back they’d fall over, but put them behind a wheel and suddenly they’re raving maniacs. I think Christchurch is trying to replace all of it’s traffic lights with roundabouts, which makes traffic move a bit more easily, but *really* f’s things up when people forget to look right or just stop in the middle of it for no particularly good reason.

University and residence orientations were pretty enjoyable. It’s nice getting to know folks, although most of them are quite a bit younger than me, and it’s a little odd resetting my brain from work mode to school mode. There’s about 120 people living in our residence hall, which has four buildings and a nice little quad in the middle. It’s the smallest hall on campus, which is nice. I like it that way. The administration also seems to have a pretty open and realistic view of drinking and what-not – they fully expect freshmen (“first years”) to go out and get loaded on fridays, and while they don’t encourage drinking, they talk plainly about having a big meal before going out, and who to contact if you get stuck in a bad situation. They’re good folks.

I’m about a 10 minute walk from the campus rec center, which has a pretty ok climbing wall. I’ve been going down there every couple of days, which has been quite enjoyable. Membership at the rec center is free for us international students, which is a heck of a deal – it’s very well equiped, with a pretty good athletic sciences department in the middle.

I’ve also developed a reasonable tan. It’s quite sunny most days, and I suspect the ozone is a little thinner above this country than it is back in Oregon …

Classes have been good so far. I’m taking philosophy, math, linguistics, management sciences, and art theory while I try to weasel my way into the photography department. Unfortunately, the photography department only takes two international students per year, so the competition is a little stiff …

Anyhow, I should get back to reading my philosophy texts and pick up my room a bit. If any of you feel inclined to send me a letter or package of any sort, my address is:

[deleted]

If you’d like to receive a post card or something, send me your address and I’ll get right on it.

Cheap plane tickets and procrastination are two things that shouldn’t be mixed if you want to have a stress free traveling experience. Unfortunately I’m a cheap procrastinator, so I seem to be really good at backing myself into awkward situations. Lets take this current journey as an example.

Instead of buying plane tickets as soon as I was accepted to the University of Canterbury, I put it off until mid-January. I have two good excuses, though – my trip to Hong Kong and the Christmas season took a little wind out of my sails, and I was also trying to negotiate a cheap “round the world” ticket, which would let me go from Portland to Christchurch to Frankfurt to New York (or Rio de Janeiro) and back to Portland in time for next Christmas. But alas, no one had an RTW ticket that would fit comfortably in my budget, so I had to do some one way ticket hunting.

So that’s the procrastination bit. Here’s the cheap bit: I’ve found that the people at the check in counters will happily reassign your seats if there’s room on the plane – you probably won’t get in to first class, but they’ll move you towards the front of the economy cabin (which is quieter) and give you an isle or window seat – which means that the cheapest possible bit bucket tickets can usually translate into quite comfortable seating arangements.

I have three places I go for cheap tickets: Azumano Travel, Priceline, and Orbitz. Azumano is a “real” travel agency with offices in Portland, and some of the agents really enjoy the hunt for cheap trips. Priceline is the company which used to run the terribly irritating William Shatner ads on television – you get to bid on vaguely described tickets, but you have to be a bit flexible to get the best deals. Orbitz is an interesting site which is currently fighting lawsuits from a couple companies, because it’s run by a consortium of a good number of the world’s major airlines who use it to dump their cheap tickets.

For this trip, Orbitz worked out the best. $1200 for the most direct one way trip to New Zealand on one month’s notice is a pretty damn good deal. Portland to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Aukland, Aukland to Christchurch – I would leave on the 13th of February, endure a 12 hour lay over in LA, and step off a plane in Christchurch on the 15th, ready to kick some academic buttocks for the first time since leaving Simon Frasier University in 1998.

The trick with Orbitz is to use the multi-city option if you’re going to be hopping around on your journey … if you’re willing to endure long lay overs on some of the hops. My Portland to Christchurch ticket was running in the neighborhood of $1600 for a pre-packaged plan, but the multi-city option hacked off a $400 chunk, and all I had to endure was 12 hours in Los Angeles. It’s almost like getting paid $33 bucks an hour to wait. I can do that.

Of course, I also ticked the option box for “flexible flight schedule,” which means my flights could be moved around without my permission in order to get the cheapest possible fare. Of course, a few days before my supposed flight out of Portland, I get an e-mail with an update: My flight leaves at 7 AM on the 12th, not the 13th. Of course, the other tickets weren’t bumped up … so my painful 12 hour layover became a terrifying 36 hour ordeal.

And, par for the course, a day earlier I had agreed to assist on an evening shoot on the 11th. The photographer was a good friend of mine, and I thought it would be nice to work with him one last time. Besides, I thought I had another day to pack …

To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much of the night of the 11th, except that I managed to pack or throw out about 95% of my stuff over the course of about 10 hours. Only a few things kept me reasonably sane – Nova, who’s extraordinarily good at planning things; Frank, the fluffy white cat; a pot of super-strong french-pressed coffee; and Poncho, who walked from downtown in the cold and wet at some god aweful hour of the morning to help me pack, and escort me to the airport, like I did for him almost exactly a year ago when he was leaving for the University of Christchurch.

The flight to LA was uneventful. There was some breakfast concoction, but other then that I was zonked out from the time we rolled away from the terminal until we touched down at LAX.

Another travel tip: Avoid LAX if at all possible. It’s a terrible airport. Dingy, run down, funny smelling, and in several other ways nasty. “Customer service” representatives are assholes, and it’s laid out in the most inconvenient possible way. But take my opinion with a grain of salt – I’m usually pretty surly after waking up.

Two hours later, after getting hassled by soliciters and the LAPD (the shuttle bus ran a red light), and lugging my 23094823049823 pound board bag all over heck and back, I finally arrived at Izzy & Pete Han’s pad for a bit o’ chillin’ and nappin’.

I took some rather entertaining pictures of Izzy to send home and freak people out — no, he’s not really a gangster, it’s just funny to dress him up like one, and give him tequila, Airsoft guns, and a big bag of powdered sugar. To compensate for his time, I took Izzy out to a nice italian dinner … then I slept the night through.

I’m going to go take a shower, call the shuttle bus, and in other ways prep for my 14 hour intercontinental flight.

Word up from L.A.

The good news is that I’m writing to you from my computer at home sweet home. The bad news is that I’m severely jet lagged, so this e-mail may be a bit discombobulated …

Two weeks is hardly enough time to see a single country, especially one like China. Technically, I suppose Hong Kong is now a Chinese territory, but it’s about as different from Guangzhou as … well … I can’t actually think of a reasonable comparison here in the United States. A week here, a week there – just enough to get a good first taste, but not enough to adapt and really explore. Regardless, the trip was more than worth the time and money …

The adventure getting home was rather … adventurous. Poncho and I were on separate flights – they left and arrived at about the same time, so we were probably never more than 300 miles away from each other at any given time. When we arrived in Vancouver … no one was there to meet us.

Which isn’t such a terrible thing … I mean, I know Vancouver pretty well, and it WAS 9:30 in the morning … an early hour that would have required an all night drive to make. We figured we’d head to the Lion’s Pub as planned to wait things out.

At around 3 o’clock, we started to get a bit concerned. Our fears were confirmed when Nova called the pub and told me that no one was anywhere near Canada, or even on their way up there. Damn. So I called Tom – it turns out he wasn’t able to get wheels, and besides, I put the wrong number for his pager in my last e-mail. Doh.

A quick call to Amtrak sorted things out … partially. We could get as far as Seattle that night, on a train leaving Vancouver at 6:00 PM. Poncho suggested we track down Timmy, his good buddy from his days at Southern Oregon University who’s now at Evergreen in Olympia. But ol’ Timmy hadn’t been seen for a few years (he had been living in China … how ironic), so we weren’t entirely certain it would pan out.

But the phone number we had was right, and Tim was on the ball – he said he’d pick us up in Seattle, and that we could crash on his futon, no problem at all.

After arriving at the train station, we find out we’re actually going to be on a bus. I hate busses. Ugh. It’s almost amusing, though – every single time I’ve taken the “train” from Vancouver into the States, it’s always been a bus! Everyone will tell you it’s a train, until you actually arrive at the station, and they say “oops, it’s been changed into a bus.” You’d think they’d figure it out, or at least be honest with folks on the phone. Oh well. It was a ride, and I wasn’t going to complain too much.

Crossing the border while severely jet lagged, with little sleep, and after having celebrated our return to North America in a pub, was an interesting excersize. We were dirty and smelly guys with fat backpacks and we undoubtedly looked half dead or terrifyingly stoned. I think they asked me what my birthday was, and just waved me through. Eeesh.

Arriving in Seattle, Mr. Tim was happy to see us, and proceded to drag us into a little club and feed us more beer.

Coincidentally, our good buddy Chris Franz was headed down to Portland the next day, after being stranded somewhere on the Olympic Penninsula due to car troubles. To make a long story short, Poncho and I crashed out at Tim’s pad, Chris picked us up the next afternoon … and here I am, safe and sound, back at home.

And now I’m going to bed. Oi.

I’m back from a little adventurin’ in China, and tomorrow I’m hoppin’ on a plane and heading to Vancouver. China was … crazy. At least, the city we were in was pretty nuts. I’m having some issues accepting the notion that China is a communist country – everything I saw was privatized, and although there’s undoubtedly a bit of subsidising from the government, it’s essentially a basic capitalistic and entrepenurial economy with a weird quasi-republic semi-dictatorship government behind it. But enough political talk. China is far from any sort of western romantic notion of the Far East – everything I saw was f—– filthy, the people love staring and pointing at us white kids, and the security guards at our gracious hosts’ place are racist sons of bitches who threatened to call the cops and put us in Chinese Lockdown almost every time we tried to get back to where we were living. The complete lack of any sort of organized traffic system added spice to every outing, and the lack of governors on the go-cart motors made it a heck of a lot more exciting than any wussy go-cart I’ve tried in the United States. That, and the fact that the best track is in a gutted and nearly abandon mall, the carts burst into flames, throw chains, and otherwise misbehave in dangerous ways. We played a lot of pool, drank a lot of tea, gorged ourselves on REALLY GOOD chinese food (I’m not sure I’ll be able to stomach the sorry excuses we have state-side), and consumed entirely too much PBR and Kingway beer.

I like China, and I’d like to see more of it, but I don’t think I could handle living there. There’s tons more to write about, but I gotta get some shut-eye tonight before my terrifying journey back over the Pacific.

For those of you who are interested in making the road trip to the Vancouver BC International Airport to meet Poncho and I, we will be arriving around 9:30-ish AM on the 18th. Because our flights are a little whacky, we’ll either be arriving together or separately on either Cathay Pacific flight CX888, or Air Canada flight 12.

If you’re unable to make it to Vancouver by 9:30-ish in the morning, we’re going to head to the Lion’s Pub in downtown Vancouver, a couple blocks from the “Canada Place” convention center (also known as “The Sails,” near Gastown) – we’re both sick and tired of guzzling PBR and cheap Chinese brews, so a few pints of good beer and a basket of onion rings will probably keep us occupied for a while. If we’re no where to be found, we’re either in transit between the airport and the pub, or out and about because there’s only so much beer and onion rings a travel weary man can consume. Check with the bar tenders to see if we’ve left a message.

I beleive Tom is the man to talk to if you want to head north and meet us – his pager number is [deleted]. I recommend you leave lengthy, rambling voice mails. He really likes that. Heh.

Anyhow, I hope this e-mail finds you all in good health and high spirits – I’ve had a great time here, and it would suck to come home to a bunch of depressed sick people.

Today wasn’t particularly action packed, but it was good none the less. I woke up early this morning, and did a bit of reading and Game Boy playing while waiting for the other fellows to arise from slumber. I spent a bit of time wrestling images off my digital camera, but to no avail – this dang computer keeps crashing. Oh well.Most of the day was spent rowing. We had the fantastic notion that it would be a lot of fun to rent a boat and visit some islands, but we ended up with a really sketchy row boat, with 4 different sized oars, and the sorriest excuse for oar-locks I’ve ever had to deal with. It’s damn near impossible to get anywhere with 4 different sized paddles, especially when they pop out of the locks every third or fourth stroke. Never the less, we managed to cross a fair amount of water and land ourselves on a deserted island … which was so strewn with trash and tangled brambles that we couldn’t really do much there anyhow. Regardless, the spirit of adventure endured: We salvaged a kite, and hacked our way into the biomass a good distance before realizing that we weren’t *really* getting anywhere, and it wasn’t for a *really* good reason. Defeated, we turned away to frantically splash our way back across the bay (at least a mile) before night set in.

Dinner was pretty standard fare. I’m actually starting to crave miscelanious fried organ and noodle dishes now, although something always catches me off guard every time I eat. Oh, and a few of you might appreciate this: The beer of choice in lots of these little places we visit is PBR. PBR! And it’s CHEAPER than it is in the United States! Amazing!

In other news: We had a little problem getting my Chinese visa – apparently they had NO idea what “self employed” meant. Grunt. After a little negotiations on the phone, Zafirlah sorted things out … with the help of about $30. We leave on Wednesday (the 12th, I think).

Phew. Well, I’m exhausted, so I think I’m going to go watch some television and relax on the couch.

Hello again from Hong Kong!

The last couple of days have been grand – we’ve been doing a bit of the tourism thing, visiting The Peak and some of the downtown shopping malls and what not. The only problem I’ve had is the computer crashing every time I try to download images from my camera.

Anyhow, the dietary excitement continues with “beef organ,” ox tail, and thinly sliced ox tongue. The tongue and tail were pretty good, but the “beef organ” worried me a bit – what the hell part of a cow is neon orange with hexagonally shaped membranous structures? Further questioned, our friend and guide Zafirlah meerly shruged his shoulders and laughed. “Beef organ!” Ack.

After a morning (well, afternoon) dim sum, we went to The Peak. It’s a 30 minute bus ride out of downtown Hong Kong, up some particularly steep and twisty roads on a double decker bus. Quite exciting. The Peak is a tourist trap of the worst sort (second only to Wall Drug) – it’s a mall on top of a mountain, complete with a Haagen-Dazs icecreamery and Ripley’s Believe it or Not “Odditorium.” Utter crap, but the view was really cool.

Then it was off to grandma’s for some good ol’ fashioned Hong Kongese cookin – two boiling pots of water, into which slices of meat, tofu, bok choy, fish/lobster/”meat” balls, squid, and shrimp-on-a-stick are inserted. It’s a sort of perpetual stew – if you want beef, you pick some raw meat off a plater and drop it in, wait a few minutes for it to cook, then fish it out along with whatever other goodies happen to be in there. Pretty decent, although we were already kind of full from Haagen-Dazs, so we ended up getting stuffed stupid … heaven forbid Zafirlah’s family would let us walk away from a table without eating our own weight in regional cuisine.

After dinner, we went off drinkin’ with some of Zafirlah’s friends in a crazy big basement bar. What can I say … the people here are light weights. When it comes to destroying an enormous amount of nearly free alcohol, I think we came out on top. I think we paid about $12 US for 4 hours of unlimited refills, and I’m pretty certain we consumed more then that. Then we headed off for a few hours of karaoke … which doesn’t work like it does in the States. We essentially rent a closet with a stereo, TV, and couch in it, and every now and then a waiter pops in to drop off food and drinks. (Un)fortunately, most of the songs were in Cantonese, so I had an easy out on the singing bit, with the exception of a little Bee Gees – Poncho and my duet seemed to have scared the hell out of them, because they never seemed to be able to get another English song on the system despite our pleading and mild threats.

So we woke up today feelin’ a bit groggy around 2pm. We headed down to the local market, picked up some “chow fun” (big steamed rice noodles with four sauces), and headed downtown for a bit of the Hong Kong Holiday Shopping Experience. It was crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people buying so much stuff, crammed into narrow streets that are lit up with huge neon and backlit displays. Neat to experience once, but I don’t think its something I’m particularly keen on doing often. Anyhow, we spent a bit of time in a video arcade, I bought myself a watch (no, it’s not a fake rolex .. I’ll find one of those later), and headed out to dinner at a korean barbeque restaurant.

The korean barbeque was a heck of a lot of fun. It works like this: there’s a big hot plate in the middle of the table, and you put uncooked meats and vegies on it. Pretty simple. I have no idea why I haven’t seen it before, other than the fact that the FDA really freaks out about things like raw chicken at the dinner table. Quite delicious.

After that, a movie: Spy Games. Yeah, it’s an American movie … but it was playing at the right time, and it was a pretty decent flick. I recommend it. I think we’re going to try and catch a real Hong Kong action movie while we’re here, I mean, those movies are a huge inspiration to us all (right?), so it’s a must-do item.

Now we’re crashing out at Zafirlah’s, and I’m fighting a loosing battle with his computer, trying to make it cooperate with my camera. Grumble grumble. Oh well. We’ll see what happens …