Shaving. It sucks.

I don't like to hate, life is way too short. I can count on one hand the people in life I have met that I actively despise, and still have fingers left over. There are many people I haven't met that I hate, but I am sure if I met them in real life I would no doubt reconsider - except for Chris Martin off of Coldplay. I don't think I would ever tire of punching him in the throat.
One thing I do hate though is shaving. Not so much the act itself, more the aftermath, and mainly the bleeding and the rash. No matter what preparations I take, or any kind of after care, my chin always ends up with more pus than a leper with a multitude of infected tumours. I swear it is a miracle that I haven't yet been found languishing on a bathroom floor having almost bled out through my nut sac.
I find it's a necessary evil though, as I am not too fond of having a beard for a few reasons. Namely, I generally associate beards with sandal-wearing tree-hugging hippies with a fondness for tie-dye, or fat, sweaty middle aged perverts hanging out the back of children. And all the mini-beard combinations I associate with nob-heads.
There is also the worry of walking around with half a hot-dog matted into the hair. I was once on a training course run by a guy with a big, long, ZZ Top style beard. While he was watching us try some of the practical exercises, eating a sandwich, he sneezed. A vile combination of bread, cheese, and sputum ended up in a big lump halfway down - and fused into - his face fuzz. Watching him shamelessly trying to remove it almost put me off bread, cheese and sputum for life.
It's a rock/hard place situation for me however, as the only thing that rivals my vanity in magnitude is my laziness. And although I have made peace with being a scruffy twat, I don't like people to know this about me straight off the bat. I'd rather they had to work a little bit to find this out. So with two events in mind - first day at a new job followed the next day by casual ski instructor try-outs at Coronet Peak - I hacked at my face once again for what will no doubt be the last time for a few weeks at least.

The work - not too bad. I only have a few shifts this week. The first day we just spent a little time going through ski/board fitting, went for a drive to check out the hotels that the deliveries go to and then just hung around waiting for people to want to hire equipment. Which many of them didn't and probably won't until well into next week. So essentially right now my job is just like being unemployed still, just in a different location, with better pay, and with less Jeremy Kyle and Loose Women (which I seriously think should be renamed to Four Sluts on a Sofa).

The casual try-outs, slightly different. I recalled the horrific Quiksilver interview and how my lack of research possibly scuppered my chances of being a retail tard, and knuckled down a few days beforehand to go through all the New Zealand ski teaching progressions to refresh them in my head. I started panicking somewhat, as the more I read, the more I forgot, and the more I confused myself. But I persevered and spent every minute that I wasn't looking at Norwegian lesbian porn with my nose stuck in the manual. The nights preceding it, the bus ride in the morning, whilst eating breakfast at McDonalds, the coach ride up the hill. Every single spare minute that I didn't have an internet connection to distract me.
The try-outs were to be a brutal affair. There were around 18 skiers, and they were looking to hire 8. Split into two groups, the deal was that the morning would be spent having skiing assessments, and the afternoon would be teaching assessments. At any point during the day the group would stop, and if anyone didn't meet the required standards they were taken aside and told not to bother carrying on. It was quite similar to the dance-off scene in Grease, but with less gayness and more career at stake. I approached the ski school director beforehand, a Frenchman with a very thick moustache that I swear I saw mushy peas stuck in, and explained that I had a commitment with my current job and could only probably work a few days per week as this job will in all likelihood turn full time. He told me they were really looking for a solid 5 days, 6 during school holidays, so not to bother trying out for it but he appreciated my turning up and especially letting him know this. I appreciated his appreciation, as much as you can appreciate a Frenchman, and just spent the rest of the day skiing.

Elsewhere, the spare room in the house has now been filled. In a bizarre sequence of events a Japanese girl and Indian fella were shown around on a Friday night and then asked which one of them the room was for. Confusion was rife as they proclaimed it was for neither of them. They then explained that it was for a friend of theirs who was arriving from Japan on Saturday. So they were subtly told to maybe pop back when the person that wanted to move in was actually in the country. I guess I only find this situation odd because I know my friends, and I can't trust them enough to leave my mobile phone unattended let alone leave them to find me a place to live.
However, their friend came back on Sunday night, liked the place and moved in Monday. She then spent the day on the following Saturday doing the whole CV whoring thing, and has a job lined up to start on Sunday. Less than a week she has been in Queenstown, and already has a place to live and a job. I know, I have both, I should consider myself lucky, but I can't help but feel that a combination of being as flabby-titted as I was when I was clinically obese, and a wonderbra, may have got me in there sooner.

That is all for now. Please excuse what will most likely be a lack of forthcoming updates, I don't see too much of interest happening in the next few weeks until the season gets off into full swing. I apologise, but I hope you will appreciate that the first few weeks I had a lot pent up to report on so it all came out pretty quickly and now I have got it all out of my system, it will slowly peter out into a bit of a trickle, no doubt leaving you with a sense of unfulfillment and disappointment. In fact, imagine it akin to a sexual experience with me.

Except that when I apologise for the blog, I actually mean it.