A massive exercise in extreme vulgarity.

I have never been one to shy away from vulgarity.  Those that know me well, and those that don't know me well at all either, will still probably know that vulgarity is something I positively embrace.  In fact, at times I am so vulgar that I would probably wait until vulgarity falls asleep whilst I am embracing it, and then do something extremely vulgar to it.

This year's end of season party didn't really offer me much chance to be too vulgar however.  With a retro ski theme, the best I could do was to borrow a bright yellow one piece, and wear very little underneath it.  I tried, with what little I had to work with, and at one point was talking to the co-owner of the company stripped down to the waist whilst covering my nipples, (or not covering my nipples, who knows, I had taken advantage of the open bar a little too much by that point), (or walked around after her trying to encourage her to touch my nipples depending on whose version of events you get), but that is about as far as I went that night.  My decision to wear little under the ski suit I came to regret early on, when we were taken on another jet boat ride before the evening began unfortunately in the freezing rain.

So here I go on a bit of a tangent.  As you can tell by my little "about me" box up there to the right, I fled normal life in England a while ago.  Yep, I had a proper job, for about 10 years.  I liked it a lot.  It was sometimes challenging, it was in an area I liked (not geographically), and it paid well.  Not well enough for me to buy a llama to lead around town to spit on all the chavvy scum I deemed unworthy of my own saliva.  Nor could I pay a midget and a dwarf to fight to the death on a whim, to finally discover which is the superior race.  But I did alright.  I rented a nice flat, had a car that looked a little bit like K.I.T.T. off of Knight Rider (if you really squinted, from a distance, looking through tracing paper), and didn't have to think twice if I needed to buy clean/flat clothes because mine were dirty/needed ironing.

But it was a life/quality balance.  I had no responsibility, no-one depended on me, and I was plodding.  Waking up every day to the same old routine, shower, work, finish work, have dinner, wait for the weekend, binge drink all weekend and wake up on Sunday to fingers that smell of chili sauce (careful now, despite my vulgarity I wasn't going there), and a lounge that stinks of half eaten kebab (but you can make of that one what you will), spend all Sunday watching movies on the couch in my underwear, go to bed, Monday.

So yeah, see above.  I jacked it in.  I yearned to be in a place where I had to actually save for something I really wanted.  I figured that you appreciate the material possessions more when you have to work hard and make sacrifices to obtain them.  And so here I am now, in a beautiful place where I wake up every morning to the view you see right at the top of the page, in a job with some awesome people that I love, where I get to meet new and interesting people every day, where I also get to meet old and dull people every day, not earning the greatest wage in the world, but it's enough to keep me living here and pay for coffee and the occasional beer which is all I really need in life.

Does it sound like I am trying to convince myself I did the right thing?  Of course I am.  I always am.  Every now and again I wake up wondering if I have done the right thing.  Should I have got this out of the way when I was younger?  Maybe so.  Do I worry that I threw away a life back home that was pretty comfortable to live in an environment where every six months I have a tense wait to see if my visa will be renewed or not?  Of course.  But you know what, if I hadn't taken that potentially massive leap, I wouldn't have met half of the amazing people I have.  I wouldn't have made friends and formed relationships with all the people all over the globe if I hadn't decided I wasn't really "going places" back home.  And I wouldn't have done anywhere near the amount of amazing things I have done here.  And here comes the vulgarity......

Since I have been in Queenstown, I have:

• Been to Milford Sound on a coach day trip
• White water rafting
• Canyon Swing
• Nevis Bungy (134m)
• Nevis Arc
• Kawarau Bridge Bungy (43m)
• Kawarau Jet (twice)
• Shotover Jet
• Skippers Canyon Jet
• Wilderness Safari (including another jet boat ride)
• River Surfing
• Paragliding
• Hang gliding
• Quad biking
• Snowmobiling
• Skydiving
• TSS Earnslaw Steamship
• Kayaking
• Clay target shooting
• Gondola, Kiwi Haka show and buffet dinner
• Gondola and buffet dinner
• Season passes for one of the ski hills for 2 seasons

And most recently I went back to Milford Sound, this time flying there and back.  You tend to forget that behind the mountains you can see, there are other mountains.  Loads of them in fact.  We flew over the Routeburn and Milford walking tracks, at least one of which I hope to do during the summer, and I got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot on the way back, an experience which left me sitting rigid with fear just in case my knee rubbed against the big red button that says "Do not rub knee against".  There were only four of us on the cruise this time around, which made the experience all the more personal, however the day was tainted by the fact that one of the others on the cruise was wearing the same trainers as me.  And to top it all off, despite spending well over a year selling a Milford Sound day trip to people, and telling those people to wrap up warm because it will be cold, I turned up for a cruise at 9 o'clock in the morning wearing shorts and a thin hoodie.  It was a morning where I didn't need to strip down to the waist as my nipples were clearly visible from a distance of miles through the scant clothing I was wearing.

So next time I wake up and wonder what the hell I am doing here, on the other side of the world, away from all the people I have known and loved for years, I will take a deep breath and think about all the friendships and relationships I have since formed, how I now have friends worldwide who I hope would be happy to see me (in small doses), how my quality of life has improved despite how horrified my Mother would be if she saw the amount of holes in my underwear, how I am not stuck commuting every day on a sweaty train, or bumper to bumper on the motorway, how I love being here and would be exceptionally sad if I had to leave, and how I have managed to experience over $6500 worth of products and adventures for absolutely nothing.  Zilch, nada, gratis, zero, nil, fuck-all.  So there's your cock-shitting vulgarity.

Wow. Awkward.

I despise awkward situations. You know those times where you say or do something you know you shouldn't say or do, to the wrong person, or even to the right person who takes it the wrong way, and end up looking down at your shoes, raising your eyebrows slightly, whistling to fill the uncomfortable silence before bidding a stuttering farewell knowing full well that when that person says, "See you later", you know they have no intention of doing so and are in fact thinking, "What a prick".

Despite my hatred of these situations, I quite often find myself in them. Don't get me wrong, I am no Prince Phillip. I don't stumble around all day working my way into Larry David-esque situations of awkwardness. But my socially-acceptable-and-appropriate scale often differs to that of other people.

In recent years I have found myself being incredibly rude about the Scottish and how they would deep fry their shoes if shoes were edible. Generally accepted as fact by most people, but not the girl I was talking to at the time who turned out to be Scottish. I guess I should have paid attention to the accent.

Cutting out a square of masking tape at work, colouring it in black and sticking it to the top lip in a hilarious homage to Adolf Hitler can be awkward when you turn around and come nose to nose with a customer you didn't realise was there.

Babies and pregnancy can be a massive minefield for us guys. Especially when you are talking to a friend of a friend about their impending delivery when they have in fact already delivered said baby months previously. I guess the clue should have been the fact that she didn't look pregnant in any way at all, and was in a pub drinking alcohol.

Waking up next to a one-night relationship only for her to turn and face you, then leap out of bed screaming "Oh my God, you're not my boyfriend". Where do you go from there?

None of the above however, comes even close to the end of ski season party I recently attended. If you have read previous posts, you will know that I was highly likely to go as something offensive or disgusting. And I don't like to think I disappointed. But as much as I expected something like this to happen, nothing could prepare me for the moment that the wife of the director of the company who kindly employed me during the winter, and who I hoped to work for during the summer approached me and asked what I had come as. My eyes dropped to the floor to look at my shoes. My eyebrows raised slightly and as I got ready to fill the uncomfortable silence with whistling before walking off, I murmured "A scrotum".



In my defense, I had heard people tell me they were going as a sperm, sanitary towels, and other equally disgusting items. No-one followed through on that, leaving me with the dubious honour of wearing the only oversized genital-related costume in the room.

To be fair, I spent a lot of time over the previous days working on my scrotum. I would sit alone, in my room, whiling away the hours, just peacefully working on my scrotum. And a work of art it was, aside from the fact that being made from chicken wire fencing with no protection on the inside, I was essentially wearing an outfit made from barbed wire, which my arms did not thank me for the next day. And this also led to more awkwardness when I spoke to my mother who said, and I quote, "I saw the photos of your scrotum on Facebook". A sentence I NEVER want to hear from my mothers' mouth again.

And so after a month of unemployment, I now have a job once again. I attended a few interviews, none of which led to any hilariously uncomfortable situations, and in the end was hired once more by the company I worked for during the winter. This time in a front line sales role, meaning I get to talk to people, and sell them all the activities Queenstown has to offer. But more importantly, I get to do all the activities for nowt. Zilch. Nada. Gratis. Frickin free innit. And the activities we sell that the company actually own, I get paid to do.

So I went to Milford Sound, which is a sound rather than a fjord, which is a body of water and not a car. That's all I learnt from the trip, but I did take lots of photos in an effort to try and be a tourist again. I was surprisingly impressed with some of the scenery on the way. I arrogantly say that because working seasonal jobs means that frequently you wake up with a mountain in your back garden, so some of it is very, well, pah. However a lot of the Lord of the Rings locations are on the way, and it is obvious why they were filmed there as a lot of the journey is breath-taking.

I have also been River Surfing, which involves a body board, a wet suit, a river, some rapids and a lot of struggling to stay alive. And this time I DID freak out when my face got wet, purely due to the amount of water I inhaled, and a feeling of impending doom as I slapped the surface of the water like a tantrum throwing 7 year old with mental health issues. The jury is still out on how much I enjoyed this, having (as I previously mentioned) not been involved in any kind of water activity for many years. It also led to another awkward moment on the bus, involving the question "So who was it that pissed in the wetsuit"? and a finger pointed squarely at my head. It wasn't due to fear, purely that I couldn't hold it any longer. For Christ's sake, my bladder was full because I had drunk half the river on the way down it!

I have also fulfilled a childhood ambition, and been Hang Gliding. I recall wanting to do it when I was a tiny person, and looked into doing for charity. There was a fee of £275 to do it, unless you raise £3,500 for whichever charity it was at which point it was free, both scenarios slightly out of a ten year olds grasp. Also, my mum wouldn't let me. But now I am older! And I can do it free! And my mum is on the other side of the world! So that's one childhood ambition realised, now if I can just get close enough to Winona Ryders drink, I may fulfil the other.

I have a few other things planned which will be in the coming weeks hopefully. The Nevis arc and bungy (highest bungy in the world I believe), skydiving (fingers crossed), canyoning (despite them not hiring me), it's an endless extreme playground right now, and I don't have to pay for any of it!

So there you have it kids, until next time if I can leave you with one tiny snippet of fucked up wisdom, it would be that nothing says "employ me" like talking to your bosses as a giant ball sac.