Be prepared.

Way back in December 2003, myself and three friends went for a weekend in Amsterdam. I am sure it is a lovely place, however we were staying in the middle of the red light district, so my views of the city were tainted by, to be frank, drug dealers and whores. Not my cup of tea to be honest, those drug dealers. And the closest we got to any kind of sex show was in Hooters, which was just ropey girls with huge knockers, covered by t-shirts. Nothing against that, they're not pieces of meat after all. But if I'm paying exorbitant prices for tepid lager, I would like a side order of at least a bit of nipple please. Especially when that glass of lager is only half full due to the other half being taken up by head (too obvious). Their refusal to top up our lager only led us to spend a lot of time in the hotel bar.

It was during one of these afternoons that I was casually gazing out of the window, across the canal. On the other side of the road, there was a bum. A tramp, not an anus. He was ambling along the sidewalk, staggering a little, clearly worse for wear. After stumbling for a few minutes, nature called and he slowly worked his way towards a covered doorway. I assumed he was just going for onesies, but he slowly pulled down his pants and squatted, and did his dirty business right there on the street. Impressed?? Of course not. Neither was I at the time. In fact up until this point I was positively disgusted. But then as he stood he slowly reached into his jacket and pulled out a full roll of toilet paper, ripped off a couple of sheets, wiped, discarded, pants up, staggered on. And as disgusting as the initial act of defecation was, I can't help but feel he redeemed himself somewhat by actually carrying a roll of paper around with him for such emergencies. I was pretty awestruck if I'm honest, it takes a special person to be that prepared.

Preparation has never been one of my strong points, which is how I found myself at Heathrow airport after travelling for around 40 hours, maybe a bit more, with a mouth that felt like I had spent the entire journey licking Amsterdam Bums bum. Once again I had loaded my bag with entertainment - laptop, more books than I could read in 3 lifetimes, magazines, iPod, camera, a huge bag of gummi bears thanks to the wonderful girlfriend, but no toothpaste, or toothbrush, or anything that would make sitting next to me on a nigh on 30 hour flight a pleasant experience.

The first 9 hours of travel was by coach, essentially the same journey I made from Christchurch to Queenstown almost a year ago but in reverse. From Queenstown to Lake Tekapo the driver was a chap I worked with during the winter, so the journey was filled with chat. Being an occasional miserable bastard, I would have been quite happy with the iPod in, but decided to be amiable for a while, however when New Driver took over at Tekapo he began by asking me a few questions about how I knew Previous Driver which I cleverly parried with one word answers, before settling in to listen to inane chatter on the iPod. And becoming silently enraged by a husband asking his wife rather loudly as they boarded the coach where the best place to sit for her travel sickness would be. Please. That loudly? Mentioning travel sickness? Sorry, would you like me to give up my seat at the front of the coach so you don't get all queasy? Or wait, is it because you want to sit at the front of the coach to get better views? I'm not moving, so I would suggest you just man the fuck up and deal with it. We are human beings, we were designed to move. Get over it.

As we entered Christchurch in the early evening, we became embroiled in the first traffic I have seen for a while. Given my ultimate destination - the United Kingdom - this just brought back memories of being stuck in four lanes of stop/start traffic, moving an average of 3 inches per millennia. This was no M25, this was New Zealand traffic, which essentially consists of more than 5 cars but less than 20, so we moved on pretty quick. My eyes lit up as we passed Warehouse Extra, then my heart sank as I remembered it's as disappointing as gearing up for a huge poo only for it to drop out in pellet form. My heart sank even further as suppressed memories of Masturbating Israeli reared their ugly heads again.

I arrived at Christchurch airport with approximately a third of the gummi bears left, and began the epic flight back to England. I am completely torn as far as flying goes. It's clearly a necessary evil, and I would rather do the entire New Zealand to England in one trip without breaking it up, but it's a lot of time to sit in one place a zillion miles in the sky. Sure, they try and make it as comfortable as possible by supplying you with a fibre-glass blanket and a pillow made up of 4 sheets of A4 paper folded in half, pritt-sticked together and stuffed with shredded paper, but there is no getting around the fact that the person in front of you will always recline their seat as fast and as hard as possible at the exact moment you are taking a sip of molten coffee. I'm not worried about Deep Veined Thrombosis, which is another thing that just requires people to stop wearing stupid socks and running on the spot for 10 minutes out of every 15, and just manning up a smidgen. I'm not too worried about major incidents either, after all whatever is going to happen, is going to happen. What does concern me is who I will end up sitting next to. Will they smell? Will they be fat? I paid for this seat, I don't want half of someone else spilling over into it. Snorer? Frenchman? The horrific possibilities are endless. The last thing I want is what happened on the way to Canada a few years back. A French-Canadian woman who insisted on talking to me instead of her husband, but only when I was eating. Asking me questions as my fork was nearing my mouth. Irritating to the nth degree. And French-Canadians are the worst kind of person. These guys are Canadian, but they actually want to be French. Imagine that.

But on the plus side, and this is what I really look forward to about flying, I have pretty much an entire day where I don't have to worry about food. The only critical decision I have to make is do I want chicken or beef. Or lamb or chicken. Or chicken or fish (chicken; as a seafood-phobe the thought of sitting in an aircraft cabin filled with the aroma of fish disgusts me almost as much as sitting next to a French-Canadian). I don't have to stand in the supermarket going back and forth over what I want for dinner, what I already have to make the dish, what I need, oh no. For a day I am told when to eat, pretty much what to eat, and that to me is utter bliss.

Another plus side? Oh yes, I am completely on a roll here with the positivity, I was flying back via Hong Kong. Hong Kong airport is great. L.A. is terrible. At L.A. when you alight the plane they usher you into a room for a few hours where you have to sit and wait for refuelling, with no opportunity to do anything else but sit there and concentrate on not looking like you are about to do something bad for fear of getting shot by an over-zealous gun-toting cowboy who clocked you as a potential fundamentalist just because you have a little bit of a beard. In Hong Kong they let you back into the departure area. You can walk around, check the Internet, have a Starbucks, and more importantly have a smoke. There are still smoking rooms in Hong Kong airport which is phenomenal in my opinion. Sure, they have glass fronts which I assume is so that you can sit in there and watch the world go by still feeling like a part of it, when in fact it actually makes you feel like a monkey in a cage, a relic of days gone by, a window for children to point at and ask their parents what those creatures are doing? For the parents to reply that they are smoking, and that it used to be a really cool thing to do in the old days and that it used to be good for you until science got in the way. But still, breaking up the journey with a smoke? Awesome. Yes please.

When I got back to Heathrow with rotten-arse-mouth, I was collected by my Father and taken home where I have now been for a little over a week. And it has been a manic week of catching up with people. My time is limited, and I have spent a lot of it writing this fetid nonsense, but I am catching up with who I can, when I can. It is difficult to get everyone in as for some reason people have jobs which means their days are filled with essential activities, but I have been doing what I can. And there is a lot to catch up on and a lot of things I have done that I didn't realised I missed so much until now.

That list includes, but is not limited to family, friends and everything that has happened in all of their lives while I have been away, good curry, McDonalds breakfasts, breakfast in greasy spoon cafes filled with gypsies, proper pubs, black pudding, Wensleydale with cranberries, pickled onion Monster Munch, Space Raiders, Pork Scratchings, Chocolate Caramel Digestives. So apart from the people I love, I have mainly missed food. It seems there isn't much about the U.K. itself I have missed. I haven't travelled too much on the motorways so the traffic I touched on earlier hasn't been much of an issue. I have used the Underground a few times which is always a great experience if you like every inch of your personal space occupied by the founding members of the London Halitosis Society. And I have also tried the train too, and enjoyed one half of a chavvy conversation from a lardy chick whose clothes were way too tight, which went along the lines of "Nahhh, but oi'm ahhnly entoitled to a two bedroom haaarrsse innnooiii".

So despite the general public getting on my tits a bit, which was nailed on to be honest, it's been a great trip back so far. It's been great to catch up with those I have managed to see so far, and I hope to squeeze in as many as possible, but please accept my apologies if I don't get to see you as my time and funds here are limited, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't like you.

And you'll be glad to know the very first thing I did when I got back was stock up on tiny soaps, toothpastes and deodorants in preparation for the journey back to NZ. As it transpires I can be prepared if I really put my mind to it.

Festive bitching, other cultures, free shit and disableds.

New Years Eve, 2009, and I am standing in a taxi queue just after midnight. A few of us had walked down to the lake front to watch the fireworks after being at a house party for a bit. Although I wasn't too fussed about the fireworks, I have voiced my opinion on them previously, the atmosphere itself was buzzing. The front was full of revellers having a good time, we all wished each other a happy new year at midnight, however my lady wasn't feeling too good so being ever the gentleman I took her home.

The taxi queue was long, about 45 minutes long, but you know what? I'm British. Therefore I am genetically predisposed to love queuing so I was completely in my element. I had had a good night, I was on my way home, and I was already in my first queue of 2010. What more could a Brit want out of life?

Then my moment was spoilt. Someone tried to edge into the queue in front of me with utmost stealth. Two people in fact. To the untrained eye maybe it wasn't even noticeable, but God-damn it, I know how to queue, they weren't getting ahead of me in a million years, so they squeezed in behind us jumping approximately half the queue in the process. Nothing was said by anyone. Presumably because one of them was in a wheelchair.

I like to think I am very tolerant of others. I will not judge you based on the way you look, your gender, the way you dress, the colour of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, we are still all human after all. But is it wrong of me to get angry at a disabled for trying to jump the queue presumably just because she is disabled? I don't think so. If anything I think people should have been able to jump in front of her, I mean after all we are all having to stand and wait while she has a nice comfy seat.

So 2010 is here already, and I have been gainfully employed now for just over two months, and it is largely going great. I say largely, obviously taking advantage of the free stuff I get thrown at me helps immensely. Since my last entry I have been busy reaping the rewards of a job that allows you free stuff.

I spent one morning kayaking across Lake Wakatipu to Pigeon Island in a sea kayak, a two person kayak with a rudder at the back operated by the person sitting in the rear seat. It's a company run by a pleasant dread locked hippy, and includes a guided tour and commentary around Pigeon Island, situated funnily enough in the middle of the lake. As you would expect, the island is a large land mass with trees, bushes, birds and insects, surrounded by water. But it's a nice serene setting, with a hut which is free to stay in as long as you can get over there, and is very reminiscent of the Evil Dead. Once you have toured around the Island, you paddle around the side of it before heading back to main land. The morning was marred only by the sour faced Scandinavian "girl" steering the kayak I was in. On the way back she pointed out that it wouldn't matter how hard I paddled to try and make us change direction, the way we were going was completely controlled by her. "So how about you steer us in the same direction as the rest of the fucking group then you dumb bitch", I imagined myself saying before imagining my paddle accidentally scalping her.

I have done my first bungy jump, the Nevis. A cabin suspended by cables 134m in the air which you obviously jump off attached to a long piece of elastic made of multiple strands of that white round elastic you used to get in those black plimsolls you wore at school. There's something they don't advertise. Plummeting towards the ground for 8ish seconds was a bizarre feeling. People have previously said that the scariest part is jumping off. That's crap, absolute crap. Jumping is easy. I jump down the last 3 stairs at home all the time. Toddlers can jump, animals can jump, disableds can jump (granted, just queues but it's still jumping). No, the scariest part is the few seconds after you have jumped, when all you can do is question whether jumping was a sensible thing to do.

On the same day I did the Nevis Arc, the worlds highest swing, in tandem with one of the girls I work with. You are loaded into the swing and dropped, free fall for a while and then get kicked into a swing across towards the canyon wall at around 150kph. In all honesty I found this scarier than the bungy, purely because the control is passed onto someone else so even though I knew the fall was coming, I still screamed a VERY masculine scream (the girly ones belonged to my tandem partner) when we were released.

The Canyon Swing is a similar experience, the main differences being that when you drop you can go a variety of different ways, you drop down the side of a rocky canyon wall, and the crew mess with your head in a big way. Generally asking if you are ready to die, that kind of humorous thing. Questions such as "How many times have you done this?" are met with a response like "This?? Never, it's way too dangerous. I know when the ropes were last changed". I went off on the chair, you are strapped into a plastic chair and told to rock back onto the rear two legs. As you dangle precariously over the edge, the crew mess even further by slowly releasing you only to pull you back up at the last minute a number of times. Eventually, exasperated, you cry "For Christ's sake, will you just get on wissssshhhhhhhhiiiiiiiitttttt".

Finally, I eventually got on a sky dive. 15,000ft, 60 seconds of free fall, a very concerned look on my face as they strap me to a chick about half my size. No offence, she was awesome. Knew what she was doing, had thousands of jumps under her belt, I appreciate her keeping me alive. But it could very well have been a different story if it was her week. While everyone else on the DVD looked like they were having a great time, I was masking my joy with the face of a man unable to work out how to get air into my lungs. Make no mistake, I loved it, and would do it again at the drop of a hat. I just look like I am concentrating really hard on something, and I am going to assume it was either the amazing views of the Remarkables, or just keeping my mouth from making some "jokey" sexist remark that would get me all kinds of dropped out of the sky without a parachute.

I can't say it's all been fun and laughter though. My job involves dealing with people. And people are generally idiots. Sure, there are some great people you meet, and it's kind of heartwarming when someone stops by to say thanks. I've done nothing but facilitate their trip/experience by taking money off them and reserving them a place, the experience or trip is made by the operators, the crew that take them out there, the experience itself, so they have no need to come and thank me, but some do. And it's nice. But the idiots far outweigh the genuinely nice people.

I've had a couple moaning a little that their trip to Milford Sound was boring. "Boring?" I asked. It's some of the most spectacular, testicle numbing scenery you will see, how was it boring?

"It was 5 hours on a coach". I would have liked to have pointed out to her that the boredom was most likely instigated and perpetuated by her travelling companion, who looked like he could turn the most orgasmic experience into a dull, trudging funeral march.

And other cultures who are used to bartering. Obviously being from the U.K. we aren't so into haggling when we make a purchase, but I believe that to get a discount on something you are buying, you at least need to offer something in exchange. Maybe that you are working for a similar company and can promote whatever it is you are buying, or at the least produce some kind of coupon. Every day I wake up wishing I was in the position to offer discounts if people dance for me. Not just a little jig, a proper dance for two straight hours. And they also have to provide me with sharp objects to throw at them, and snacks too, I'll need snacks to keep my throwing arm nice and strong. No sir, you can't get a group discount for booking two people instead of one. A second person barely counts as having company for the day, it certainly will not get you a group discount.

Finally, before I put this entry out of its misery, Christmas came and went. My Christmas was great, thanks for asking. There was a house party at my house, at which I sank about half a litre of Jim Beam in a relatively short period, and another house party later in the evening which I don't remember much of due to the Jim Beam from the first party.

It didn't feel like Christmas largely due to the weather, and it being light late. I associate Christmas with cold, crisp winter evenings, darkness, and the bustle of people late night shopping in towns adorned with festive decorations. Queenstown was bare. The only festiveness available was at Starbucks, where they were using cups with a Christmas design, and playing Christmas music halfway through November. I know I should avoid Starbucks, the amount of coffee I drink on a daily basis can't be good for my guts anyway, but coffee and festive happiness at least half a month before December I can't deal with in any kind of sane manner.

We had festive adverts though. Almost 2010, and the must-haves for this Christmas in New Zealand were Enya's Greatest Hits (honestly - I didn't realise she had more than one song), and Soda Stream. Honest to God. Well into the 21st century, and it seems New Zealand is only just getting busy with the fizzy.