s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

So I have survived my first week. Go me !

For those interested in minutiae, my day starts at around 5:30, which is 45 minutes earlier than it used to, which may stand some adjusting in the future. I shower, dress, and pad upstairs to eat a breakfast of cereal, toasted home-baked bread and tea with Chris, my gracious host and surrogate wife (he’s a terrific cook, he did my laundry for me, he hopped in the car to come get me at the train station when it was pouring rain… I know it it’s only ’til I make the transition from “guest” to “housemate”, so I’m enjoying the heck out of it while I can :^). After breakfast, I brush teeth and walk the ~ten minutes down the hill(s) to the train station. (There’s a big blooming jasmine bush on the last corner, which I stop to enjoy every morning and evening.) If the weather is nice, I am treated to a really gorgeous sunrise up the valley. The train into Wellington takes about 40 minutes, and my office building is practically across the street, next to the backpackers’ hotel and a pub. I get in around 8, which is before most everybody else, sort out the mess Tawhiri (the Maori wind god) has made of my hair, and sit down at my borrowed workstation (I have yet to have a job that had all of my accounts and equipment sorted out before I got there, and this place is more chaotic than most). I stay til around 5. At some point, I will trim this back a bit, and either come in later, or leave earlier. I’m still feeling the place out. I’ve gone out to lunch a couple times with Ragul (from India by way of Singapore, NY, and Brunei) and Leon (Kiwi. Hee.), and gotten myself a bank account and a tax ID (you won’t believe how easy taxes are here. They take the money out of your check. That’s it. It’s only if you’re being taxed at the wrong rate for some reason — you have a student loan or whatever — that you need to fill out a tax return). Got the strap fixed on my bag. Two nights this week, there’ve been social engagements with Chris’ kendo club, otherwise, it’s take the train back out to Silverstream, have a yummy Chris-cooked dinner of some kind, and veg (finally saw the first Hornblower ep the other night).

Work so far is challenging. My new employers are models of bureaucratic inefficiency — not in a Dilbert kind of way, but more in a right-hand-shooting-the-left-hand-in-the-foot-to-spite-its-face sort of way. Pretty crazy. The people are nice so far, though, and frankly that’s the most important.

Here’s a recipe for you to try (let me know if it works): Take some tomato soup, and blend it with milk or cream, and curry spice. Cook some chicken and maybe some onions in it, and serve over rice. Near as I can tell, that’s the recipe for “Butter Chicken”, which is the Kiwi’s hands-down favorite dish to order in an Indian restaurant. It’s pretty tasty, actually, although Ragul complains that like everything from North India, it’s bland and tasteless (translation: It won’t melt your face off. New Zealanders, like the Brits from which they are largely decended, don’t have the tolerance for spice that the average New Yorker or New Mexican does).

Had some yummy Japanese food with the… whatever the proper plural for kendo-ka is. I had fried tofu (I’ve developed this weird jones for fried tofu. I can only assume it’s a vitamin deficiency of some sort) and a funky seaweed-wrapped oblong riceball that made me feel so like I was in an anime to eat. Fun !

Also: That colossal squid that was in the news a while back is at Te Papa, the national museum. We went a took gory pics, just for Stephen:

Check out those wicked hooked suckers !