It seems anyone with any skills leaves the land of the long white cloud as soon as they are old enough to get a passport. When I tell people I'm moving here they struggle with the concept and after I tell them I have some skills so getting a job should not be hard they assume I am insane. I am starting to wonder why I am here when everyone else is leaving. It feels like I missed a boat and now I'm a drowning rat on a sinking ship. I'm mixing analogies and seem to be on a boat having missed one - but Auckland is all about boats.
After just one week of looking around and going to quite a few interviews I get myself some employment at www.shift.co.nz - the premier web design company of NZ. It's a perfect set up for me and I start on monday. They are an interesting bunch of people. An international crowd with people from Israel, the UK, the US, France, Spain,China, Korea and of course NZ. It seems like they cherry pick the biggest geeks from around the world and then put them in an open plan ofice just to see how awkward it is. There are a lot of headphones and Burger king wrappers lying around and I don't mind it at all. I can walk to work in about ten minutes and my walk takes me through Albert park - a particularly beautiful public space that makes me feel a whole heap better about being here and knowing no one.
I get thrown in at the deepend at work since they are so busy. But the work is pretty easy given that it's all about two years out of date. That's the thing about New Zealand web design - since no one can get decent broadband there is no need to produce super-flash websites.
On wednesday evening I go to the Auckland web meetup with some of my new colleagues. It's basically a meeting for all of Aucklands web designers where they can talk about emerging technologies and showcase work. Auckland is a small town and their web industry, I assume, is small too, but about 150 people turn up and a bigger concentration of nerds you will not find. I actually forget for a few hours how super cool I am and laugh along at the jokes about the cool things flash 4 could do.
Friday night is drinks at work. Something I need to stay away from in future. And then the weekend turns up again for another 48 hours of alone time.
Plan for next week: Join gym, make friends. Or make friends first then join gym - don't want gym buddies.
Plan for following week: Cancel gym membership. Write book.
Saturday 15 September 2007
Wednesday 5 September 2007
Solitary confinement
It's been a week of solitary and rather than just sitting here bouncing my tennis ball against the floor and wall Steve McQueen style I have been settling in nicely.
I drop Amanda-Sue off at Auckland International on the wednesday, the same day I move into my new apartment in downtown Auckland. It's a weird feeling saying goodbye after two months in each others pockets. But that is the deal and you deal with the deal as best you can. So I head back into Auckland to drop the car off at Jucy - the bright green rental people with a stupid name - and walk to my new home. I have no broadband, so that's number one on the list of priorities. It gets installed the following day, but their idea of broadband is my idea of broadly crap. I don't really need super fast speeds until I get a job, but I feel I should have it out of principle being a digimon. But they tell me NZ isn't really set up for high speeds and that's definitely true. People will return your call after a couple of days with nothing more than a "Sorry, I've been a bit stacked" and the maximum speed in a built up area is 20kph - you can walk faster. I'm getting used to the pace though. I think I'll get a job in a couple of weeks.
Since I've stopped travelling and doing interesting things I have very little to write about. I have a drawer style dishwasher in my kitchenette. That's different. Not exactly interesting but I haven't spoken to anyone in seven days and it makes a noise when it's on so I consider it company. Television here is an interesting mix of all the worst tv from all over the world. They have Coronation St, but it's a year behind, and I haven't got that low yet. They have McLeod's Daughters from Oz and I know it's awful but that hasn't stopped me getting into it. They have a channel called Maori TV for the indigenous people that can actually afford a TV, but it's not in English and even if it were it would be a waste of airspace. Thursdays at 7.30 is "brand new Family Guy" according to the ads, but I definitely saw the one last week about a year ago. To sum up I am reading a lot.
In desperation I buy a couple of DVDs, but don't think about region coding at all. When I bought the mac it was region 1 which I changed to region 3 to watch a singaporean dvd. I then changed to region 2 to watch my own dvd and I have one change left. I'm not going to waste it just yet. So the dvds provide me just enough entertainment of reading their back covers.
The weekend in the center of Auckland is a quiet time. I walk around, but it's cold. I take a ferry across the bay to Devonport - a nice little village type place. I have a coffee on my own and climb a volcano on my own. It is grey and cold. Up at the summit of the volcano, through the drizzle I spot my ferry coming and try and race down to beat it. I lose. Half an hour later and soaked I do get a ferry and hole up in my apartment for the rest of the day. I'm working on my CV which is less appealing than working on my novel, but just as much fiction.
To get me out of the apartment I head up to Ponsonby for sunday breakfast to see my only existing kiwi friends - two fat cats. There are loads of kids there playing with the cats and they don't even see me come in or leave. Nothing else happens of note.
Monday turns up as you would expect and I head out to visit my old friend Wayne. It's great to see him, if only because it allows me to speak to someone other than the dishwasher. The rest of the week is job seeking and killing time waiting for people to return calls. Since no one else is unemployed they don't have the same urgency as I do so it's a frustrating week, but hey it's thursday and an episode of Family Guy that I saw last year will be on soon, so that's already twenty minutes of my evening taken care of.
I drop Amanda-Sue off at Auckland International on the wednesday, the same day I move into my new apartment in downtown Auckland. It's a weird feeling saying goodbye after two months in each others pockets. But that is the deal and you deal with the deal as best you can. So I head back into Auckland to drop the car off at Jucy - the bright green rental people with a stupid name - and walk to my new home. I have no broadband, so that's number one on the list of priorities. It gets installed the following day, but their idea of broadband is my idea of broadly crap. I don't really need super fast speeds until I get a job, but I feel I should have it out of principle being a digimon. But they tell me NZ isn't really set up for high speeds and that's definitely true. People will return your call after a couple of days with nothing more than a "Sorry, I've been a bit stacked" and the maximum speed in a built up area is 20kph - you can walk faster. I'm getting used to the pace though. I think I'll get a job in a couple of weeks.
Since I've stopped travelling and doing interesting things I have very little to write about. I have a drawer style dishwasher in my kitchenette. That's different. Not exactly interesting but I haven't spoken to anyone in seven days and it makes a noise when it's on so I consider it company. Television here is an interesting mix of all the worst tv from all over the world. They have Coronation St, but it's a year behind, and I haven't got that low yet. They have McLeod's Daughters from Oz and I know it's awful but that hasn't stopped me getting into it. They have a channel called Maori TV for the indigenous people that can actually afford a TV, but it's not in English and even if it were it would be a waste of airspace. Thursdays at 7.30 is "brand new Family Guy" according to the ads, but I definitely saw the one last week about a year ago. To sum up I am reading a lot.
In desperation I buy a couple of DVDs, but don't think about region coding at all. When I bought the mac it was region 1 which I changed to region 3 to watch a singaporean dvd. I then changed to region 2 to watch my own dvd and I have one change left. I'm not going to waste it just yet. So the dvds provide me just enough entertainment of reading their back covers.
The weekend in the center of Auckland is a quiet time. I walk around, but it's cold. I take a ferry across the bay to Devonport - a nice little village type place. I have a coffee on my own and climb a volcano on my own. It is grey and cold. Up at the summit of the volcano, through the drizzle I spot my ferry coming and try and race down to beat it. I lose. Half an hour later and soaked I do get a ferry and hole up in my apartment for the rest of the day. I'm working on my CV which is less appealing than working on my novel, but just as much fiction.
To get me out of the apartment I head up to Ponsonby for sunday breakfast to see my only existing kiwi friends - two fat cats. There are loads of kids there playing with the cats and they don't even see me come in or leave. Nothing else happens of note.
Monday turns up as you would expect and I head out to visit my old friend Wayne. It's great to see him, if only because it allows me to speak to someone other than the dishwasher. The rest of the week is job seeking and killing time waiting for people to return calls. Since no one else is unemployed they don't have the same urgency as I do so it's a frustrating week, but hey it's thursday and an episode of Family Guy that I saw last year will be on soon, so that's already twenty minutes of my evening taken care of.
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