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.

2 comments:

v8villager said...

You poor old chap! We'll talk to you... being on such a time zone difference can be a real downer...

Enjoyed reading some of your blog, must come back for more later.

hball said...

Rob. Get handbrake to help with your DVD problem. http://handbrake.m0k.org/ H