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"Cheers, Driver"
The public transit of Wellington is a bit of a muddle. Within the city, you can use the yellow Go Wellington bus system, which uses the Snapper card. This is distinct from the suburban lines which are the Newlink buses, which uses the Mana card. Both of those are distinct from the train service which is its own thing and only operates out to the suburbs. There is a plethora of options on the train, you can buy single tickets at a ticket booth or on the train, a ten-ride ticket, a Peace Train ticket, a monthly ticket, and so on.
I have a Peace Train ticket (which is basically the same as the monthly, except that you'd need to pay two dollars extra if you tried to get into Wellington on a weekday at 8:07 or 8:20. Also, it has a bizarre creature on it that I interpret as a walrus and, Claire informs me, is probably actually a dove), and the time I spend on the bus has given me plenty of time to acquaint myself with the peculiarities of the whole system.
Trains are not particularly high tech, and there is a very clear sense of how manual each train is. Each train requires two employees to indicate at each stop when the doors are cleared. The employees (are they conductors? I don't think they qualify) then close the doors with keys attached to hole punches. They use the hole punches to mark tickets. These employees frequently look bored and will sometimes tell you to ride a certain traincar to minimize their workload. (They are, like most Kiwis, generally unfailingly polite and will let you not pay fare if you forget or, uh, temporarily misplace your Peace Train ticket. Hoorah!)
One of the main downsides of the trains is actually how frequently they do not work. This isn't usually a problem and, in fact, occasionally brings me great joy in the midst of motion sickness. Allow me to explain: The buses are nice in that they are timely and slightly more forgiving when you come crashing onto the station in the hopes of getting to the train on time. Unfortunately, the buses take all the twisty turns and tiny roundabouts through the hills to get to each of the train stops, and the resulting journey feels a bit like riding the back leg of a moderately ill hippo. (For some reason, the trains have been down for at least a full day, and I've had the misfortune of sitting at the back of the bus and just getting nauseous at the wild hairpin turns.)
Despite the heinous ride-- and this is what I want to get to-- every single person on the train replacement bus will thank the bus driver upon exiting. Seriously, everyone.
I was sitting with my head against the window, loathing the tiny roundabouts, when the bus made the first stop at Crofton Downs and people started to exit the bus. "Cheers, driver," said each student, dressed in their blue uniforms. "Thank you," said each businessman. "Have a good night," said each woman. And the bus driver smiled back.
I love it.
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Movies
Claire and I watched Scott Pilgrim at the Reading Theatre on Courtenay Place, and the whole experience was interesting. Tickets are kind of ridiculously expensive, by which I mean over $16, and -- and this blew my mind -- they assign seats.
We didn't really think out what H6 and H7 meant on our tickets, so we stumbled into the theatre and found what we approximated to be Row H. Then we mosey-ed on over to the middle of the row, where people would naturally sit, and placed down our things for maximum isolation. (You know, how you put your coat down to drape onto the seat next to yours in the hopes of warding off over-eager and overly familiar movie viewers. You know you do it, too.) We munched on our French bread, bought at the farmer's market just down the way, and laughed about the hilariously awful New Zealand previews. Then. Then. Then a couple came by, asked us what seat numbers we had in a slightly disapproving way, and we went, "HA. HA. OOPS," and scooted down a few seats.
Unfortunately, instead of being in H6 and H7, we were in H7 and H8. I'm one of those people who get really antsy about being in The Wrong Seats, and I spent the rest of previews anticipating possible scenarios for if two people did frown at the single seat between me and the other people and opened their mouths to ask what our seat numbers were. (Rather than have both of us move over, maybe it would be smarter for me to just skip over Claire who was in H7 and take H6. Or maybe that would prolong the awkwardness as the rightful seat owners would have to shuffle back and Claire would be squashed as I tripped over her. So maybe we would both move one seat down. Or maybe it would be at the start of the movie and these phantom movie viewers would have to take another seat and they'd shoot us dirty looks for stealing their spots. Or maybe--) Luckily, no one else tried to sit in our row, or I think my brain would have exploded.
(Claire, being Claire, gave me a concerned look in the middle of the SWOOSH WHIZZ SOUND EFFECT! preview for the new series of Top Gun and asked me if I really wanted her to move down a seat. Paralyzed by the impending possibilities, I told her it was fine.)
Aside from that terrifying glimpse into my psyche, I just wanted to mention how it made me think about how I frame the movie-going process. In my head, going to the movies is this thing that people do casually, usually on a whim, for lack of anything else to do. You go to the theatre, maybe you'll buy tickets online, maybe you'll arrive early, but it's not something that you plan to devote your evening to. But here, going to the cinema seems much more analogous to going to a music concert or a live action theatre production. You have to buy tickets early to get good seats, and you pay a decent price for them.
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Desserts
Claire and I went to Strawberry Fare with Derek the other night, which he advertised as having the biggest cheesecakes in New Zealand. The desserts are not bad, let me tell you, but he did bring up an interesting point on New Zealand desserts.
As North Americans, we all expect a certain creamy richness to desserts, like cheesecake and ice cream. Chocolate should be oppressively thick, and each bite should stick to your teeth. You desire milk or water or something to wash it all down. Basically, at the end of a good dessert, you should, in Derek's words, "feel sick."
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Kiwis don't do dessert like that. Cheesecake has a consistency akin to slightly thicker sponge cake, and brownies feel like cake. Everything is just a little bit too light and perhaps a bit too healthy.
Strange and slightly offputting. But not strange nor offputting enough to keep me from devouring my dessert (sticky date pudding served with ice cream and butterscotch sauce and a crisp slice of apple all garnished with an artistic drizzle of hardened sugar and possibly crack). Guh.
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