Day 38: PSA and a discussion on labo(u)r laws!

Oh boy. Today was a day of faux pas.

So, I learned that apparently, um, companies in New Zealand (and I'm sure in the rest of the world) follow Google Alerts on their name and that disabling bots on Blogger does not necessarily exclude this blog from those alerts. That being said, hello inadvertent new readers! If you are still around, I sincerely apologize for any discomfort that I may have caused. I would also like to add that the sheer mortification at my own carelessness and inconsideration has kept me continuously blushing for the past twelve hours. My face is a furnace.

Along those lines, those keen of eye and memory may notice that I've gone back and changed a few details in previous entries. While I would like to remain accurate and detailed for my (intended) audience back in the States, I certainly do not want to cause any more situations in the future. I guess I've never articulated this, but if anyone is ever uncomfortable with anything that I've written, please let me know and I will do my best to accommodate you. I am not so important that I place this absurd little blog over anyone else's feelings.

And now, to keep my face from combusting, I am going to move on and pretend that I was never careless enough to put myself in this position. Righto!

The new workplace is good, although I confess I'm still finding it strangely difficult to acclimate to this break schedule. I actually went ahead and looked up labour laws in the States and New Zealand just to see if I was being crazy, and I actually learned quite a bit (assuming I haven't misread entirely).

Apparently in Illinois-- which is one of only eight states that has any sort of regulation on breaks and has the distinction of being my home state-- the One Day Rest In Seven Act (ODRISA) simply stipulates that if an employee works more than seven and a half hours in a day, their employer must provide a twenty minute unpaid meal no more than five hours after the start of the day. (Just for completeness's sake, the eponymous rule also states that in any given week, you must have at least twenty-four hours of rest. See also, the Illinois DOL website) Other states have varying rules and such, but none have anything as detailed (or generous) as the New Zealand regulations. Here, ten-minute breaks and a half-hour meal are actually written into the laws, given x number of hours worked.

I don't mean to put any value judgements on this at all, but I just find that so at odds to what I'm accustomed to. It all makes sense, certainly, but I'm used to just powering through the drooping eyelids and general doldrums. I suspect I may have inadvertently broken some labor laws while working part time as a student (see also: volunteering for various shifts that have lasted as long as 13 hours without so much as a designated meal time), but I've never been conscious of having rights to a break. That just seems so-- decadent. So strangely luxurious.

(Oh hardship, I suppose it will have to be my burden to adjust.)

In any case, that's just the sort of thing that I think about in my free time. Labour laws. It's a wild and exciting thing to be me.

And back to real life, after work (with proper New Zealand designated breaks), Claire and I toddled over to the Film Archives to try and catch Departures*. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, all of the seats were taken, and we were turned away.

On the plus side, that meant we could go back to our humble abode earlier than anticipated. We stopped by the local video store to rent some movies for the week, and it was quite nice. I keep being pleasantly surprised by their selection. It's far from comprehensive (damnit, Netflix, for providing me with instant access to pretentious films and the subsequent - terrible - sense of cinematic entitlement!) but I keep coming across movies that I wouldn't necessarily expect it to have. In a way, New Zealand is really much more international than the States; any movie in a different language isn't necessarily shunted off to a dusty FOREIGN section but can be nestled just as lovingly in the ACTION or COMEDY sections. (Last week, we found OSS 117 and Oceans Eleven side by side. Claire's brain may have exploded from the joy. Mine, killjoy mine, may have twitched a bit at the lack of actual alphabetizing.)

And then, instead of doing anything remotely interesting, like watching said videos or being a social human being, I spent the rest of the evening with my face on fire.

C'est la vie.

* From the Film Archives, a summary: "Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved. Having decided to move back to his hometown he answers a classified ad entitled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi,' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife despises the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of 'Nokanshi,' acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living." Even discounting my immediate weakness for anything cello-related, it sounds so good! Civic Video, prove yourself!

Day 37: Temping!

Today was another day for learning!

I temped today for a weather information company based in New Zealand. The job itself was just a reception position, so that was pretty standard, but even a small glimpse of the company workings was illuminating. Have you ever considered what goes into creating the weather forecast? Or the daily operations behind weathermen? The administration manager gave me a brief, handwavey overview of what happens here, and I imagine it was only the tip of the meterological iceberg. Apparently this is where weather is monitored and modeled, and somewhere in this building that data is converted into a visual, and that visual is what we laypeople use to interpret their results.

I've always had a vague egocentric notion that weather forecasts were used by people who, like me, want to know if they should put on an extra layer or if they could forgo it, maybe ponder how the weather will be for a trip this weekend. Oh-so-surprisingly, this is not the weather service's sole focus. According to the website, there're three domains of primary interest: aviation, marine, and public (which is served mostly through the media.). Among many other contacts, there's a line for aviation forecasts, and two lines for marine forecasts, one intended specifically for the purpose of sea voyages. There's an entire department devoted to media enquiries about the weather, where people like sportscasters and reporters call in to check future conditions. There are also other miscellaneous meteorological resources. On my quick reference sheet, there's a mysterious "Possum Forecast," which costs 30 cents a minute to call. ("Today is going to be sunny with a 45% chance of possum"?) A few people called in with what seemed like bizarrely specific questions about the weather, like what was the rainfall in Taronga in the past ten years? What was the wind direction and speed in Auckland on August 23? I wish it were socially acceptable for me to ask what exactly they were working on such that they need answers to those questions, but, in lieu of that, I just forwarded them to historical weather data (date specific).

There's just so much here that I had no idea existed. I'm sure I'll get jaded eventually, but right now, it's interesting to see what makes our modern lives tick.

And now, in a change of tone, this is the part where I talk about something that was delightful at the time, but is now just a reminder that I still have many things to learn:

So, today at 10:15, the admin manager stopped by my desk and asked if I wanted to take morning tea. She was politely confused by my confusion and showed me the way to the tea room, where there was a wealth of teas, and people stood around and drank said tea. I was super charmed and took some time to do as the natives do and, yes, drank tea. I wasn't quite sure how long my lunch was supposed to be later, and she was sort of noncommital about it, so I just took as long a lunch break as she did. And then I skipped afternoon tea, because it just seemed silly.

All of that was fine and good and no one commented on anything, but I realized later that I went about my day at odds with the New Zealand break schedule. According to Libby, tea breaks are completely standard during a normal 9 to 5 job. You're expected to take a morning and afternoon tea break of fifteen minutes and then have a half hour lunch break. I... did not do that. I mean, it's not a big deal, but for some reason I was really crushed for about ten minutes after she explained it (incidentally, over toast with marmite). I had this overwhelming sense of getting things wrong. Once I got over myself, I identified the feeling as plain embarrassment for having gotten something so mundane so obviously incorrect (and for needing it spelled out for me. But I'm glad I asked, because otherwise I would have gone on in ignorance). In any case, life goes on, and I now know what I didn't know this morning.

Tomorrow I start work at another company. I'm pretty excited for the opportunity; they are based on Queens Wharf, which is a sweet location. As per usual, I'm not 100% on what I'll be doing, but I imagine it's going to be something rather menial. My agent/consultant/liaison has also said that they've got "quite a cool team," which intrigues me. If nothing else, I'll hopefully avoid strangely awkward conversations with people who don't realize that they'll likely never see me again (during my lunch break today, one gentleman literally ended our conversation with, "Er. So, right. I've gotta go back to my. You know," and backed away slowly. In my defense, I have no idea what drove him away.) I'll be working there for three weeks, maybe more if they decide to extend my contract. We will see how that goes! And I will be prepared for these tea breaks!

Also tomorrow: We are going to the Film Archive to watch some rockingsocks Japanese cinema for free. Stoked!

Day 36: Falling into a Routine

In some weird way, I think today has been a turning point.

Today, I woke up relatively early in the hopes of preparing myself for a week of early mornings and found that the weather was foul, with the kind of rain that really only Wellington can summon upon the earth (which is to say hugely wet and oppressively consistent). Rather than do anything interesting, I wrote up a bunch of blog posts etc (see also: the many entries have mysteriously appeared through backdating magic) until Claire got up a while later. Without discussing it, Claire and I got up and ready to make it to the farmer's market.

I'm not sure if I've written about the farmer's market at any length, but we are regular goers and it's become a Thing. A routine. We bring both our backpacks and the green reuseable shopping bag and we go to town (quite literally). Produce there is fresh and absurdly affordable, and I can get my weekly fruit fix. I can get mandarin oranges for two dollars a kilogram. Asian pear is the same price. Nectarines and plums are a bit more at $2.50/kilo. The rest of the produce is equally awesome, and we are really good about finishing everything that we buy. (It's gotten to the point where Claire needs to stop me from glutting myself on more fruit! More fruit!)

In addition to the truly excellent produce, we also have two other stands we regularly attend. One is the (-- quick, vegetarians, avert your eyes!-- ) manuka-smoked salami stand, which has absolutely mouth-watering venison salami. We got a half roll of cracked pepper and red wine salami a few weeks back, and it was absolute perfection. Today, we got salami with chili, and it has this amazing slow burn in your mouth. Oh my goodness. It is amazing.

The other stand we discovered because Claire is the polar opposite of the Atkins diet and would be happy to subsist off of bread and butter for the rest of her life. The first week we were in Wellington, we were still figuring out bread options, and she had sworn that we passed a bread stand. We scoured the place and the first bread place was not so great. It was, anyway, out of French bread, which what she wanted. Disappointed, we continued walking and came across this little stand with pastries and a basket of delicious loaves behind the display. This, my friends, is where we met Frenchbread Man for the first time.

Allow me to expound on Frenchbread Man for a little bit. At first, he was just like any other seller, cold and nestled in his layers, but then he turned to look at us, and we collectively swooned. He's slim with dark, curly hair and light eyes. Really striking. But then he opened his mouth and we, thunderstruck, learned that he has the most adorable French accent. Even Claire was not immune to his charms.

Anyhow, he also has some amazing French bread that we devoured that first day with the salami, and from then our hearts sang for French bread and Frenchbread Man.

So it's our Sunday indulgence at the farmer's market. We get all of our fruit and veg shopping done, occasionally stop in for some salami, and then we swing by the Frenchbread Man's stand to get our week's worth of French bread and ogling.

Today, as previously mentioned, was a cold and wet day, so the market was pretty sparse. We did our shopping and then went to the Frenchbread Man's stand. It was towards the end of the market's hours, and we requested our weekly French bread, and then -- oh, and then -- Frenchbread Man started up conversation and we learned where his bakery is (I'm not actually sure if it's his bakery or what exactly his role is. Perhaps he is simply the beautiful man the bakery hires to woo passing Americans. Perhaps he is not even French.). We chatted for a few delirious minutes, and then he gave us a chocolate croissant for free.

I'm pretty sure he recognizes us as the weirdos who stare just a little bit too long and he simply had too many croissants left to sell, but nonetheless-- oh my heart. Frenchbread Man, I will happily buy your Frenchbread and your chocolate croissants! (The legitimate part of my brain would also like to mention that the croissant was delicious. Bakery, the beautiful man you hired to woo us has done his job! I am hooked!)

Anyhow, after that exciting venture, we went down to Cuba Street to do a little bit of focussed shopping.

I don't want to get too boring here, but one strange thing about moving here is that no matter how cozy I get, I know that at the end of my stay, I'm going to have to pack everything I own back into one suitcase and head home. It makes me extremely disinclined to buy things, but, at the same time, my wardrobe was entirely limited to the things that fit into that one suitcase. So there's this constant balance of what I need(, what I can afford), and what I'll be able to keep. It also means that everything I buy I have to think through my wardrobe and consider whether it'll match my limited color palette. Luckily, Wellington fashion is stuck on all black all the time, so whenever I go drab, I fit right in.

(An aside: I'm pretty sure that Frenchbread Man recognizes us because, in the farmer's market, we are quite possibly the easiest to spot people who aren't holding dogs or small children. Claire has bright red hair and wears a chartreuse jacket. I have a silver purse and wear a purple coat. In the times where we split up to get whatever items, I have no trouble spotting her. Also, we have American accents. And ogle.)

We took the train back to town, did our laundry, did whatever random things one does in a house, and then we made dinner.

It was only when I walked into the kitchen to see Claire starting to make omerice, a distinctly Korean dish, that I realized how settled we've gotten. We go to the Sunday farmer's market and we make our rounds. When we did laundry, we hung it up on the drying racks without thinking about it (during the summer apparently they hang it up on the lines outside). I mentioned it was cold, and Claire said, offhand, "Yeah, I was thinking of starting up the fire." There is no central heating in our house, so we light the fireplace to heat the house. Part of the flat money goes into buying kindling. Claire and I make dinners together, and she's picked up on some Korean foods and I've picked up a few of her recipes. When we wash and dry dishes, we fall right into position and we know where everything goes. Tomorrow, we're going to stop by the local video store and check out our Monday weekly rentals.

It's nice. For the first time, I'm starting to feel like I could be here a while. Tomorrow, I'm temping at some place located off the Botanic Gardens (Claire and I visited the other day so we knew where to go. My agent gave me directions, and they sounded like the start to a bad RPG: "Take the street halfway down. Turn into the small lane. Take the cable car to the top of the hill. Turn right. Turn left. You will walk a few hundred meters before you can see the building. Climb up the stairs. Press the third brick from the left and a passage will appear. Beware the ghouls."). I'm getting a call tomorrow confirming it, but I think -- I hope -- I am going to start working for an energy company for a bit after that.

I feel good, productive. There is work (and money!) in my future. We are trying for our car again tomorrow via online bidding. (Claire and I talked about the whole bidding thing, and we were both amused by the fact that they tried to drive up the price. Claire had received a call from the auction house the next day, asking about whether we would still be interested in similar cars in the future etc etc, and at the time she was sort of perplexed by the call. Now we think that they were trying to gauge whether they missed their chance. We're bidding under my name this time.) I'm also involved with a charity auction, and I'm going to be making some customized artstuff for two generous people. I also am in the midst of planning a silly collaboration with someone I respect hugely.

It's been a good day.

(Gratuitous endnote: I thought of Korean fried chicken today and have spent the past two hours trying to find a place where I'd be able to obtain it. The local Asian grocery store is decent, but it doesn't make food on the premises, and the internet seems to be holding out on me for places in Wellington where I can buy Korean side dishes. And who knows what I will do if I can't find an adequate replacement? Salivate, probably. Experiment, possibly.

Isn't it silly that this is the first thing that makes me really miss home? I'm having such a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that there may be no overflowing tins of Korean fried chicken in my near future. What do you mean I won't be able to drive to Touhy and Crawford and ask the Asian man slumped against the cash register in broken Korean for kampoongi? It is genuinely perplexing. And, honestly, a little bit upsetting.)

Day 35: The RING OF FIRE

I forgot to write about this earlier, but Claire and I now occasionally work as ticket office sellers for a stadium in Wellington. Today we worked our first event, which was a rugby game between the Wellington Lions and Northland. Good times!

Given that I've worked for the past four years at a box office, I was surprised by how excited I was to work at the venue. It's just something that I wouldn't have an opportunity to do otherwise. Selling tickets to the largest stadium in Wellington! For a rugby game! With the Wellington Lions!

I was actually supposed to be a runner, which is apparently the name for the miscellaneous harangued people who stand around for hours and then are thrust into repetitive activity for fifteen minutes. It turns out that they had a vacancy in the actual box office so I filled in for that.

The TicketMaster system that they use here in New Zealand (or maybe that they use worldwide, I do not know) is not at all like TheatreManager. It's this massive MS-DOS esque system that works really well once you know it (I assume), but it has quite the learning curve. During training, it seemed rather straightforward, but I had a moment today where I had to shift my expectations away from what I was used to with TheatreManager and the four-year routine at Pick. In addition to very real differences between working in a 1,300 capacity concert hall and a 34,000 capacity sports arena, I have close to no knowledge about rugby and New Zealand sporting events. It turned out to be fine in the end and my supervisor was great, but there was that adjustment period where nothing seemed quite as simple as it did on paper. I like to think that I handled myself with composure, though.

In more I-Am-Still-Getting-Used-To-Things-Here news, I had a strange moment where someone gave me $25 for a $22 order, and I stared down at the $1 and $2 coins in my drawer. The cogs in my brain were working at the speed of mud. I knew that I had to give three dollars back, but there was just a stalled moment where I couldn't quite figure out where the one dollar bills were, and why I couldn't just give three of those back. (Things Kiwis don't have to do before jobs: Sit on the train with change in their hands, memorizing the shape and size of the coinage.)

Oh, it was also cool to work in the Blue Booth*, because that's where the supervisors etc are all headquartered, and I could hear the banter and all of the hilaricrazy supervisor talk. It was very much the kind of conversations we got up to in the offices at Pick.

Anyway, there were also a ton of interesting characters in the office itself. In the Blue Booth, our supervisor looked like a hipster Tom Cruise with imperfect skin. He had on tiny black skinny jeans and those stripey black and white sneakers that have a brand name that I can't recall the name of. He was super chill and really great when I was failing at pressing buttons. To my right was a woman from Scotland, who was maybe five feet tall and still sometimes got away with children's tickets on buses, despite being in her mid twenties. I'm not quite sure what her story is, but she said that she "left a mess behind in Scotland" and she's been traveling for going on ten months. She's signing on for a six month lease on Monday, so she's committed to staying for at least that long. Beside her was a university student whose family is from England but she came over when she was thirteen. After work, we chatted on the way to the train station and had a brief nerdy conversation about Inception. I didn't really get to talk to the next two people, but the lady after her had clearly worked the box office for a while and was an absolute pro at helping us navigate the horrible maze of Courier font. She was bright and cheerful and sounded like a big rugby fan. To be honest, I had no idea that there was a person in the booth next to hers, but there she was at the end of the shift, quietly counting up her cash. Oops? Other people whose names I caught included both full time ticket office workers, and one of the two was this awesome Samoan guy who was both flippant and super competent. (Also, prior to talking with him, I didn't know that Kiwis pronounced "Samoan" with two syllables, "sa-mone." Either that or he's whatever a samone is.)

The conversation with him made me realize that I haven't actually written about the demographic of minorities here. There are plenty of Asians around-- much to my parents' relief, I can report that there is an Asian grocery store in Johnsonville, manned by a Korean girl even! -- but after that, things get a little bit different. There is obviously a large Maori influence, and street signs and slogans are frequently doubled up in Maori. (I wish I had any sort of grounding in the Maori language aside from the handful of words I've learned from the museums etc. It's strange not to know anything about the grammar or, well, anything at all.) He mentioned that people frequently mistook him for being Maori and said that he should apply for Maori grants etc. It makes sense, but just hearing that made me re-realize the differences between the States and here. And, in the same vein, the thing that has been pervasively off is that I have not heard any Spanish spoken or seen any Spanish written. I am so used to Spanish being the Language To Know that it's strange that there is hardly any use for it here. (On their version of Food Network --or maybe it was just a cooking show-- there was a commercial for how to make tortill-lahs. Maybe they have tips on how to cook fa-jee-tas?)

Claire has mentioned that it's especially weird for her, given how certain language skills are prized in Quebec. We were working on her CV, and I thought it was really telling that her version from home has her languages listed first. Now, in New Zealand, it's relegated to second page, subsection "Skills."

Anyhow, that was my first cash handling experience in New Zealand. Watch out now!

* The Blue Booth, in case anyone wants to know, is actually red. This is very confusing for people who are told, simply, to convene at the Blue Booth but can only see the Yellow, Red, Red, and Grey booths. Apparently it was repainted recently and the only blue on it is on the door inside the gates. Claire was selected to work in the Concourse, which is this tiny ticketing island which has the dual luck of having eight cramped booths, little ventilaton and no space and gets the bulk of walkup. I think I won that particular booth-off.

Day 33: Training and cable cars! [FILLER]

This is filler for an entry on:

+ Training at the stadium! In which we meet Dean, the man who we will probably never see again because he does not seem too bright, and learn how to navigate the maze that is an ancient ticketing system.

+ Cable cars! In which we try to find the location of my future workplace and travel up a disappointingly short cable car ride and I wet myself in an unlikely way.

Day 32: Derek and Lauren treat us right [FILLER]

This is filler for an entry on:

+ Claire's interview at the job agency. In which Claire went into Wellington, and I stayed in Johnsonville, and both of us were apart for more than a few hours for the first time in about a month. I almost didn't know what to do with myself!

+ Dinner with Derek and Lauren. Mmmmmm salad with avocado and blue cheese. Mmmmmmmm lamb cutlets and garlic bread. Mmmmmmm Movenpick dessert. Mmmmmmm. Wine. Mmmmm excellent company!

Day 30: Car Auction

Posted 8/29, because I am lazy.

So today, we went to the car auction!

It turns out that buying a car in New Zealand can be a really economical purchase. New Zealand has this perfect storm of getting a lot of good second hand cars (Japan apparently has really stringent maintenance requirements, and it is frequently cheaper to buy a new car than to maintain an old one) and having a really big backpacking culture. You can buy a decent car for a thousand dollars, provided you're smart about it, and if the previous owner was a backpacker, there's a decent chance he or she will try to sell you their camping gear as well. Originally, we didn't plan to get a car, didn't even conceive of it, but after talking to some people, both at the IEP orientation and other backpackers, the independence it would afford us started to sound really appealing. (Our budget is a bit higher than that, given that we don't have enough on-the-fly car skills in case of carmergency.)

Anyhow, after doing a ton of research (grumpface sidenote: One reason I've been a bit hush-hush on this point is that I really do not care to talk car specs or car care with anyone who is not standing beside me.), we toddled on over to Lower Hutt to go to our very first car auction.

(Lower Hutt, as our flatemate Libby explained to us, is apparently the Jersey of the Wellington (New Zealand?) area. Without dwelling too much on it, she had been explaining the stereotypes, and Claire and I went, Ah yes right. That being said, I'm sure Lower Hutt is lovely, but we didn't get to see a particularly nice side of it. The car auction was in the industrial part of town, and it felt a bit like those endless hours driving through Indiana.)

We grabbed ourselves a catalogue, poked and prodded our way through cars with great finesse (one of our notes read: "HAIRY AND SMELLS FUNNY."). After our exhaustive review, we went for lunch to a nearby fish 'n' chip shop (the restaurant's claim to fame was BEST FISH 'N' CHIP SHOP IN NEW ZEALAND 1995, 1997 !) and loitered with the uniformed school kids. We fit right in, let me tell you.

Anyhow, after our late lunch of far too much delicious grease, we headed back to the lot to prepare ourselves for the auction.

To be honest, the auction itself was a bit startling. The auctioneer had on the full crazy fast speech and a gavel, and his sidekick was a serious-faced man on the lookout for paddles who kept shouting "Hup! Hup!" Once you get used to the patter, though, the auction seemed pretty straightforward. There were online bidders, telephone bidders, and live bidders, so between the three types the auctions were pretty lively. Given that this wasn't a day for high rollers, there were no dizzyingly high bids or particularly competitive bidders. I was actually surprised by the number of cars that didn't even meet the reserve price.

We didn't get our car, but I suspect that's primarily because we were a bit too distinctive in our want for the car. (In fact, going back to the website, I'm positive it's because we were a bit too distinctive. The exact same car is back on auction, so I assume the house was trying to drive our price up. Too bad we're cheap and stuck to our budget.)

Overall, I'm glad that we didn't get it, though. Going to a car auction is really quite an experience, and I'm glad that we had a dry run. And, if nothing else, holy crap. We have traveled to another hemisphere and went to a car auction! Go us!