A midnight rant (borne of sheer boredom)

Right I'm in Hamilton and shock horror I am bored.


All the rest have gone to bed, went to bed bout 2 hours ago. Is it just me or is that terribly dull of them? And to make matters worse this is the norm, every week night. Lucky if any of em stay up til 11. Anyway that is why I am here, shitein on bout basically nothing to you my loyal followers.*





So what shall I rant about. . .





Germans. A topic I've broached before you may recall. Firstly I would like to say, the image of the stereotypical German is entirely incorrect. I know. It's hard to take in. How can decades of stand up comedians be wrong? Well truth is I don't know. The general way a German is portrayed is how. Boring, anal, lacking in any sense of humour, big into thier rules and systems.


The truth. All the germans I've met thus far** have been excellent fun.( Bar one, and you know who you are. You ass. Just in case you ever have the pleasure of reading my nice little blog).

#continued above#

Coming to an end

David reminiscing bout his favourite childhood game, pretending he was inside a washing machine

Well haven't written in quite a while and for that I am sorry. So I've two weeks to fill you in on... Well one of those weeks was in Hamilton which as I said before is not thee most awe inspiring places to visit. Though we did take part in a Maori blessing ceremony. We were planting Kauri trees. The Kauri is New Zealand's largest tree, monstrous would be the only word to describe the bigger ones. Biggest I've seen had a 36 ft circumference have a picture that I'll upload at some point. Though the picture really doesn't do it justice. It's almost hard to believe it's real. Impossibly big and this one was 'only' about 800 years old I was told. The oldest tree they had was over 3000 and something crazy like 40/50 meters around. Anyway there's a disease here that's killing the Kauri. In fact it is believed that it will wipe them all out before too long. So planting them is a big deal. We planted about ten and the chief of the local Maori tribe came to bless them. Wasn't quite what I expected, he arrived in a big white car and was wearing a sports jacket and jeans. He wandered about the site chanting in Maori and waving his walking stick. After he told us some of the history of his tribe and a couple of little stories about Maori gods. He also blessed our group in Maori. Pretty cool to able to say you've been blessed by a Maori chief. Nothin much else report from Hamiton that week, oh one of the local guys we were working with brought us up to his place for beers and a BBQ which was nice. So greetings to Don if he ever happens to be reading this. Any man who gives you a free beer is allright in my books.

The past few weeks have also seen the loss of quite a few good people from CVNZ. Team Germany has disbanded, team Germany was comprised of the 4 four Germans I started here with. The 'elite' as we say. Alas it is no more though Karin and Anja are gone. Karin back to Germany and Anja is currently making her way to Wellington. Must say I was somewhat sad to see them go. On top of that Wayne left this week too, off to work on Yogi Bear the movie. it's unbelievable he's actually going to be playing Yogi. Well no not really, I made that up, he working in the 'greens' department on the film. Doing stuff with trees and such. I've no doubt he'll keep up the conservation fight as well. Probably be on set with his spade in tow just in case he happens upon some weeds like those pesky pine trees. Was a pleasure to be on his team for his last week. We were at Huia in the Waitakiere ranges. Stunning place, rainforest and mountians the usual drill but I hadn't experienced it on this scale before now. And he lives there so he brought us to all the best spots. Some amazing beaches and views. And for the whole week we only did about two days work. One was dismantling fire pits, though calling that work is somewhat misleading seeing as all it involved was throwing rocks away. The other day we had a 6 kilometre hike through the rain forest putting up some signs. Was pissing rain and had to cross a river so we were soaked through and slipping and sliding all over the place, immense fun. Though some of the girls wouldn't really agree with that surmise I'd say, bit of an aversion to mud I believe. Another evening we went to Waynes local fishing club, really cool little place with seriously cheap drink and some interesting characters. We left with a cd of native bird noises in tow and orders to find some French ornithologist.

Also lost two good people this week. Sophie who was one of the most pleasant people I've had the pleasure of meeting thus far on my travels( So where are you from?:p) rarely seen without a smile. And David who I'm reasonably sure was clinically insane ' When I was a nipper I used to pull my jumper over my head *to the point where just his face is sticking out* and pretend I was inside a washing machine'. Great sense of humour five minutes rarely went by without him giving us something to laugh at. Also had a worrying interest in Jack The Ripper which is best not mentioned. I'll start to get worried if a bunch of dead prostitutes turn up now that he has left the country.

I'm currently in my last week with CVNZ. And I must say...
WHY!? Why have you sent me to Hamilton for my last week? What atrocious crime could I possibly have committed in a previous life to deserve such a fate? Seriously did I inadvertently cause the death of someone close to ye or what? * sigh * Brief little rant over.
Aside from that I also must say that I'll miss CVNZ, or more the people rather. Its been a fun few weeks for the most part at least.
And next week I'm heading north, myself and Nils* are renting a car. Heading north first then making our way down to the south island. It should be pretty cool. Not much else to report. Will leave it at that for now.

*Nils is the German I mentioned before. The one who likes Irish rebel songs. As it turns out he not only likes them but has a wide knowledge of them which puts my own(rather measly) knowledge to shame. It is quite a spectacle to hear a german guy putting on an irish accent while singing the likes of Come out ye Black and Tans.

N/A

Will upload some more pictures shortly those aren't very good...

Tawharanui

View from outside our house in Tawharnui

CVNZ's no 1 tree killing duo, doin what we do best

Thats me on a hill

We are now a fully fledged CVNZ death squad. Spent the week in the forests and hills of Tawharanui hunting down the enemies of the land. My weapons of choice, a handsaw, a bottle of poison and a grubber(kind of like a strange axe). Our targets, thistles, moth plant and climbing Asparagus. We went two days combing the bush for these evil plant using our expert CVNZ skills to track them down. What skills you ask? Well this is how it usually goes down. We see a plant and we say "WAYNE! Is this it? They all look the same..." Aside from thistles, we know what they look like. Have to hack down hundreds of em over the past few days.

Oh a quick mention of our Head Executioner* Wayne. Great leader. Always have a good laugh with him. He apparently somehow ingested an encyclopedia about New Zealand at some point in his life. He has a vast knowledge of weeds and is pretty knowedgable about pretty much everything that has anything to do with New Zealand as well. It's like having a tour guide the whole. Wait no scratch that, having a tour guide all the time would be horrible. This is actually interesting. So it's somewhat like having a tour guide. Also need to extend a big thanks to him seeing as he introduced us volunteers to Flight of Conchords which has now almost become ingrained in our minds.

So on our brief breaks from hunting down renegade greenery there was a night time walk through the bush, listening out for Kiwi. Really cool, Tawharnui is a reserve for rare birds. There's a big fence around the whole park to keep out rats, cats, ferrets and possums. And because of the lack of predators the place is amazing at night. Loads of very interesting birdcalls and such. And funny little insects that do the breaststroke. Oh I've just realised I haven't explained about Tawharanui a'tall. It's an Auckland regional park, bout an hour and a half north of the city. Its a part of a peninsula which has a big predator fence running around the park. Kinda reminiscint of Jurassic Park when entering/leaving cause the forest here look very like the ones featured in those movies. Beside our house was a lagoon and after that large green hills(some heavily forested) dot the landscape and on either side of the land mass are beaches. One in particular called Anchor bay was very beautiful. A long white sand beach, which has had no development so it's unplagued by horrible seaside town and hordes of people. Dolphins paid a visit to the beach one of the days, was pretty cool. The HE(head executioner) and the Frenchie* went swimming with them.

Not much else to report, back in Auckland now for a long weekend. YAY! Then back to Hamilton next week. YAY! Again. So disappointing afer being in Tawharnui. Oh well, was on Rangitoto today. Weather here is now brilliant, sun shining, bright blue sky and turqiouse ocean what more could you want. Also could actually see the view from the top of the island today, fantastic.

*This is the term CVNZ insist we use, personally we prefer the term team leader.

** Frenchie is in fact a lady called Isaelle who is a Parisian doctor and isn't really too bad for a french person. Good Luck if you're reading Isabelle will give you a shout if I ever find myself in Paris

Nothing much to report

Nothing much to say today. Sundays tend to be a bit boring around here. Weekends in NZ are typically very dull it seems everything closes at like 2 so I usually just sit in at the house and watch dvds but I've run out of things to watch so I've taken refuge here in the internet cafe where I am currently listening to some of the songs of Flight Of the Concords.*

Been doing a serious sampling of the nightlife here in NZ past few nights. I figured someone should really check it out and report back to all you people what its like over here. So you see, I only really went out so I could you guys about it. . .

Worryingly I think the rest of the group may believe I am a bit of an alcoholic. I don't know why, it's clearly a baseless accusation I think it's just because I'm Irish. Prejudice is all it is. Nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I've been going out 3 nights a week and usually forcing them along with me. They're also not very good with beer most of them and this has led to the belief that I drink a lot. Again baseless, just because my stack of bottles is nearly always twice the size of theirs is no reason to assume that I drink a lot. Also bouncers here don't seem to like me, again I believe it prejudice against the Irish. They always ask me things like "Are you allright mate?" or "How many beers you had?" Most of the time at this point I've only had one or two. Its the Irish stereotype thing you see. As soon as they hear my accent they think. "Oh great, a bloody Paddy no doubt pissed off his face" I was even escorted out of the club one night for no good reason I was aware of. Was just standing there talking to someone and next thing this big kiwi dude comes along and asks me to please follow him. At this point I hadn't realized that I was being thrown so it came as quite a surprise when I found myself outside and was told I needed a break. The duration of this break I was told should be about an hour/hour and half. This was at like 1.30, so you do the math.

Anyway gone off on a bit of tangent there, this blog was originally meant to be just me telling you that if you're following my blog you should add yerself as a follower and leave comments and such. I'd like to read them.

* Its terrible I'd never watched this before. Absolutely fantastic show. Very popular here too as you can imagine

Return to Auckland III

The driveway out of the farm we were working on
One of the peat lakes we were helping restore, up close the water is a horrible murky brown
Andrew and his wife Jenny with the cake she baked for us.(real irish heads on em eh?)

Turbo the hyperactive, super affectionate dog also features
The Waikato river, biggest in New Zealand. Flows through Hamilton
Soohyun, myself and the self christened Kyle*. Crazy Koreans.

Went out in Hamilton last night, was pretty good. Good music anyway, great pub band. Played everything from Bob Marley to Pearl Jam to the Proclaimers. Have returned to Auckland now and just spent the last hour or so sorting out the pictures on my camera. Tremendous fun. Off to a place called Tawharnui next week. It's a reserve on a secluded peninsula with nothing within about 20 km or so. Should be interesting, I'm one of the lucky few not going back to Hamilton. Although I wouldn't mind spending more time on that farm really, nice people "salt of the earth" as they say. Apparently the farmer had a lot of Irish in him too. It showed, there was something very very Irish about him and his wife. She even baked us a cake when we were leaving. The farmers name is Andrew Hayes by the way, I reckon he deserves a mention for the past five years he has been working to preserve the peat lakes located on his land. I'm informed this is very important, these lakes are some of very few remaining examples of this kind of habitat in New Zealand. And I figure he deserves a mention because for the past 5 years he's been all the restoration work on the area himself. As well as running a huge dairy farm. It's a massive amount of work, to give you an idea; in the past 5 days my volunteer group planted/ transplanted close 2000 plants. Before last week this guy did all this by himself, can you imagine how much time that would take? So kudos to Mr. Hayes for some serious dedication. Though I still haven't really a clue as to the point of most of what we did (save that it helps the lakes in some way).

Oh a word about the owners of the hostel we stayed in Hamilton. Kim and Edith. Edith is a little old lady who is 92, looks like she is made of leather and has a hunched back. She is also one of the most active 92 year I've ever seen. Although truth be told I haven't seen very many 92 year olds. Kim is her daughter of indiscernible age. Anywhere from 60 up really. Anyway there's a point here somewhere. Oh yes, they're both bona fide lunatics. I know what you're thinking, I call quite a few people lunatics and you would be right in the assumption that the title is not always suitably given i.e Andrew the farmer, is not really a lunatic. Just a bit of a character. On these two however you can trust my judgement. They should probably get help. Firstly they don't believe weather forecasts, they say that the internet lies about (I know, not very crazy) they have a priest who predicts the weather for them. Also today Edith asked one of the girls to put a piece of the cake in her mouth for her. Thats a bit mad allright but exactly not what you'd call bona fide lunacy you say. Well how about this. The daughter Kim is adamant that she participated in the French revolution and not just that but led one of the charges. In a previous life no less. She produced this little bit of info when she heard one of the girls was from France.

So judge for yerself.

* Real name Young Jun, he figured we wouldn't be able to remember that so he chose the English name Kyle after the main character in the tv show Kyle xy. (I have no knowledge of this show)

A note on the previous posting

Hamilton's no.3 tourist attraction.

Firstly when I say the farmer is unhinged I mean it in the best possible way. He's a nice man. His mind has just moved to that particualr corner of insanity reserved solely fot those have worked in agriculture for most of thier lives. If he was in Ireland he would certainly be wearing a paddy cap and a battered old tweed suit with some wellingtons. Sorry "gum boots" so they call them here. He would not at all be out of place in the village in fact (leaving aside the Kiwi accent obviously).

And secondly I've realised that this is in fact the midlands of New Zealand so maybe its a general rule that midlands have to be boring. Or maybe they've done it purposely so no one will want to visit. Yeah maybe they've actually destroyed anything thats of any interest as some form of tourist detterent. Certainly worked back home, ever hear of anyone going on holidays to Offaly? The main tourist attraction in Hamilton is (after the museum and garden) a statue of a character from the Rock Horror Picture show. This strikes me as very odd. Though I've never seen the movie. I reckon it may be another cunning strategy to keep tourist away. Who in their right mind would come to a place with such a thing listed as one of the main attractions?