boldly going where thousands of people have been going for thousands of years

This weekend my workmate/flatmate and I did some intrepid exploring, and drove up to Arthur’s Pass for a bit of a bimble.  The weather in Christchurch was pretty naff, all windy and rainy.  I’d been assured by The Wise Old Bloke at work that if it was grotty down here, it would be nice up there.

The Wise Old Bloke was wrong.  At the edge of the hills we were stopped and told that after that point it was 4wd or snow chains only... so we turned around, drove back down the road to the last village we’d passed through (Springfield), bought snow chains, and drove back to find that the road had been temporarily closed while they dragged back someone that had got stuck.  No worries, it gave us time to wrestle with the bizarre tangle of chains.

Turns out the trick is to just keep swearing at the things until they go on.  As you can see, at this point the weather was still mostly just a bit wet and chilly; but we didn’t have to go very much further up the road to discover why the chains were a compulsory requirement.

DeathCar2000, with its spiffy new shoes, gave not a single fuck.  And then a few kms later, the weather cleared (ish) and the chains came off.

We made a stop on the way up to check out the Cave Stream Scenic Reserve.  There’s a 594m long cave stream that runs through the hill there; when the river is less raging and deadly, it’s possible to follow it through the cave.  We had to follow it overland, but there were still some nice sights to be seen.

Wet and cold, we ventured onwards.  Arthur’s Pass is, believe it or not, a pass named after a guy called Arthur.  Arthur Dobson was the first European to discover the pass in 1864; a coach path was constructed the following year to meet the demand for a route from the west coast to Christchurch during the gold rush.  Arthur’s Pass village itself is New Zealand’s highest altitude settlement (793m), and boasts a population of 54.  We arrived at around 1730, and everything was still a bit blizzardy and misty and bleak.

We found the pub,had dinner and some drinks and turned in for the night.

The following day was astonishing.  All the snow remained, but the sun was out; it was bright and clear and crisp and warm and glorious.  DeathCar2000 had made a new friend too.

This guy is a Kea, a kind of Alpine parrot.  The underside of his wings is bright orange, and looks pretty spectacular when in flight.  Not that they do a lot of flying; mostly they scuttle about sideways in a drunken fashion and try to remove all of the metal trim from around your car door.

We planned to spend the day doing a few walks and seeing the sights.  First up; Devil’s Punchbowl Falls.

At the start of the twentieth century the growing coal trade required a rail line through the mountains, and one was duly constructed.  These were the concrete foundations for the dynamos and whatnots of the old power station that provided electricity for the Otira rail tunnel, which goes straight through over five miles of mountain.

Lake Misery.  I don’t know why it’s called that, but it’s a cool name.

Bealey Chasm.  We saw this from a few different places; there were several different tracks to follow.

On the way back we took a few photos of where we’d been; the weather was so crappy the day before that we hadn’t been able to see what were driving towards...

pigs and ruins and candy

When I got into work on Monday morning, the first four people I spoke to all opened with something along the lines of "so... is the car still working?"

As it happens, yes.  Jerks.  I didn't mention my latest disturbing discovery; disc one of Now 34 in the stereo.

Urgh.

The hire car went back this weekend.  It wasn’t used at all for the last couple of days, and was just sat in front of the house as a reassuring fall back option... now it’s gone, and I must put all my faith in the mechanical fortitude of DeathCar2000.

Faith not being in any great supply, the weekend was spent exploring things not too far away from home.

First stop was Willowbank wildlife reserve to gawp at kiwis, monkeys, goats and some kind of giant pig that was strangely reminiscent of a Bantha.

The next day I went bimbling around Hagley Park (just to the west of the city centre) where I discovered “Icefest” - some kind of week-long outdoor Antarctic thingummy.  It sounds much more exciting than it actually was.  There was an ice rink, a bouncy castle full of kids and someone dressed up as what I assume was supposed to be an abominable snowman of some sort; but mostly they looked like an emaciated Hoth Wampa.

I got some food, read about Shackleton’s failed 1914 expedition and moved along to the botanic gardens, which were all very pretty.  

Somewhere in the middle of it all was Cunningham House, a huge glass-roofed building seemingly full of trees and things.  It’s been cordoned off due to earthquake damage.  I can imagine it all being a bit reminiscent of the Bioshock gardens level in there; all overgrown foliage, crumbling stonework and a general air of creepiness...

And after that I went around the centre of town to rubber-neck at some of the earthquake damage.

Mostly it's a bit of a ghost town... until you hit the edge of the redzone, where you will find the re:start mall - a shopping centre made out of shipping containers, defiantly painted in bright colours.  Swish.

All of which was terribly interesting, but the real reason for travelling halfway around the world is to experience sinister foreign confectionary.

Last week I tried a Pixie bar, which was a delicious slab of caramel coated in dark chocolate.

This week's sinister foreign chocolate bar was a Pinky - possibly the only chocolate bar less manly sounding than a Pixie.

It is pink marshmallow with a strip of caramel down the middle, all covered in milk chocolate, and seems to be an item of confectionary designed specifically to rot teeth and make kids all sticky and 'orrible.  It's not the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth, but I'm in no hurry to repeat the experience.

buggers muddle

Since my arrival in New Zealand I have been making use of a hire car to get around.  It turns out that there is a category of hire car even lower than 'Economy'; this.

A majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan with 180000 kms on the clock.  Like many cars here it is an automatic; which means instead of numbers there is a bunch of confusing letters on the gear lever.  I reached into the glovebox and consulted the manual.

The manual was in Japanese.  It also seemed to include a helpful section on how best to crash your majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan.

As much fun as the majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan was, I couldn't afford to have it on hire for the full three months that I'm here; but a car would still be essential for weekend hobbit-hunting.  In theory, a cost effective solution would be to buy a second hand car and then sell it on again when its time to leave...

Of course, this meant having to find a balance between the conflicting requirements of "must be cheap" and "must be cool".  What I found was this 1990 Toyota Celica GT-R... it was advertised at $1350 (cheap-ish), and had pop-up headlights (cool for the eighties, so good enough for me).  A test drive revealed that it was full of what some might refer to as "character" -  covered in dents, a collapsing drivers seat, peeling paintwork, knackered front shocks, worn cv joints, a disintegrating steering wheel and possibly water in the oil too.

Of course I bought it.

Less striking, more stricken.

In the end I forked out $1050 for it, which is about $1050 more than it's worth.  It's a manual though, and surprisingly, everything on it seems to work - including the active suspension, which as far as I can tell is a button that does nothing more than make lights come on on the dashboard.  But they are green lights, so they're probably telling me that everything's okay.  The manual might be Japanese, I don't know - I'm too scared to open the glovebox in case I find a severed head in it.

I have decided to call it DeathCar2000.

We moved into more permanent temporary accommodation this week.  It's nowhere near as fabulous as the cottage, but it is also half the price of the cottage; and we could always spend the money saved on fairy lights, scatter cushions and a disco ball if we start getting fabulousness withdrawals.  Aside from the lack of fabulousness, it's not too bad here; two double bedrooms, a living room with a pair of sofas, a crappy but usable kitchen and a similarly crappy but usable bathroom.  It feels a bit like student accommodation; the furniture boxes have been ticked at the lowest possible cost to the landlord, and there's next to nothing in the way if knick knacks or anything to make it feel like a home.  Nothing is particularly nice, but nothing is particularly dreadful either.

And finally... I spotted this poster on the noticeboard outside the canteen at work.

I have literally no idea what it's all in aid of, but the sign-up list beneath it has around a dozen names on it.

i have travelled through time and space

And so I find myself, to a considerable extent, to be in New Zealand.

Myself and another colleague shall be here for three months as part of work placement in which I will get to poke at aeroplanes, which is a novel experience for most engineers involved in the design of aeroplanes.  I had originally intended to go to Canada for my external placement; but the company I was to be seconded to quite selfishly decided to go bankrupt - so now I'm here instead.

Despite being a work placement, work is profoundly unsupportive of the entire shenanigan and generally takes the view that it's all a bit of a free holiday.  Which of course it is.  However, it does mean that the support we get extends no further than a subsistence allowance (half of which will be paid after the placement is completed) and the advice that we should try to sort our accomodation out as soon as possible.  Thanks, work.

Sorting out accomodation has been tricky; partly because being on the other side of the planet is somewhat inconvenient when it comes to viewing properties, but mainly because a lot of the buildings here have either fallen over or mostly fallen over.  Short term accomodation is hard to come by because so much of it is snapped up by people who having their houses repaired, or by the people that are repairing their houses.  In spite of this, it looks like we might have stumbled upon somewhere that is not upside down or on fire, and if all goes to plan we should be moving in on Wednesday.

In the meantime, we've been lurching between motels.  Motel number one was perfectly acceptable.  Not as luxurious as a Premier Inn, but also not as squalid as a multi-storey car park stairwell; finished in exquisitely functional shades of grey and brown, my room included a decent shower, a kitchenette thingy, a comfy bed and a TV with no porn channels.  Motel number two isn't a motel at all; it's a fabulous B&B.  Fabulous.  

In between checking in and out of temporary accommodation, I went to work.  Day one at Sinister Foreign Workplace was much like day one anywhere - lots of meeting people with eminently forgettable names and faces, wrestling with nefarious admin systems to obtain access to the various computer gubbinz that will be needed, and mandatory pre-employment drugs tests.  Disappointingly, the drugs test did not take the form of a Pespi Challenge style blind tasting; instead I had to pee into a cup for a nice lady who will send it away to see if it is possible to get high by smoking it.

So, all good so far.  Once things have settled down a bit I hope to do a bit more roaming about, seeing what there is to see and attempting to catch hobbits.

fairygodmotherlicker

Between then and now.

Eduardo Monteaz - either failed to kill us all, or (more likely) didn't bother trying.  Also didn't reveal his true identity, leaving us all to endure a thoroughly pleasant evening of eating, drinking and talking bollocks.  The bastard.

Track slag - we fitted more red bits to make it go faster.

We haven't had an opportunity to see how much faster the new springs and anti-roll bars actually make it go; but the lower ride height does make it easier to access disintegrating bits of engine, so it's still some sort of progress.

Mouses - due to Megatron's increasingly more psychotic tendancies, he and Barton went through a trial seperation.  This was followed by a very brief trial reunion, followed by a permanent separation.  Stupid mouses.

Gigs 'n' that - many.  Harvey Milk, Trash Talk, Bastions, Kylesa, Eyehategod, Baroness, Karma To Burn and countless support acts.  It's been a tinitus filled couple of months.

Toy soldiers - more orkses happened.  My stormboyz were so cripplingly bad at the doubles tournament that I decided to paint a few more.

Kommandos cost almost twice as much as normal boyz without being very much better, so they're a must.

A few extra nobz give me more options when it comes to deciding what to waste my points on.

And a trukk should allow my warboss and his drinking buddies to get almost twice as far across the board before they get exploded to pieces.

Next on the list of things to do; lootaz.

And that's about it.

Oh, except for the fact that I'm living in New Zealand for the next three months.