Dusk Donkey

As of a few moments ago, I am officially a permanent resident of New Zealand.

The whole experience has been surreal. I entitled this post “A bitter sweet victory” because of all that I have sacrificed to obtain this goal that I set out to achieve. I did achieve it, but it was not without dark moments and high emotional cost.

On one hand, I have New Zealand as a home. I go to sleep listening to the ocean. I sleep well, I no longer get up at nights to check that the doors are locked, and that my car is safe. I wake up and have my cup of coffee on balcony, breathing the sea air, waving and greeting passing joggers and walkers. I drive to work on clean streets with no traffic, a journey of 10km which never takes me more than 20 minutes. I walk the city blocks and parks during my lunch hour enjoying the city and the country. I’ve made a few friends and I consider Christchurch my home. It’s as I pictured it would be. It’s exactly how I thought it would be.

The bitter part I speak of is most likely obvious to those who know me. It’s been a long and stressful road to obtaining my residency. I’ve had to deal with a costly and time consuming process which had me pulling my hair at times. The financial costs alone have been astronomical and the bills are not done rolling in. I left Wimpy behind, everything else has suitable replacements, but Wimpy is only Wimpy in SA. I left a lot of friends and family in South Africa, the full consequence of that will only be realized as I grow older I’m sure. From interacting with them on a daily and weekly basis, I now have verbal communication only once in a while, and I cannot tell when next (if ever) I will see any of them again or for how long. But most of all, it cost me my relationship. I’ve heard a similar story from many fellow immigrants, but it does not soften the personal loss.

So yes, Barry did it, and believe you me I will be celebrating in due course. I will drink my first beer as a free man very soon, without the terror of a forced return to SA looming somewhere in the back of mind that gives me nightmares sometimes. I will savor the victory, and enjoy what I promised myself -and others- I would do for so long, but in a quieter moment, I will reflect on the painful toll my freedom extracted.

Autumn in the City

Big talk at the time. This is Stu and I, back in late 2007. It’s cazy looking back now. Working for Standardbank, Stu had just resigned and was getting ready to get on the plane to NZ. I was still planning my journey, but what I was sure of, was that I’d be taking photo’s like this in the future, on some snowy mountain or something.

South Africa - Late in 2007

And I made good on that promise:

New Zealand Skiing

New Zealand Fishing

The thing about plans is that they never turn out exactly as you hoped, but I had a very clear picture in my mind about where I was going. I’m a year and a half in now, living in New Zealand. It’s becoming more and more difficult to identify things that stick out and make good writing topics. I used to be in awe at things like different colour recycling bins! The Green is for bio degradables, Yellow for Recyclables, and Red for Landfill garbage. But having taken out the Red every Wednesday and alternating between the green and yellow every monday, it’s not “special” anymore, it’s just garbage day. This is one of the reasons I don’t write as often

Dear readers

My apologies for my absence of late. I have not had the urge to write for quite some time. Let me summarize the last 6 months of silence:

I went to South Africa for month. I came back. My apologies to those of you I wasn’t able to see.

The Guy Faulkes fireworks this year outside my place on the New Brighton Peer were again fantastic.

I took a long weekend down to Tekapo for a camping trip with some other South Africans. It was bully.

A serious high point was seeing Pearl Jam live in concert. A moment I will never forget. Eddie Vedder is every bit of the legend I thought he’d be and I take one of my most famous sayings about Pearl Jam back which was, “Pearl Jam rule Ballads, they don’t rock as well as they do those softer songs” Pearl Jam seriously SERIOUSLY rock!

The last movie I remember watching was District 9, and I have to give it a DuskDonkey “Can’t Miss”. I gave it the award because it’s the first South African movie that didn’t completely and utterly suck balls. Seriously, if I have to see another South African movie (about South Africa or by South Africans) with either Samuel L Jackson, Morgan Freeman or Denzel Washington in it I’m going to puke. Oh, I’m getting my bucket ready for the new movie about World Cup 1995. That’s a prediction.

So I’m about to head into the cheapest christmas I’ve ever experienced. I intend to fly solo, catch up on a lot of movies, and just contemplate my new years resolutions.

I’ll talk about these events and others in the usual Flashback format
Cheers

Here is my other church: Valhala Combat Academy

Nice grappling mat, now if I walk about 10 meters right of this picture…

The Thai floor is separated by a full size ring. Pretty cool. It is here that I intend to become a black belt. Should take me about 10 years.

Okay, so I didn’t get to post all of the awesome stuff about my new gym, here is some more picks

Rings and the pull up bar frame! I’ve already had a couple of painful moments with this set up.

The olympic lifting section.

I just like the feel of this gym. I asked the guy, “what time do you close?” and he said, “when you join we give you a key and the alarm code”. SOLD! If I could buy life time membership, I would’ve! Now I have a place to go on my lonely nights.

By popular demand, the movie reviews will be restarted again. It’s been a while and there have been no “Can’t Misses” so don’t worry, I will however review the following popular titles released last month.

Terminator Salvation

Can Miss!

Can Miss in a good way though. I didn’t think it was bad. In fact there was a lot to praise in this movie, and it was a good addition to the series as appose to Terminator 3 - but let’s face it, that wasn’t hard to do. I thought that the story was surprisingly tight, with not too many holes. For those of you who loved Christian Bale’s Batman voice, you’ll be happy to know that it’s back as he broadcast’s his message as John Connor over the radio. A good criticism of the movie that I unfortunately can’t take credit for, was that they did try over villainize the machines with Helen Bonham Carter’s role. I think you’ll know what this means if you watch the movie. A hat-tip goes to Anton Yelchin for his rendition of Kyle Reece. More on Anton Yelchin later.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Can Miss!

They followed the formula which I thought was good thing, and they stuck to the actors that were in the first one which I consider a prime requirement for sequels. Nothing pisses me off more when they change an actor to the play the same character (at the same age). They didn’t do this, and stuck to the formula, and since sequels are usually worse than the first, I think they did pretty well in making it pretty close to ‘as good’ as the first Transformers. I did think that had too many explosions, and for those who know me, I like lots of explosions but I just think there’s only so much glorious Ga-boom an audience can take, and if I felt they overdid it, I think normal people should wear sunscreen whilst watching this one.

STARTREK

Can Miss!

I have to be objective. I want so badly to give this a can’t miss, but I understand I’m complete bias when reviewing Startrek anything. As any trekkie is, I’m so emotionally attached to the crew of the Enterprise that I can’t see any character without “knowing” that character – if that makes sense. To other people, Spock is just the “live long and prosper guy”, but to a trekkie, I know him VERY well. I’ve adventured with him, I know his entire family, I know his evil parallel universe twin, I watched him grow up… both times and I was at his funeral. I do however think this puts me in a unique position to judge how well the actors in this movie played their characters. Kirk was average, I expected “the Kirk” to be more legendary, and the only criticism I have about this story is that they cheapened his achievement of being the only cadet to beat the Kobayashi simulation. Scotty and Chekov were great, but the stars were Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban (Kiwi actor) as Hank “Bones” McCoy. In fact Bones was so good, I couldn’t help laughing every time he spoke, I was laughing cause all I saw was a young DeForrest Kelly (the original actor who played Bones) since the first time he spoke in that movie I was literally in tears, he was THAT good! I thought the attempt to make STARTREK absorbable by non-trekkies was a good one, but I haven’t spoken to enough non-trekkies about this movie to ascertain if it was successful. I think this would be my pick of the year so far.

Side Note: The actor who played Chekov was also Anton Yelchin, who also played Kyle Reece in Terminator Salvation, AND he played Charlie Bartlet which was reviewed earlier on this blog. I didn’t like him as Charlie Bartlet, and I still don’t like him. I do think he’s having a fantastic career though, and he has gained some point by doing a good Chekov and a good Reece. Let’s just hope the drugs don’t get him, but if they don’t, he could be used to play a young Indiana Jones or even a young Stringfellow Hawke if the need ever arose for a remake or prequel.

Here are the 3 great perils of the Kiwi Road. Adjusting to driving in New Zealand was pretty easy… except for the following:

1) Crazy speed limits. 50, is the speed you drive in a parking lot or driveway in SA. In NZ, it’s the average road speed. Highways (called Motorways) have an absolute maximum of 100. Adjusting to the slow speed is difficult.

2) Despite the speed limit, regardless of how bad the road is, NZ drivers will drive the speed limit. A tight hairpin on a wet road? 100km/h here we come! So when you’re winding through the mountain passes here, expect someone on your ass the whole way, even if it’s snowing.

3) Without a doubt, the worst peril, and the most stupid thing I’ve found to date. Give way to the right! Let me try explain how much this sucks with a picture:

This is not a 4 way stop, Car A is traveling north and Car B is traveling south, and they would pass each other if there was no turning involved. HOWEVER! Car A is turning left, and Car B is turning in the same direction crossing traffic (both cars are turning west in this picture). CAR B HAS THE RIGHT OF WAY INDICATED BY THE GREEN ARROW! This means that Car A has to stop dead and wait for Car B to turn infront of him before he can turn left. This rule becomes even more ridiculous when applied to double lanes and traffic circles, but I hope you can at least get an idea of how messed up this is. They’re thinking of changing this rule back to normal because NZ is the ONLY country in the world with this silly rule.

It is said that when the pupil is ready, the master will appear. This is the front of my new gym.

Then I walked in and saw:

The keg weighs 95Kgs! That’s more than my friends Dirk and Murdoch! The concrete balls weigh 125kgs! That’s more than me!! I was sold at this point, I didn’t even have to see more…

Proper squat racks and solid state dumbells that weigh up to 60Kgs!!! A power lifter started chatting to me at this point and he told me without asking the questions, “They’re good, they still chip a bit when you throw them”. I smiled, and said, “I’ll have to test that myself”. To show off I snatched a 40Kg dumbell with no apparent effort… a man gets that sort of strength when he’s showing a larger guy that he’s got some skills. 40Kg snatch, I’ll feel that in the morning, good thing I’ve been practicing with my kettlebell.

CHAINS!!! YOU GOT CHAINS!!! At this point I had to stop taking photos cause I was looking weird and I was so excited I think I was making squeaking noises. They were having a practice session for Olympic clean ‘n jerks. It was so good to see coaches talking the people through it, shouting, “Hold it! Get your back straight GET YOUR BACK STRAIGHT! Pull in the stomach and hold it!” I saw thick climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling and weighted medicine balls. Proper pull up bars. The gym is owned by a power lifter and the cross fitters just use it. I’m thinking I might not even need the cross fit guys, I could just sign up to the gym and go wild, but I need someone to call an ambulance when I get stuck under a concrete ball that weighs more than I do!

Oh yeah! I think I’m going to get big and strong chaps!

So it’s work visa time again, and well, here’s the update:

You may remember the little trouble I had in securing a work visa last year, well, it’s game time again.

I’m a little surprised that nobody read the note they made on my file last time, that said they’ll give me my extra year that I paid for due to a mistake that they made. I’m further very surprised that they no longer do “same day” work visa service. And I’m pretty disgusted that they don’t negotiate, don’t compromise, don’t recognize and don’t socialize with people looking for a work visa! This is very different to the department I walked into just a year ago, things are nasty, and they tell me “up to 70 days processing time, just put your forms in the box”, and that’s all they’re really prepared to do.

So why am I applying for another work visa? Well, my Residency hasn’t come through, which leaves me in a terrible place. I’m expecting my residency to come through any day now, but the problem is that that doesn’t mean anything until I have it in my passport. In the meantime, my 1 year work visa expires on the 9th May, which means as of that day, I’m not allowed to work in this country.

You’d think that being permanently employed, and just a few days or weeks short of a residency visa they’d allow a little latitude in sparring you a $200 visa that you’re only going to use for a few days or weeks before it gets canceled and replaced with a residency visa… no. Not a chance. They’re not even prepared to talk about it, and they’re not really interested in that you need it to continue the permanent contract you signed with your employers.

I feel terribly embarrassed once again, I have to once again bother my employers with this burden, and tell them that there is a very real chance that I’ll be taking some unpaid leave for up to 70 days! They’re running projects and are under tight deadlines, and here is this South African - who is obviously dodge, because how can it possibly be so hard to get a work visa - who is burning time and delaying our project. It’s unprofessional, unacceptable and if I were the program manager I’d start looking for an Australian replacement yesterday! They worst part of it, is that it’s totally not my fault, and the fault of the bloody uncompromising and unwaivering Department of Labour! Kind of makes me think, “If this was South Africa, I’d buy someone ‘a big lunch’ and have my citizenship by now”.