Dusk Donkey

A new one...

A new blogger has joined! We’re now up to 3, which should equate to 3 times the content! Muwhahaha-heeehaaaw!

My brother and father decided to join me for a weeks worth of holiday. It only took them 3 years! But seriously, what do you show first timers of NZ who only have a week? TURANGI OF COURSE!!! So I planned it out, quick trip up the east coast, ferry to Wellington, drive up to Taupo region. It was really great seeing my bro and dad after so long, my brother got a bit older and we all seemed to get a bit larger. In retrospect, I don’t think I should’ve planned such an “outdoorsie” holiday, but that’s what we do here in NZ

The boys at Picton on a Ferry to Wellington

In Wellington walking the warf

You’d remember from my last posts that Wellington is a wonderful city, and I’ve commented before on what a weird experience it is to walk its busy streets at night and encounter joggers, strollers, people playing rugby or soccer, skaters, skate-boarders, families cycling… it’s just amazing. Anyway, we spent the night there because everybody should stop there if your journey includes a city such as this. Incidentally, cities look more and more marvelous to me since Christchurch was destroyed. Tall buildings all packed together with lights coming out of them looks so weird!! Anyway, on we went Turangi…

Skiing

Fishing

It’s difficult to describe Turangi in words or capture it with a camera. Although we caught the end of season snow, we still made a good day of it, and the fishing was a little slow due to the rain. Can you believe it? It actually rained for 3 days straight while my bro and dad were here, now they’re probably back in South Africa saying, “Didn’t see the sun once in that place”

Trout Kill Squad again

Stu joined us for a day and a bit of the action. Good thing too, because he knows all the rivers around Turangi like he knows his own parents… actually he knows the rivers better!

Gotcha... I did release this one

The more I fish, the more I enjoy it. You know, I remember Turangi from when I first went fishing there a few weeks after I arrived in NZ. I don’t know if I wrote this on an earlier post, but I still remember the first time I was standing in the middle of a crystal clear river casting at nothing and just soaking it all up and thinking, “This is home!” I hate leaving Turangi, I always promise myself to come back soon and spend a decent period of time there. It was a double hit cause I had to say goodbye to my bro and dad. Well, I had fun, come back soon guys!

Right! I suppose that of all the topics that I owe this blog a little something-something on, is this one. Kind of ironic really, since I left South Africa in search of a safer life, and end up at ground zero of arguably the biggest disaster to hit New Zealand ever! For those of you that aren’t familiar with South Africans, they are really weird on the topic of emigration, I suppose it’s a human thing, but there is nothing better for a South African who chose to remain in South Africa than hearing about expats that became victims in their new homes abroad. Nothing better! It is the ultimate proof to them that “everywhere has its problems” and that “South Africa is as safe a place as any”. That aside, here is what I want to say about what happened.

September 4 2010

Our story begins on the morning of September 4 in 2010, about 4am. Residents of Christchurch were woken up with what appeared to be an invisible train de-railing next to your house and rolling over your bedroom. A better description is difficult, because I honestly haven’t felt anything like it. It was dark, unnaturally so, because the entire electricity grid had failed. No street lights, no house lights, nothing, and it was loud. I remember a very interesting moment on this night, I remember standing in the doorway, bracing myself in the frame that was wobbling and shaking, and I thought, “So this is how I go? I hope it doesn’t hurt too much” and that was it. No crying, no prayers, no regrets, just a realization that this was possibly tickets and the hope that it was going to be quick. There were no casualties for Christchurch that day. I remember having a conversation with some friends about how interesting that whole experience was. Living in CHCH between Sep 4 and Feb 22 wasn’t much different to Christchurch, the city stood up very quickly and we all got used to the occasionally large aftershock. They told us it was 7.4, which was then adjusted to 7.3 and I believe that the world now knows it as a 7.1 magnitude quake. By Christmas, Christchurch 7.1 the book was published that showed the heaviest hit areas, and T-shirts were out with slogans “I survived the Christchurch Earthquake” and “CHCH, the city that ROCKS!” We all settled down, because we all clearly won.

February 22 2011

I left my cellphone at home that day, and only realized this at about 9:46am. Before lunch I went back to my place to pick it up. It’s funny, I had absolutely no idea that this would be the last time I saw my place for more than 2 weeks. I made it back with enough time to do a quick lunch with my mates in the other building. I left my 7 story building and went to the 10th floor of a 12 story building (the Radio Network House building). I’ve been asked by various people to recount my version of events in the hours that followed. Many people have very little recollection as adrenaline and fear took over. Christchurch was stuck at 12:57pm as we had just finished lunch and were talking our usual shit. The building felt like it was jumping up and down, and someone screamed for people to get away from the windows. People scattered, the lights tripped, the emergency generators kicked off the fire alarms, and I followed 2 friends to the nearest wall, I was grabbed, and I grabbed someone else passing by we all pushed up against the wall. At this point, I thought I was going to die again, but this time there was a difference, the thing I remember thinking was “Oh f*ck! I don’t want to die working for an insurance company!”

I didn’t die as it turns out. The shaking stopped and I looked out the window and the city was dark with dust and smoke, and I knew instantly that this time, we weren’t lucky, this time people were lost.

The flight of stairs zoomed past as ran down them and out. The streets were chaos. Bricks and flattened cars, facades of buildings had fallen down, buildings had pancaked, fires had broken out, and people asked (more in disbelief) “Is there anyone inside?” I must’ve heard that question more than 50 times that day, I didn’t hear anyone answer. We settled in Latimer square, which is just outside my work buildings. The square was filling up with people, injured, scared, and confused. We were eventually dismissed and told to go home. I couldn’t, since I had left my car keys in a building that I wouldn’t be allowed access to. Even if I had my keys, what I didn’t know is that the roads were gone, and I could not reach my suburb even if I had a car… I’d need a boat.

Walking to my mates place

People were helping each other, and people did what they could to help people out from under rubble or out of cars. Christchurch is reclaimed land. Not in a political sense, but in geological terms, it used to be swamp and before that it used to be shallow ocean. When the earth shakes it forces water from deep in the earth to the surface, and with it comes kilotons of silt and mud. This phenomena is known as “liquifaction” but the locals call it “liqui-fuck-tion”. I did not know it, but I would spend the next 2 weeks developing an intimate knowledge of the grey mud that used to be beneath Christchurch.

The walk out of town

little liqui-lumps everywhere

used to be gutter here on the curb of the sidewalk

Mud and grass, cleaning up the mud

Scott on the left and Glenn on the right. I stayed at Scott’s place for the 2 weeks. Where they are standing, we had to remove the fence to help the neighbors get all the mud out of their house. Basically, about half a meter of mud covered this suburb, and we had to dump it on the side walk for the trucks to pick up.

Getting into it, a lighter moment

Now what was good was the support we got from the surrounding areas in Canterbury. People came from all over to help dig this mud out, we had a garden full of students and farmers from everywhere bucketing mud and water into wheelbarrows and carting them back and forth. Everyone got into it. TVs and Radios were left on to get the latest instructions and news from officials, and ever so often there was a knock at the door and someone offering help, food, blankets, water, and just a talk. People dropped off spades and other tools without being asked, and I found myself in a strange world of something called “a community”. I got to learn something new about Kiwis, and I couldn’t really explain it to them. We’ve had a serious quake, all the police and military are busy in town, there is no electricity, and people are helping each other out, in each other’s houses, cooking dinner and lunch for each other, bringing over coffee. It was like being in Pleasantville part 2! I found myself actually getting a bit annoyed with all the help that was offered. I just wanted 1 daylight hour to pass without somebody popping in to drop off muffins and sandwiches! The streets were finally drained enough to get home, and this sight greeted me:

My kitchen caught the damage

The force of the quake knocked open my drawers… which saved my alcohol from hitting the floor. The fridge stank of defrosted and rotting meats and veg, and the floor was a lovely mix of broken glass, sauces, oils and a broken jar of honey. There is something severely not great about cleaning up mushy-broken-sticky-glass. 7 months on, we still aren’t able to walk the whole city, buildings are still being demolished. This picture below is of latimer square, standing on Gloucester street looking west.

7 months on

The block to the right used to be covered in buildings. They’re gone. To my left across the park is my work building… since I took this picture, that building has been demolished. It’s a strange picture for me to look at. Town is still ghostly silent and I have moments where it still hits me. The movie of these events is hitting cinemas soon. I won’t review it, as I’d be a little subjective I think. So there it is. Will I leave Christchurch? They say the city is going to take 10-15 years to be rebuilt, does the prospect of spending my 30s in rubble city appeal to me? Probably not, but I feel I am now more a part of Christchurch than I’ve ever been. I will examine my position over some new year’s beers and consider all my options.

So, I get a letter this week telling me that my place is being sold and that I must let real estate agents in when they arrive. I didn’t like that, so I got myself a new place to stay. It doesn’t have the magnificent shower my old place has, or the second bathroom, or the beach, but it’s in a deep green suburb to which I’m partial… must have something to do with the Northern Suburbs of JHB. I will post pictures when I take them!

I finally got around to visiting what we in NZ like to call “The West Island”, I even got to visit Dave and take my own damn pictures of his view because he seems to be a lazy bastard! So my first stop was Melbourne, and this is what it looked like:

City Centre

The Alley Ways

So this is Melbourne, big city, great shopping, alley ways packed with European style coffee/ cake shops. Even the graffiti looks fancy and the streets are cobbled. Melbourne reminded me a lot of France and Italy. I went to watch an AFL game which was fun, and the most evil thing I discovered was HOT JAM DONUTS! These bad boys are evil, and appear to only be available in Melbourne. This is definitely a city I’d want to visit again. I realized something, although I tell people that I grew up in a big city, I don’t have any real big city memories. What I mean is, while in Melbourne, after the AFL game the stadium emptied out into about a 1km-2km walk into city center, where they went for dinner, drinks, or transport.  The city was brightly coloured by lights and lamps, and I wished I had brought my camera. Melbourne at night is utterly breath taking. My only memory of Johannesburg CBD at night, is driving around it on the M1 highway, eyes front, hoping that it doesn’t notice me. Can you imagine a walk from Ellis Park Stadium to Nelson Mandela Bridge at 10pm at night? Yeah, I can’t either. A big city with lights only truly exists when you can walk it’s streets. The scariest thing I saw was a guy in a full bunny suit busking with his guitar at 1am in the morning. Even Dave had to laugh, that guy was a legend! Anyway, onto Perth, which looked a lot like this:

View from the Gardens

Another View

Cotesloe, or Cots Beach

As a lot of people told me, Perth is about space. It seems massive and vast, with big houses everywhere. It also seems hotter than hot day in hell! With temperatures plummeting to the early 20 degrees of Celsius, my family was wearing polar necks, scarves and jerseys, while I was sitting outside in shorts and a T to cool down a bit. Heat aside, the beaches are vast and I seriously loved it there. The real sell point of Australia is the hot women!  Each day I spent in Australia, I saw more hot women than I’ve seen in the past 3 years of living in NZ! Melbourne and Perth literally where jam packed with hot women… like hot jam donuts with ponytails but less sticky!

In conclusion:

Compared to South Africa – The basics apply, you just can’t substitute the actual enjoyment of the city delights, the clean air and streets, the public transport, the safe parks and walkways.

Compared to New Zealand – The 2 big ups that these OZ cities have over NZ are the sheer magnitude of the cities and the hot girls! I’d say NZ is still tops when it comes to scenery and out door living, and the snow capped mountains in the distance encircling the city in the winter never gets old for me. But wow, OZ reminded me of all the things I loved about a big city. I mean, if you take all of Auckland, and all of Wellington, and all of Christchurch (before the quake) you come up with roughly half of Melbourne! It’s that big! And the women, did I mention the women? I think they’re attracted to the warm water or something

It was a fantastic holiday… pity I got sick at the end.

I eventually got around to watching some movies in quake ravaged Christchurch. It’s been an eventful few months with me travelling up to Auckland every other week. Unfortunately it’s put the hurt on my diet and healthy living practices. I have a short visit in Australia next weekend, going to visit Dave of Duskdonkey and the fly over to Perth to visit the folks. So without further ado, allow me to present this month’s can misses!

Suckerpunch

Can Miss!

Like with Watchmen, while watching this one I kept thinking “this is brilliant”. But it wasn’t. It was like sitting on the line between great and fantastic the entire movie, I kept waiting for the moment when it would explode into pure joy and awesomeness and take a coveted “Can’t Miss!” but then it ended, and I had spent the entire movie just 1 notch under superb… so I basically walked out the movie feeling disappointed and unsatisfied. The movie is visually pleasing, and pretty enjoyable, but it gets 2 bad marks for me which are constants that you don’t fuck with on Duskdonkey review days: 1. The Bad Guy – Great actor, he got noticed. But the heroins of this story are supposed to be in a really bad situation that they’re trying to escape. With the exception of 1 scene, it never appears as if their situation is indeed that bad. So the villain isn’t all that villainous. 2. CGI fights. We’re getting better in this field, but we’re not perfect, when you want to have someone get hit so hard that they actually become embedded 2 meters deep in a brick floor, don’t have them stand up like they just got out of bed! And don’t – after a kick ass final attack – have them glide magnificently horizontally and then land without bending knees to absorb a fall! You’d think this stuff was basics of CGI. They can do marvelous things with CGI, but these small unpolished edges do a lot to destroy it.

Scream 4

Can Miss!

Can’t exactly explain why it got a can miss, other than to say that it’s Scream 4! Come on! Number 4! Full credits though, they followed the formula very well, and didn’t fly too much off the plot. So this was actually a great time at the cinema, and a neat addition to the series. It’s good to see Neve Cambell again as well.

Paul

Can’t Miss!

This was great, I knew absolutely nothing about this movie before I went in, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the crew from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz – Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I don’t know why these guys don’t do more movies together, I suppose that’s what makes them pretty good. I gave this a can’t miss because it excelled at 2 things and didn’t suck at anything. It was a great original story, and it was very funny. That’s pretty much all there is to this movie. Note: Simon Pegg also reprises his role as Scotty in the upcoming new Startrek sequel! Look out for it.

Your Highness

Can Miss!

Okay, this movie was stupid, but it was funny and entertaining. I kind of felt like I was watching the next generation’s Robinhood: Men in Tights, without the obvious references to an original film that formed the story. No, this story was pretty good actually, like Labyrinth gone wrong without David Bowie. The downsides were the overuse of “F” bomb, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good *F-bomb* as much as the next person, but there’s only so many times you can spice up “traditional fantasy talk” with it before it becomes boring. I’ll give you an example “Once upon a time” becomes “Once upon a fucking time”. Lol! Yeah, exactly. The movie did role like an adventure movie of old, and it was actually good. Hat tip goes to Natalie Portman who is hot and brilliant – she’s had a fantastic year! Only May and she’s appeared in no less than 3 movies, not including Black Swan which was late last year. Looks like she decided to work for a bit . Also Hat tipping James Franco who I’ve rated since I saw him do a College Humor skit on Youtube where he acts as James Dean.

And there you have it. You’re movies for May. I intent to bring these back now since there doesn’t seem much else to do in Christchurch these days.

So, as Barry wrote in his post I was planning to start my own blog, he then mentioned his duskdonkey and tabled a persuasive argument for me to start writing here.  So here I am.

I cant help but notice a distinct lack of posting going on, and content is king after all.  Maybe I can insult Baz enough in my posts that he’ll feel compelled to start posting himself again in order to protect his reputation.

HEY BARRY, ELFEN LIED SUCKED!  Yeah I went there!

That should be enough to get him going…

I’ve just woken up after a night of boozing and smoking some green out on my gorgeous terrace with a few locals.  The terrace is the reason I took this apartment.  The block is right on the Yarra river (which will mean nothing to those who don’t know Melbourne) and the terrace is one big open space on the roof of the apartment block which looks out over the aforementioned river, the botanical gardens and the sporting precinct with the skyline of the CBD in the background.

We’re at that amazing Melbourne autumnal period when every day seems to stretch on with unbroken blue skies and perfect mid 20s temperature.  Balmy evenings perfect for outdoor carousing.

So yeah, this probably wont be the most coherent post I’ll ever write, given the mental fog and general lack of sleep, but there was yet another example last night of one of my pet peeves.

The politically or socially outraged human who has not even a basic understanding of political or social theory.

This person likes to postulate and rant about some topic or other but when you challenge them about their stance on it and dig into the ideology behind it they very quickly expose their ignorance and you can catch them in contradictions.

From there, the individual can go one of two ways.  They will either get their back up and storm off in a huff or abruptly change the topic, or they will yield the floor and try to engage you in conversation using leading questions to tease information from you without exposing their own ignorance any further.

The moral of the story is this kiddies: if you’re going to be one of those types who gets politically or socially conscious and holds strong opinions that you want to voice in social settings, make sure you educate yourself sufficiently and facilitate yourself with the tools necessary to argue your point should you be challenged.  In fact I’ll take that further, how can anyone truly form an opinion on any politically or socially sensitive topic without first understanding their own ideology?

So, yes, I’m way behind in my Duskdonkey updates, but I promise, as soon as I find an open cinema I will start posting my movie reviews once again. I owe you a snip-bit about an earthquake… or two. I owe you the progress of my new years resolutions and the updates of my jouney towards citizenship, I owe you, my blog, a great deal of time and catch up.

Instead, I will employ what was refered to as the OJ defence and say, “Take a look at this monkey!”

Today I welcome a contributor to Duskdonkey… my mate Dave! Because everyone needs a mate called Dave! Dave, like me, is somewhat of a modern day philosopher and writes about similar things. I offered him the pen just today, when he voiced his desire to blog a bit. Due to the arguments and discussions we engage in over email on a daily basis I put aside my hesitation to expand my blog to a small group of like minded individuals and start with the inclusion of Davo. The added bonus of having Dave around, is to review movies that I would only be tricked into watching, like Magnolia or Vanilla Sky. Welcome aboard

So, Christmas and New Years rolled on over, and I barely noticed. It’s safe to say that I’ve started the year on a low. My NLP therapist says that I have a powerful “away from” motivation. I am strongly motivated not necessarily to move towards favorable situations, but rather to move away from undesirable ones. It’s not a good or bad thing, it’s just important to understand how your mind and drivers work. So this year, I’ve got some new year’s resolutions, and I’ve structured them – for the first time – in a way that I apparently respond well to. So here they are:

In 2011, I plan to move away from:

1. Being overweight, weak and unhealthy
2. Being untidy
3. Being an indoors person
4. Being lazy
5. Being unable to cook
6. Being lonely

7. Being unsure of what I want

That looks cynical and negative, but apparently, the uglier it looks, the more I’d want to move away from it, and yeah, I’m already feeling the urge to move away from the state. Out of the shambles of these statements, my desired ‘future state’ becomes clearer.

Top of the list is my weight and health. This year I plan to get exceptionally fit and strong, and I plan to put that on the internet, here and on Duskdonkey. I don’t want to just lose a couple of inches, I’m promising a miraculous transformation that will make people go “Whoa!”. I want to be tidy, keep busy, keep in the sunshine, and generally be more “home” friendly. Last 2 items on my list are going to be tough. I have been living in NZ for almost 3 years now, and I realize I can’t just cruise along with regards to a social life like I did in SA. Nor can I keep my head down and put in my 9 to 5 and home for my dreams to come true passively. I’ve got to put in some hard yards to get some plans off the table and into action, I’ve got to try actively meet more people and really start getting into life in NZ. Now that I’ve accomplished my goal of leaving SA, I find myself with a blank sheet of paper on which to paint whatever I feel like. I noticed that I didn’t blog much after I got my residency. I noticed I just kicked back into auto-pilot, I’d moved away from the undesirable, and that was were it ended. Ultimately I’m not sure what it is I want or need to do now, but I got it into my head that when you’re in my shoes, the best thing to do is just do something, or anything. I’ll start with the health thing.