Life Without Guitar and Marmite

Hey everybody! Welcome back. Today I’ve got some cool stuff I’ve been meaning to talk about… first, a bunch of random thoughts.  Then, I’ll outline the short north island road trip that Cole and I finished about a week ago. I’ve even thrown in some multimedia elements (ooooo, ahhhh) to supplement my writing this time. One of the great things about blogging is the freedom it gives me to organize my writing however I wish. In this case, that  means little to no organization whatsoever.

I’ve had a few “kicks” recently, and by “kick” I mean temporary obsession.  You know… like when you pull out an old CD and listen to it for a few days just because you feel like it.  Well, I have a good/bad habit of gleaning large amounts of information from the internet just for fun.  This is good because I learn heaps of useful things (especially about my artistic hobbies), but bad because it takes up more of my time than it probably should.
A few weeks ago, I had an acoustics kick. Acoustics = the way sound bounces around a space; the science of sound. I spent several days learning about studio design & construction, soundproofing, bass traps, deflectors, absorption panels, standing waves, frequency responses, and all kinds of other things. This probably sounds really nerdy to you, and let me assure you, it is. But these kinds of things fascinate me.
More recently, I had a VUCC kick. VUCC = Vanderbilt University Concert Choir, the choir I’ve sang with since freshman year. One day I just pulled up iTunes and listened to all my VUCC recordings. I had already forgotten about some of the ones from 2006, so it was fun to rediscover that music. Good times. I was not able to join a choir here in Wellington, and I really miss singing.

You know what else I miss? My guitar. I realized a couple months ago that leaving America without my guitar was a huge mistake. Sure, I had good reasoning. I was trying to avoid the hassle of taking my guitar on multiple flights around the world. But it definitely, definitely would have been worth the hassle to have my beautiful Ovation here with me. (And to all you Ovation haters, I don’t wanna hear it.) When I get back, I plan on spending more time with my guitar to practice the ten or so jazz chord shapes I recently found on the internet. As it turns out, there are tons of video guitar lessons on YouTube for free. I’m the kind of person who would exploit that.

Let me talk about Arise for a bit. I’ve been attending Arise Church since my first month in New Zealand, and I love it. I go every Sunday, and I’m involved with a LifeGroup that meets bi-weekly. It’s been awesome getting to know many of the members and staff of the church. I’m certain that the relationships I’ve begun to form with people from Arise will be one of the things I’ll miss the most about New Zealand. My experience at Arise has also encouraged me to get more involved with the church I attend in Nashville. I feel the need to belong to a praise band once again.

In other news, I won a photo contest a few weeks ago. It was a digital photography contest sponsored by Victoria International, so it was only for international students at university. I won the “student life” category with a B&W photo of Allie I took at Day Bay a few months ago. Ironically enough, Day Bay is nowhere near university, but she’s wearing a backpack in the photo, and the background doesn’t give away the location.

For winning, I received a $100 voucher for the CD/DVD Store. With it, I purchased the new Metallica album, Jon Foreman’s Fall/Winter EPs, and a Planetshakers CD/DVD combo. For the record, I’m obsessed with Jon Foreman and Planetshakers right now, but I’d give Metallica a B-.

I realized the other day that I have not yet written about Marmite, so I have to do that now. “What is Marmite?” my American friends and family might ask. Marmite is a popular food product in New Zealand. It is essentially a yeast spread that people put on toast and crackers and such. It is a blackish-brown paste that tastes like ink. It is disgusting, and to illustrate this point, I will list the first four ingredients of Marmite by weight:
Yeast (80%)
Sugar
Salt
Mineral Salt

I don’t know why they eat this stuff.

After much deliberation, I marked my absentee ballot and sent it in today like a good citizen. At the risk of being disowned by my family, I took a photo of my ballot and posted it below.

Now, about my final road trip! Two weeks ago, Cole and I decided it would be a shame to leave New Zealand without seeing more of the north island, so we (quite spontaneously) took a four-day road trip. We literally conceived of the trip on Friday and left on Monday morning. It was a lot of driving and a lot of fun.

Day One – 13 October 2008
I woke up around 7:30 so I could gather my things and make it to Stafford (Cole’s place) for the rental car shuttle to pick us up at 9. I met Cole on time, but the shuttle was half an hour late. We brought a bunch of our own groceries.
At the rental place, we had to buy the GOLD insurance plan because my VISA card isn’t a true credit card, and the company had a really overprotective bond policy. It wasn’t that bad though because it covered the windshield and stuff, so I didn’t mind. We were given a little white Toyota with a CD player thanks to Kieran, the employee who hooked us up. The CD player was crucial because Cole brought a selection of CDs from our south island trip. I started out driving because I’m 21, and only 21-year-olds can handle the GOLD plan…

We headed north on Highway 1. At one point, we stopped by a string of desolate-looking power line towers to take photos. It seemed like a good idea at the time. For lunch, we visited the little town of Hunterville. We ate outside of a smoothie shop called “Revive”, and we bought plastic utensils to make our PB&J sandwiches. We bought ice cream at Revive to thank them for letting us use their picnic tables.

We continued north until we found Lake Taupo, and we stopped at its edge. A truck parked nearby was blaring techno music, so Cole and I bounced to the beat as we snapped photos. The weather was perfect.

We took a short detour to Huka Falls, which is a really fast and strong waterfall in a scenic area. It was cool, but because of the size and shape of the outlet, I found it difficult to photograph.

Then we went to Rotorua and found the Hot Base Rock, our hostel. There was a scenic park/playground nearby, so Cole and I went to check it out as the sun was setting. The playground had some awesome spinny things that I had never seen before, so we played on those. There was also a huge spider-web-climbing-tower thing that was a lot of fun. I was setting up my camera to take a photo of Cole and I climbing on it, backlit by the sunset, when a couple children jumped into the shot. I ended up getting a few cool photos of the random kids playing on the spider web tower. I guess with photography, sometimes you just luck out.

Elise had recommended a trendy place called “The Fat Dog” in Rotorua for dinner, so we checked it out.  It was cool, but expensive, so we chose a slightly less expensive Italian place. I had lasagna; Cole has risotto… after we figured out what risotto was.
We went to Pak n Save for beer and yogurt. The cashier was missing several teeth, which was awesome.
Our hostel had its own natural hotpools, so we relaxed in one of them while we drank our beer. The water was about as hot as an artificial jacuzzi would be. I enjoyed it.

When the hot pools closed for the night, Cole and I grabbed a deck of cards and went to the public kitchen to socialize. No one was there. So Cole taught me a variety of card games to beat me at: 99, Golf, and Egyptian Rat Screw. Cole is good at cards. I am not.

Our beds were in a dorm-style room with about six other people, so it was a little awkward and crowded. An interesting fact about our room: Each bed had one pillow except for mine, which had zero pillows, and one other guy’s, which had two. Now, I don’t want to be hasty, but what little deductive logic I possess leads me to believe that my pillow was stolen.

I used my sleeping bag as a pillow that night.

Day Two – 14 October 2008
We got an early start on the day. With all the driving we planned to do, we really couldn’t afford to waste the morning. We ate the yogurt with our cereal for breakfast. Crumpets too!

We drove north almost non-stop until Whitianga. We learned the value of I-Sites from our south island trip, so we wasted no time finding one in Whitianga. The I-Site there was awesome. We just walked in there and told them we had a couple hours to fill, and they planned our day for us. They also gave us valuable information about the tides at the hot water beach and backpackers for that night.

We ate lunch and went to Hot Water Beach. I have feeling that Hot Water Beach is the only one of its kind in the world, so I googled it. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

“Hot Water Beach is a beach on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand, approximately 12 kilometres south east of Whitianga. Its name comes from underground hot springs which filter up through the sand between the high and low water tidal reaches.”

That’s right. You go out on the beach, dig yourself a hole, and sit in your own natural jacuzzi. SOOO awesome. Of course, we bypassed the shovel rental shop on our way in, so we had to borrow one. Eventually, we took over a perfect hole as its inhabitants left, and we just laid there for a while. I call it a perfect hole because its location allowed us to regulate the temperature of the hot water. The hole next to ours was filled with water so hot you couldn’t touch it, and by simply moving sand around, we could pipe the boiling water into our hole to make it hotter. Also, the sun was shining and it was fairly warm, so Hot Water Beach was a tremendous success. I was pleased to discover that I actually got a bit sunburned out there.

After about two hours on the beach, we showered off and drove to Cathedral Cove, aka NARNIA. Without a doubt, Cathedral Cove is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The unique rock formations on the beach (from which the cove gets its name) combined with the breathtaking beauty of the area in general are probably what led the makers of Prince Caspian, the latest Narnia film, to shoot there. The beach makes an appearance 48 seconds into the film’s trailer. Check it out:

It was a quick 40-minute hike to get to the beach from the car park. Even when we were on the sand, it was hard to believe that we really weren’t in a fantasy novel. When I was walking under the “cathedral”, I saw a group of three trying to get a self-timed picture of themselves jumping up in the air. After watching them fail twice to jump at the right time, I offered to take the picture for them. When I picked up this dude’s camera, I realized that it was a Canon 50D fitted with an L-series lens, the combined value of which is probably worth more than the computer you’re using right now. So that was cool.

As it turns out, that dude was from Arizona, and he was a CGI design student doing location scouting for his film school in Auckland. I liked their jumping idea, so I let him take a picture with my camera of Cole and I doing the same thing. That picture turned out awesome, even though other tourists are in the shot. (You can see that photo and all the other ones in the latest bunch that went up with this post.)

Cathedral Cove was unrealistically gorgeous. We finally made ourselves leave, and Cole got ice cream. We made it a goal to eat ice cream every day on this road trip, and I’m pretty sure we accomplished that goal. Cole drove us into Coromandel even though he technically wasn’t allowed to drive the rental because he’s not 21 yet. But I had already driven basically the entire length of the north island, so it pretty much needed to happen.

The actual town of Coromandel (located on the Coromandel Peninsula) is a small, quaint municipality. We arrived after 5 PM, so all the shops were closed. Most small towns shut down after five. We found the backpacker and went into the office to book beds for the night. The woman who ran the office lived in the house connected to it, and she was obviously in the middle of dinner with her children when we arrived. We felt bad. She was really nice though. She gave us a dorm room all to ourselves and directions to a good place to watch the sunset.

We drove up on top of the hill that Backpacker Mom told us about, and I expected the most glorious sunset of my life. However, there were some clouds on the horizon, so it wasn’t that great. As a general rule, the more prepared you are to photograph a scene, the less photogenic that scene will be. This is why the best moments always seem to come and go while your camera is sitting at home.

Back at the backpacker, Cole and I ate Hearty Irish Stew and didn’t leave the gas on. We drank tea, played more cards, and took showers, which were unfortunately coin-operated. At first, we thought we could outsmart them. After all, the little coin box on the wall looked totally fake, and the water turned on without depositing any money. But it was only when I inserted 50 cents that the water turned warm and remained warm for exactly five minutes. I hate coin-operated showers.

I slept well that night, partially in thanks to the nice Marmot sleeping bag that Matthias let me borrow. Danke schön Matthias!

Day Three – 15 October 2008
We returned to the kitchen for breakfast to find all the doors and windows open. Apparently, someone had left the gas on the previous night, but… it wasn’t us. I’m like 97% sure it wasn’t us.

We took a really curvy, “u-turn” mountain road to Thames, and then we got lost somehow. Since we knew we couldn’t have possibly gotten lost, we asked some constructions workers. They confirmed what we suspected: We were not lost; we had just taken a SHORTCUT! It’s true. (Accidental, but true.)

We drove through Matamata to Taupo for lunch. At the Taupo I-Site, the lady told us we should definitely spend some time on the lake, preferably while enjoying a $40 boat cruise. “The lake is very important to us,” she must have said six hundred times. As Cole and I made our PB&J sandwiches on the trunk of our little white Toyota parked next to the lake, we watched people whack golf balls into the lake as part of the Lake Taupo Hole-In-One Challenge! ™. The goal is to make your ball land on the gaudy, bright-red artificial island unnaturally placed about 70 yards off the bank of the lake. “Yes,” I thought, “very important to you indeed.”

We checked out “Craters of the Moon”, a thermally active area you can walk around for five bucks. It was alright… it reminded me of the geyser area at Yellowstone National Park. Cole and I joked a lot about “lunar-as mud people” and other random things. Actually, Cole and I pretty much never stopped joking around for the duration of the trip.

We visited a few shops and an internet cafe in Taupo before we hit the road for Napier. It was on the long, straight State Highway 15 near the town of Waimihia where I received my first speeding ticket ever. In fact, it was the first time I had even been pulled over by a cop. I was going 118 kph in a 100, which is the same as going 73 mph in a 62. Going 11 over on an interstate in the US probably wouldn’t get you pulled over, so Cole and I thought it was ridiculous. The infringement cost $120 NZD, but Cole paid for half of it because he’s such a swell guy. The good news is… Cole wasn’t driving (he’s still 20), and the ticket will not affect my license or insurance in America.  Hooray!

We liked Napier a lot. It is a sweet little city with a rock beach, an amphitheatre, fountains, a flower clock, and “Opossum World”. We checked in at the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, which was an old restored hotel from the “art deco” era of the 1930s. Actually, Napier is quite famous for its abundance of genuine art deco architecture. It’s like walking around in a Dick Tracy comic book.

For dinner that night, we mixed two-minute noodles with minestrone. We shared the kitchen with a pair of French lovers who prepared a gourmet feast for themselves, complete with red wine. Our distinctly “college” meal paled in comparison.

After dinner, we went out and sat on the moonlit rocky beach. I took some photos of the moon over the ocean and laid there for a while staring at the sky. Cole and I talked about life until droplets of rain urged us to head indoors. Back at the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep.

Day Four – 16 October 2008
I woke up to the sound of heavy machinery drilling itself into the earth’s core. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. A construction team began working just outside my window at about 6:30 in the morning, which should be illegal. I was able to fall back asleep once, but that didn’t last long. Eventually, I admitted defeat, got up, and took my shower.

We enjoyed a continental breakfast as a part of our stay at the hostel. A CD/DVD Store was nearby, so I used my newly awarded voucher there to buy the Metallica CD. We listened to Metallica on our way to a town called Hastings, which is near Napier. We were told that we could drive to the top of Te Mata Peak, and we thought that sounded like a great idea. The weather was perfect, as usual. Te Mata Peak had a bunch of really steep drop-offs with no protective railing, so Cole and I enjoyed sitting dangerously close to the edges. At one such vantage point, I discovered a seashell fossil in the ground. Since I was in fact on top of a mountain (or at least a really large hill), I imagine that seashell landed there a very, very long time ago.

After Te Mata Peak, we visited Arataki Honey, a family-owned business that is New Zealand’s largest beekeeping operation. This place was cool. We got to sample all the different kinds of honey produced by the region, from the mild clover honey to the strong, uniquely Kiwi manuka honey. Fun… and delicious.

Before we left the Hawke’s Bay area, we had to get our ice cream for the day. We heard about a good place nearby, but I can’t remember what it was called. I do remember that they had a “malted milk” flavor, which I thought my dad (the flavor salesman) would find interesting. I sampled it, and it was pretty gross… it just tasted like old milk. I ultimately decided on much more delicious flavors for my double-scoop waffle cone.

From there, Cole and I made an almost non-stop dash for Wellington. We actually didn’t stop for the last 300 kilometers of the journey. It was raining when we arrived in Welly (surprise surprise), but a rainy conclusion couldn’t spoil a fantastic trip. With only four days, we couldn’t see everything the north island had to offer, but I don’t regret a single decision we made. It was ridiculous fun.

Dear Reader, thanks for sticking with me this far. With only 14 days remaining until I catch a flight home, this is probably my second-to-last New Zealand blog post. Many of you have asked how I feel about leaving New Zealand. My feelings about ending my time here aren’t easy to describe. I would have to say that I’m comfortable here, and I like it a lot, but I’m definitely ready to come home. As far as school is concerned, I recently turned in my final film essay on “Sounding Science Fiction in The Matrix“. I have two management finals, one a week from tomorrow, and one five days after that, on the day before I leave. So far, I’ve met my goal of making an A- or higher on every assignment, so hopefully that will continue for my finals.

Thanks for reading, and check out the new photos!