What’s with the Radio???

 

Ok…So I haven’t blogged in a while…So here it is!!!

My week was filled with plenty of assignments.  3 tests to catch up on, a lab assignment due, and a research paper on the association between depression and erectile dysfunction.  Yay…or should I say boring.  I didn’t want to write the paper and almost fell asleep trying to read through the research articles.  But I got it done.  As for the 3 tests, I did alright.  And the lab assignment I still have to wait and see, but I think I did good on that.

Moving away from school, and moving via a crazy bus to the mall.  Yes…I decided to go to the mall and purchase a cell phone from the actual providers store, since the other stores (similar to our Best Buy and Future Shop) did not want to sign me up for a two year plan because my VISA is only for one year (which VISA does by the way, and then you have to renew it before the expiry date).  On the way to the mall I see the bus pull up at the terminal.  I haven’t taken this specific bus before, so I ask the driver “Is this the bus that goes to the Base?” (the base being the name of the shopping complex here just outside of town).  His response back to me was “Did you look at the sign?  What does it say, huh? WHAT DOES IT SAY!!! It says THE BASE!!! Maybe I should write THE BASE on a cardboard box and shove it in the window”.  Rude driver, but it was the only bus there for the next half hour so I got on.  As soon as I get in the bus I realize he has a radio hooked up blaring random music.   It started off with the Beatles (which as much as I don’t like, I could tolerate).  The it moved on to some French music.  The random Maori chanting.  And then some song from the 50’s in some other random foreign language.  Multicultural….oh yes…but it began to annoy me and piss me off.  Suddenly, like a miraculous act of God, his radio broke.  I secretly laughed watching him get all pissed off and struggling to fix it.  Oh he got what he deserved.  I was happy………Until the next stop where about 10 mentally challenged individuals overtook the bus and got on screaming and yelling at each other from every seat.  This bus right was a complete JOKE!

Finally I got there, signed up for a plan, but have yet to get the phone.  You see, in New Zealand everything is A la Carte…Including phones and phone plans.  Oh well, I’m going back there tomorrow to complain and hope I get my phone.

Despite my bas experiences that day, most New Zealander’s are the friendliest people I’ve met.  Just walking home, people walking by you say “Hello” and “Good Evening”. It’s kind of nice compared to Canada where people just walk by minding their own business.  Takes some getting used to though.  Take tonight for example……I went outside for a quick smoke since I cant smoke inside (and yes yes everybody, I’m not smoking as much and am getting closer to quitting).  Anyways, as I’m smoking, this random guy walks across the road up to me.  In Canada, you would be scared about what this person wants.  Turns out, he just wanted a cigarette…..and then out of nowhere pulls out a bottle of wine, a glass, asks me if I want some wine, and caries on a 15 minute conversation about quantum mechanics and how signals propagating across an axon travel faster than the speed of light.  Interesting…….I think he was drunk. HAHAHAHA! Actually, turned out he was a PhD student studying quantum mechanics, needing a smoke, and wanting to boast about his research.  At least it beats Toronto where he most likely would have been a crazy guy wanting to steal your money and stab you.  Still…Always good to be careful…people are friendly here, but there is a lot of issues with drinking and a large jailed population.

Despite all this, I’m setting in pretty good.  Except the fact that nobody believes in ice here, most people drink instant coffee (YUK!) and a regular sized pop at McDonalds is the same size as our small sized pop.  And their television commercial are graphic.  They have one about drunk driving where a man is talking on the phone with his wife, all of a sudden she cant hear him anymore, and then you see that he just got into a car accident and is behind the wheel of the car dead with blood dripping out of his head.  I think they get their point across better than our commercials with the crazy girl (who I bet is really drunk) singing a song at the local bar about not drinking and driving.  That commercial looks like it was filmed in 1992 on a budget of $50.  Go Canada.

Anyways everybody, I’ll be blogging again soon with more amusing stories.  Hope you are enjoying my adventures and having a few laughs at my expense.  Can’t wait to hear all the stories from Canada when I’m back.

See ya

Cocaine, International Rugby, and the Logging Practices of the Forestry Industry in Vanuatu??? What a week!

 

Well…This was an interesting week.  I got over my tonsillitis and managed to get out of bed and make it to class.  One thing the school forgot to tell me was that my lecture room had changed from room 1 to room 11.  Because of this, I went into room 1 thinking it was my classroom, sat down, got ready to take notes, and then began to realize that the logging practices in the forestry industry in the country of Vanuatu (Which a series of survivor was filmed in, p.s.) really had nothing to do with psychological measurement.  Meh, at least I learned something about Vanuatu, the timber industry, and got to see countless slides of various types of trees that come from there.  Interesting.

This leads into another interesting night…St. Patrick’s Day.  I was invited by my flatmates (and yes we use the word flatmates instead of roommates here) to go out drinking to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, so I figured why not.  First off, I have no clue what St. Patrick’s Day celebrates…I’m not Irish and I’m pretty sure most people that celebrate it aren’t Irish and just see it as an excuse to drink beer.  Oh well, who would say no to an excuse for beer.  That being said, we all went out to a local pub and drank some green beer, except for the girls that decided to drink these Guinness cocktails which were made with Guinness, baileys, some other type of liquor, and served warm….Interesting, but not my personal choice.   After a while the bar got boring so we decided to bar hop over to one of the more busier Irish pubs.  And this is where the night got more interesting and drunker…..Drinks were better, but more expensive.  We somehow managed to squish our way through the crowd and snagged up a booth in the back.  I managed to go out to the back patio for a smoke and when I came back there was suddenly a whole bunch of guys taking over the booth all wearing green shirts.   Turns out it was the local rugby team, and some of the players from the national team (who must have gotten in trouble for drinking because apparently there was a game on today and none of them ended up playing it because they were all benched).  Anyways, I know nothing about rugby and I don’t care, but apparently it’s a HUGE thing here in NZ and having the rugby players drink with you is seen as something amazing.  They didn’t seem all that special to me, except for the fact they had about 100 bottles of beer on the table, that they obviously must have got for free, and offered us to help ourselves to beer…..which I most definitely did. 

Then I went outside, puked a little in a corner, somehow caught up with my roommate and made it home safely……not sure how but I think we took a cab.  At least I made it.

But drinking on a Thursday night is not always a good idea when you need to be up at 7:30 the next day to get to class on time.  Surprisingly I somehow managed to wake up early this morning and make it to my class.  I’ve been getting up early most days, not sure how as I used to sleep in until 3 PM.  Maybe its the air.

At least class was interesting.  The teacher spent a great deal of time talking about how experiments on Rhesus Monkeys helped to show the addictive effects of cocaine.  The monkeys will keep craving and trying to get their cocaine fix until a point where they actually die.  Lots of jokes were made about how the researchers came up with a crazy experiment like that, and that maybe some of them might have been stoned themselves.  Well that and the fact that a certain percentage of the cocaine used on the monkeys for the study mysteriously disappeared…hmmmm is that what research does to people?

Here’s an interesting fact you may or may not know.  Did you know that the original recipe for Coca-Cola actually included cocaine in its ingredients? 

The lecture concluded with a quote of ‘drugs are bad’ from South Park’s Mr. Mackey.  Its a good course, but I need to get moving on a paper that’s due next Friday.  It sucks being two weeks behind with courses, but I’m catching up ok.  Had a test worth almost 18% of my mark in one course and managed to get 72% when the class average was 64% (plus I hadn’t studied much and had only gone to 1 out of 5 lectures).

Anyways, things are going good.  I’m getting caught up, experiencing NZ culture, making friends (including my friend from Zimbabwe….I just like saying the word Zimbabwe) and now I’m going to bed.  P.S.  as much as people say NZ wine is good, their red wine sucks.  I’m used to my Chilean Cabernet and that’s next to impossible to get here.  Guess it’s another thing to add to my list of things to look forward to when I go back home.  

I miss you guys all back home and I’ll be writing on here again soon.  Hope you guys are enjoying my interesting stories.  I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.  I’ll try to get some photos up soon too.  You can all get to see my tropical campus

 

Talk to you all again next time I blog.  Bye for now.

Folding Forks???

Did you know that cup-o-noodles here come prepackaged with a plastic fork inside the cup? AND IT FOLDS!!! Random New Zealand fact…

Finally…A Chance to Update

Hey everyone.  So as you probably have all heard, obviously not through my blog, I have landed safely in New Zealand.  It was one of the worse plane rides ever.  Not because there were any problems with the plane, it was actually quite a smooth ride, but the problem was that my first plane got delayed.  This meant that as soon as I landed in LA I had about 30 seconds to get on the next plane and get ready for a nice 12 hour plane flight .  Plus to top it all off, my bags were not going to come on the fight with me (I guess they wanted to do some souvenir shopping in LA and catch the next flight…oh well).  I did manage to finally get my bags and make my way (on another gruelling 2 hour bus ride, sitting next to this really annoying British girl who did nothing but complain about how she was down here to meet someone she’s only met once and has no clue where she’s going…what else can I say…BRITISH!!!).

But finally I’m not here.  OH WAIT!!!! I forgot to mention I managed to get tonsillitis along the way…another fun experience.  My tonsils are swollen and went white full of puss…it almost looked like a spider made spider nest in my throat if you want a nice description.  I went to the emergency clinic and was told that despite how bad it is and how much a tonsil removal surgery is needed, the New Zealand Government will only allow that to happen if you’ve gotten tonsillitis more than 6 times in a year.  Now I’m on meds trying to keep them down to make this damn tonsillitis go away before I get sent to the hospital for intravenous drugs.

Thankfully my roommates…or should I say flatmates as there called here in New Zealand…have really gone out of their way to accommodate me.  I’ve been chauffeured around town to get things I need to get my room organized (like my desk and comfy chair I just got today).   Ahhhhh this chair makes my butt feel comfy, much better than the bed where I can feel every spring in the mattress (no wonder the guy threw it in for free!).  Oh well, at least this way I’ll be sitting at my desk doing homework more than I will be lying down in bed dreaming about my homework being done on its own.

Anyways…speaking about homework, I need to catch up on plenty of it.  On that note, I’m wrapping this blog update up, making a cup-o-noodles, doing some homework and heading to bed to try to make it to class tomorrow morning (there’s a guest lecturer coming from Auckland to talk about sexually deviant offenders, the basis of my thesis subject).  I’ll try my best to make at least weekly updates on here and hope that someone’s actually going to read them.  There might be some pics coming too…….oooohhhhhhhh………just give it time, I’m still trying to get settled.  I miss everyone back home and hope that everyone’s going to keep in touch (just don’t call me 5000 times a day people, I do have assignments and homework to do. lol.)

I’ll be in touch again soon

Peter