Most of the last month has been focused on my job hunting efforts, which in hindsight proved fairly fruitful after a relatively short space of time - I have met people here who have spent months waiting for work, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I am now fully employed, fully housed and happy with it - something I really couldn't envisage three weeks ago!
At the start of May, one Monday night, I went to see Ed Byrne in the Sky City theatre as part of the comedy festival. I wish I'd gone to Dylan Moran on the Friday instead, to be honest. Ah well. Kate and Cathal went, and I met them in Ted's afterward. At this stage I was still living with them - for which I will be eternally grateful, by the way, don't get me wrong! - in their gaff over in Grafton*. It was pushing past midnight, and they were looking tired, but I was still well up for more drinking. The bar was fairly heaving, as Ted's is inclined to do, and so I decided this was the perfect opportunity to let them go home and have some time alone to fuck, or fight, or whatever they needed to do that they couldn't while I was appropriating their sofa. So I stayed out, hung out with a heap of random folk, played loads of pool and ended up going back to Takapuna for the weekend. Spent most of it lounging around in pajamas, watching films, and eating popcorn and chicken. Class.
By this point I had been looking for work for about two weeks, and was getting incredibly frustrated by the complete lack of contact from ANY of the places I inquired with or applied to. Bloody kiwis are just too laid back, I swear. This frustration, my rapidly diminishing funds and the perpetual 'getting in everyone's way' feeling were taking it in turns at getting me down, sometimes throwing in a sneaky wee tag team for good measure. Luckily, within days of reaching a real low slump, I heard back from two jobs offering interviews. One in Auckland, part time with Spaceships camper rentals, and one in Wellington doing full time mental health support work in a residential home. Couldn't really be faced with more different prospects! So I did the Spaceships interview, and then drove to Wellington for the other one two days later. Reading that back, it sounds very blasé, driving from Auckland to Wellington and back in the space of three days. It isn't, you know. It's 410 miles each way, a good eight or nine hours drive. And some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet, really amazing - especially along the Desert Road. On a good day, it's breathtaking. On a bad one, it's deadly.
I'd actually been down in Wellington four weeks earlier with Sarah for the Summerset Festival in the Basin Reserve, and we spent a few days hanging out there. I really love that city actually, it has such a vibrant, buzzy feeling. Cuba Street is one of my favourite places - packed full of second hand book and music shops, cafes and pubs. Oh, and the bucket fountain! I am really very fond of that thing. Here it is...
It collects water which slowly trickles down to fill the buckets. As they fill, they tip and then fill the ones below them in turn. Welly is a particularly windy spot, and on a gusty day you are pretty much guaranteed to get soaked on your way past. It always makes me chuckle, the creaky clunky noises it makes, and people getting wet and shrieking.So yes anyway, I went down and did the interview, and felt pretty good about the whole thing. Three days later, Spaceships offered me the part time job in Auckland, and Wellink offered me the support work. Up until that point, it had been a no-brainer of a choice, and in fact at that stage it was very nearly down to 'who can pay me quicker?'. But when I was finally faced with options, it suddenly became very difficult to choose. I mean, on paper, I don't even like Auckland. It is a big businessy hole, mostly devoid of creativity or character, filled with a sense of its own sense of self importance. The job was only offering part time hours, which wasn't enough to support myself. So why the hell wasn't I just going to Wellington? Well, I hadn't spent any proper time with Kate since I arrived, not time that we were spending together out of choice anyway. There were some other people knocking about up here I'd hardly seen or not seen at all, and for some stupid, unfathomable reason, I kind of wanted to stay up here for a while. And when it came to the work, I had begun to seriously consider what I really wanted to do with my time here. Responsibility free was kind of appealing to me, and the support work wasn't really my cup of tea in this case - it was almost more like respite care work, than trying to work with mental health needs in the community.
And then I heard from Maree, who offered me an interview the next day - I had also applied to Jucy Rentals, and they had full time hours going. This gave me an opportunity to have the decision making be someone else's problem. I resolved that if Jucy offered me the job, I would stay, and if they didn't, I would go to Welly. The next few days were fucking tense. It is a very odd feeling, knowing that in a matter of hours, you will know the course that your time away is going to take.
You know what, I am bored of this as I am typing it. I will finish this later. To follow: Flathunting, The Railway Campus, Jucy and the characters I am hanging out with at both.
Other things of note:
- The weed. Man, the weed! Exision, Silver Mt Zion, Devendra Banhart. Face tingles.
- International cooking nights.
- The bag of bags for pool.
- alkali hands and lizard skin.
*Its a cool wee place, a converted apartment over the top of a garage, a fairly unique sort of affair if I ever saw one. Thing is, it REALLY isn't suitable for longer term co-habiting of the platonic variety. Their bedroom wasn't so much behind a wall as a piece of cardboard, which tried very hard to be a wall but mostly failed on account of it's not reaching the ceiling. So effectively, Kate, Cathal and I shared a big room for a month.
