In my travels, up until now, thanks to the ingenuity of Couch Surfing and some effort on my part, I haven’t felt like a tourist. These past few days in Queenstown I haven’t been so lucky. Read on…
Queenstown, yes, there is a reason tourists flood to this place…
Way back when… me and my fighting stick in Japan
I never thought I wanted to go on one of these massive, around the world ‘trips’. Traveling always seemed to me like running from a constant state of boredom, having to decide each day where to go and what to do next. That’s why, after the army, when all my friends went travelling, I went to live in Tokyo, studied Japanese and got my ass kicked and my knees worn out by practicing martial arts. Thinking back I can postulate that my family’s holiday ‘trips’ have something to do with this early realization. The constant stress, being hauled from one ‘attraction’ to another (although I did love the amusement parks), was a tiring affair at best. But as circumstances have it, I’ve found myself on one of these so called ‘trips’ and up until these past few days I’ve been loving it. So why am I complaining now?
So many things you can do for some $$$$
MANUFACTUREING A GOOD TIME
In his masterpiece, a Brief History of Humankind (It’s being translated to English as we speak), Prof Yuval Noa Harri, touches on the subject of tourism. It is only recently in human culture that people have started going away on vacation and seeking to collect ‘experiences’. If my memory serves me, he ties this ‘fashion’ in with the evolution of capitalism. After the last few days in Queenstown I have to agree.
Being one of the main sources of income in New Zealand, Tourism has shaped the lives of some of the small towns in the country, which probably wouldn’t even exist if not for this industry. There are many such places in the world, all of them trying to sell you ‘attractions’ and brainwash you into thinking that if you cough up some money you’ll have ‘the time of your life’ and, if not, go and buy a t-shirt so your friends think that you did.
Queenstown is one of these places. Built on a beautiful lake and surrounded by mountains, the town is overrun by tourist trying to have a ‘good time’, roaming in packs looking to get drunk and party or throwing themselves off some bridge/airplane, injecting instant adrenalin, in an attempt to feel alive in their otherwise mundane lives.
So many things you can buy for $$$ (even late at night when the rest of NZ is closed)
WHAT IS OUT THERE? CAN I HAVE IT?
Unlike tourism, I think exploration is deeply coded into our genetic makeup, ever since prehistoric humans went over the next hill or crossed the river seeking food, asking themselves ‘What is out there?’ and probably ‘Can I have it?’ These are the questions that have been leading me on my journey, without even noticing it up until know. In this blog I’ve shared with you some of the answers I’ve found. These are questions tourists will never find an answer to as what they encounters is a simulacra, a fake with no origin, created in order for them to maxims money spending.
Help me not to be a tourist!
As the NZ part of my trip soon comes to an end, I’m spending the next two weeks on a quiet farm trying to work on some of my projects (hopefully you’ll know about them soon enough). After that I’ll be heading off to Australia with this old/new realization that I don’t want to be a tourist. If you have some smart thoughts on this subject or recommendations how this can best be done please share them with me.
You’ve probably never heard about this sport and you definitely should! I stayed awake until the wee hours of the morning with volunteers and hard core fans and met the world champions on the last leg of their crazy race – read on.
From the GodZone Media kit ( My pictures are not so good)
It all began when I asked, J who I climbed with in Wanaka, if I could catch a ride with her.
“Sure, I just have to stop on the way to encourage my friend who is racing”. I happily joined just to discover this crazy sport. Adventure racing is a group race of a combination of navigation, trekking, mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing and sometime other disciplines. The participants race across huge distances in a race that last several days, deciding for themselves when and where to rest. As we speak one of New Zealand’s best international adventure races is taking place (although the winning group already finished). On a feminist note, each group has to have at least one female participant and I was pleased to discover that there were groups with a majority of women.
The Godzone adventure race was designed by a close group of friends and family members who enlisted many volunteers to help with the logistics of the race. The volunteers take their job very seriously and try to take into account every small detail, for instance if the light in the shed where the participants were changing their gear and building the mountain bikes should be left on or off. They decided to keep it relatively dark as to not destroy the night vision of the participants who were going to have to mountain bike in the darkness.
Volunteers and fans Checking results
The volunteers themselves are usually into some type of outdoor sport and a lot of them have family and friends that are racing.
The volunteers and fans obsessively check the online map which is updated with the GPS coordinates of the participants. I quickly found myself drawn in to the action checking the online map and observing the horizon postulating when the group J was rooting for, who were second place, would arrive to our point. Some of the real hard core fans and the photographers have an adventure race themselves trying to meet up with the participants at as many way points as they can. The fans are not allowed to give the participants any information about the other groups or navigational tips.
Map of results
First the world champions arrived, their head lights appearing at a distance like strange alien beings. Two and a half hours later J’s team got to our point. They went to sleep for the whole of half an hour before continuing on the whole night up to the finish point! You could see how tired and worn out they were after three days of almost no sleep and constant strain yet they were determined to continue.
The world champions building their bikes for the last leg of the race
It’s not only endurance of the body, they also have to stay focused, navigate and build and take apart their mountain bikes. One of the participants even wrote on his arm every step of taking his bike apart because he knew his limits. Tactics and deception are also part of the game. Last year’s winners were closely followed by another group so the leader shouted out let’s put our jackets on and made as if they were slowing down then suddenly all the grouped dashed and ducked into the bush to get rid of their followers.
A team just reaching a previous stage of the race after the winners finished.
This sport is not endorsed by the government in any way and the groups have to find themselves sponsors varying from computer hardware companies to manufactures of oats. The price for entering is quit steep around 6000$ for the group of 4 while the prize money probably won’t even cover all the costs (around 10000$ for the whole group). So what brings these people to push themselves so hard for so long?
Don’t get me wrong I’m all for pushing one’s limits and I would love to go on an adventure race myself, but I would like to do it with a good night rest and some decent food between each leg. Anyway, even though there is a wining team, the race is still going on so check it out.
My whole trip in new Zealand has been threaded with one unbelievable coincidence after another, so much so that I’m not even sure were to begin this story…
Serendipity?
I’ll start it in wellington, with a man sitting in the rain outside of the museum. This struck my curiosity but I was too shy and too unwilling to get wet to start a conversation. Only after I ran in to him again inside the huge museum did I muster the courage. He was from France, just back from the south island while I was heading that way.
“What is the one place in the south island I can’t miss?” I asked him.
“Curio Bay,” he said a name that meant nothing to me.
“I swam there with dolphins. It’s the best place.”
I wrote this down in my very random ‘to visit’ list.
Three weeks later I find myself in Dunedin being hosted by a couch surfer I actually saw in the Kiwi burn festival, meeting a friend of his friends, who just 5 days earlier appeared out of nowhere at a lake I was camping out with my climbing friends. Back then this guy, Charlie, had sung us his song, “a dollar for a pie”, and we joked about this becoming the next great hit. 5 days later I hear Charlie, singing it in open mike night and by the end of the song the whole crowd was singing the Corus.
On with the story… on the phone the women at the Curio Bay backpackers told me it would be nearly impossible to hitch hike to the place because it was so remote, needless to say there were no buses. Knowing that this time I was really stretching my luck I decided to try it anyway.
Sun Set in Curio Bay
Not that I ever trust my good ‘fortune’, in fact I always prepare and expect the worst. Stoking up with emergency rations and a map I created with accommodations I could spend the night in I head out with the bus to Balclutha.
From there it was on to hitching. At the junction I met a guy that was on the bus with me. Anyone that has hitched knows that this is a big predicament. If I stand with him we both have a lesser change of being picked up. If I stand before him I’ll have a better chance, especially being a ‘girl’ but I’ll be ‘cutting’ in line. So being the gentle women that I am I headed on further down the road giving this guy a fair chance. He was nice enough to say that if someone picks him up he’ll try to get me on board. Sure enough 25 minutes later a car stops for me. Dan, the other hitchhiker, is inside it.
The driver is heading to Owaka, my backup plan for Owaka is to stay with a Couchsurfer, but he has two profiles which seemed a little fishy, so paranoid me wasn’t sure if to try and keep on going. Then Dan says he’s heading to that same exact Couchsurfer! So off we are, our ride taking us straight up to the farm.
Steven, our host, turns out to be an ‘old style’ new Zealand farmer, who’s just not very good with computers so he lost his password for his CS profile and created another.
My ride to curio bay
Next morning I have to hike back to the main road, more than 6 km with all of my bags. Not one of the 5 cars that passed me by even slowed down. Not a very good sign. Finally I get into town. The only café I was hoping to have a break in is closed. At least they had a public toilet I could use. Coming out of the bathroom I noticed a car with a caravan standing on the curb of the road so I used a little ‘Hutzpa’ and asked them if they are by any chance heading my way. Turns out that they are on holiday going all the way to Curio Bay! I shared the back seat with their parrot which was in a huge cage because, they couldn’t find him a parrot-sitter.
So here I am, at one of the most remote places in New Zealand and definitely one of the most beautiful, and that means a lot as this whole country is so fucking stunning.
Of course the backpackers was fully booked and because I wasn’t sure I’d make it I didn’t have a reservation so I had to pay for a private room and the dolphins never appeared… but what can I say, you win some, you lose some. I don’t think this is where the story ends but i’ll pause it here for a while…
Can you spot the penguin in the petrified forest? Sorry bad camra
No dolphins but did see sea lions
Attacked by a massive herd of sheep on the ride I got out of the bay (first people I asked in the backpackers… got to invercargil in time for a free concert my host was performing in)
Connected?
Spending time in Dunedin with some super talented people made me remember a song that more or less popped in my head one day in high school, when I was waiting at a red light returning home. I realized I was more or less living this song right now which I found sort of cool.I’m a little embraced by this but I’ve recorded my god-awful voice trying to sing it. Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you to listen to it but if anyone out there wants to collaborate to make it listenable I’d be super keen.
I just want to go-go down the road to get away from all of this
I want to travel all alone alone with no one to miss or kiss
Two years ago Christchurch was hit by a massive earthquake killing 185 people and causing mass destruction. I spent three days in the city trying to make sense of the post-earthquake city, truth is I failed.
Beauty and destruction. The view from my host’s house which still has cracks throughout the place.
I tried talking to as many locals as I could about the quake and life after it. The responses I got were very diverse. Some didn’t want to talk about it, while others claimed that the weeks after the quake were actually a good experience as everyone was super nice and a special comradery took place. Others yet said many of their friends had left and a lot complained about problems with the insurance companies and the local municipality that has taken a lot of power for itself and remains immune to criticism. The government is actually forcing some people to sell their property because the ground was deemed unstable.
CTV building site, 115 people lost their life.
I wasn’t expecting the destruction to be so bad after all this time. Trying to get to my host or the bus station I encountered whole sections of the city that were still blockaded which made walking with all of my bags an annoying mission. I was surprised to discover some suburbs still don’t have working sewage! There was even a toilet creating contest.
Road blocks in the middle of what used to be the city center.
Christchurch is a city with no ‘heart’, as the whole center of the city was destroyed, which still impacts the lives of everyone. Small hangout places have opened up in the suburbs and some interesting shops built in shipping containers have been created. Still, people go out a lot less. I started out with saying that I failed to make sense of the city because beside these facts that I bring here, the city just feels strange in a way that I can’t really put my finger on. I guess you just have to go there for yourself. But take into account that tourists are still flooding the city but a lot of the backpackers were destroyed making in very hard to find accommodations. I was lucky to find some super cool Couchsurfers!
On my quest to discover alternative life styles I discovered a Man living in yurt. What is a yurt? And what is it good for? Read on…
A yurt is a wooden framed round tent used in places in central Asia like Mongolia. It is cheap, has great insulation and can be moved from place to place quite easily which makes it perfect for some people. B is one of those people.
The Yurt
B built his yurt on top of tires for better insulation. On top of the tires beams are placed and then a wooden floor. A solar panel provides electricity and water from the river is filtered and pumped to the house. The inside is basically a one room apartment containing a bed, sofa and small kitchen. The yurt itself is a commercial product you can simply buy and ‘install’.
B on his bed.
All in one
The laws in New Zealand state that a place of residency is a self-contained unit with a kitchen and a toilet inside. So by placing the toilet outside B didn’t even need to get permits for building it, although this loophole might not last long. It seems building a beautiful residency for around 12,000 NZ dollars might be too much of a danger for the whole ‘capitalistic’ slave market.
When comparing the Yurt to the converted shipping container I encountered one beautiful advantage comes to mind. The Yurt has a built in ‘skylight’ so one can lay in bed and gaze at the start, and the real ones are so much better than the stickers I tried to set up in the right constellations in my childhood bedroom. This skylight cools the Yurt in hot days and can be covered by pulling a string when it rains.
star gazing through the skyligh.
The obvious disadvantage is the outhouse. Although the shower water is heated by gas it still can’t be fun to walk out of the shower to the yurt in the cold winter, not to speak of night visits to the toilet. I found the round room warm (not only in temperature), convenient and comfortable and if that doesn’t sell you on it maybe the view from the window will. At high tide the ocean reaches almost to the doorstep.
After 3 days of bad weather I finally managed to get to the Tongariro crossing trek, unfortunately I wasn’t the only one. Buses filled with tourists filled the nearest parking area and made for quite a strange experience. Since New Zealanders are not very capitalistic and prefer to spend more time at home than at work the last bus back to town left at 4 even though the sun only sets at 9 p.m.
so many people!
This created a sort of frenzy at the beginning of the trek since people wanted to make sure they had time to see it all. Politely, I tried passing as many people as I could to get to somewhere that didn’t feel like a German school trip. Luckily enough the meek quickly fell behind. Some couldn’t control their obsession of taking pictures, others needed to pee or drink or eat. Not me!
Smoking!
Since the volcano erupted the trek can only be walked halfway then one has to turn back the way they came. My plan was to sprint to the end and take all the pictures on the way back. So it was, that by 10 a.m. I got to the midpoint of the trek which meant I could either turn back and wait for the bus for 2 hours or attempt to conquer Mt. Doom.
Guess what I chose?
DOOM!
Group of elderly hikers
Starting up Mt. Doom I met a guy coming down who had completely lost the trail. That was not a good sign for someone with no navigation skills like myself. Then an elderly group passed me by. They were led by a smiling old lady (I like New Zealand feminism!). ‘How hard could it be?’ I thought and tried to follow in their footsteps. 20 minutes later there was no hint of a trail not because we had lost it, there simply was none. People were on all four trying to scramble up the mountain. For the first time I understood why a walking stick could help! Not that I had one.
There were two options, try to edge yourself up the slippery volcanic ash and pebbles or try to boulder up the rocky side. For me there was no dilemma. But let me tell you, this was real climbing, not that game with ropes I sometimes like to play; Jagged rock tearing at my hands, large boulders coming loose when I put my weight on them, stones from climbers above crashing near my head. I tried inventing some story to motivate me, but someone already wrote that story. A new found appreciation for Frodo kept me going for a while.
Remembering that most accidents happen on the way down I kept on asking myself if I have enough strength to climb down. ‘Hell no!’ was the answer my body was giving yet my feet kept climbing on as I got a glimpse of the famous obsession to reach the peak.
As I got close to the peak freezing wind almost blew me away and icy patches appeared in the shade but the real crazy thing was the hot misty vapour that was coming out of the volcanic mountain. There were stones that were hot to the touch!
The most beautiful view i’v seen!
At the top!
Finally I was there. I don’t know if it was because of all the hardship but I had the feeling it was the most beautiful view I have ever seen. It literally took my breath away forcing me to pause my constant cursing. But that wasn’t the end because up at the top people were talking about a volcanic crater just a little further. So I kept going, down and then up again crawling on all four again.
The crater!
Then came the way down. I thought about creating a new sport, ‘mountain skating’, one tries to skate down the mountain attempting not to bring the whole mountain down with them. Using your butt is allowed!
Somehow, with my traction-less sneakers I managed to skate down to the rocky side again and began the long climb down, the bus deadline getting ever closer. At this point the ankle I sprained a month ago became the bane of my existence. Not that the rest of my joints hurt a lot less.
Eventually the mountain became less steep and the trail reappeared. The sign on the bottom read 2.5 hours to the car park. I had 1 hour before the bus was supposed to leave. All I wanted to do was crash on the ground and never get up but instead I gave the order to my body ‘go’ and somehow it still listened. Then there were just 5 km left. That doesn’t sound like a lot but every step I took was pure pain. I remembered from Karate special training that the suffering always ends and that it usually happens faster than you think and you are left with the feeling of “that’s it? I could do more”. This was not the case! Every turn I took I prayed to the god I don’t believe in that I’d see the car park, then I cursed him when the path just went winding on. Then I heard it, the beautiful sound of a marvellous car engine. It was pure music to my ears, civilization! I arrived at the bus at 15:55.
Some unrelated stuff:
The Cup!
Almost connected: One of the cool CS hosts I encountered is behind this great idea. The Tiki Wai cup which comes with an application that shows all public drinking fountains in new Zealand so people don’t buy bottled water that is very bad for nature and also give cool discounts in coffee shops/ pubs/ attractions. If you are coming to NZ check it out here.
After 6 days at Kiwiburn, the regional burning man even in new Zealand, I could tell you about how the libertarian idea of self-reliance wins over the communist one, when comparing a burn to a rainbow gathering. Or I could describe the acceptance of ‘different’ body ‘images’ along with sexual and gender orientations as being taken for granted. I could tell you about the amazing women heading construction crews and leading different camps like the fire spinning/eating camp and the body painting camps, without the need of using the word feminism. Or I could delve into the role of nudism in the community or the obsession with burning, but instead I’ll try to provide an account of my 27 hour trip down the rabbit hole.
THE MAN He crashed when they tried to stand him up but it was still awesome
After the highest night of my life I awoke with 7 sentences I wrote down on myself in fear of forgetting. As I’m not sure how to even start describing that night I guess I’ll trust my drugged self and start with that.
Memento I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie with the guy with short term memory loss. Well I was smarter than he was. As reality started warping around me I realized this was an experiment like no other so I turned on my video camera and started filming and recording myself. It was so hard to keep track of a single thought I was sure I wouldn’t remember anything in the morning but I was wrong, I remember that night just as I do any other. But back then the memory of an action was out of phase with the action itself reaching me ‘too late’ causing disorientation and the feeling of ‘how the hell did I get here?’
Trying to check if my pupils are dilated
I knew my camera had a limited battery and memory and I was afraid to lose it throughout the night so I set myself on a mission to find a pen from the PostArt exhibition and scribble the word Memento on my hand. Then, if I woke up remembering nothing, at least I’d know shit happened.
Cliché ≠ Untrue All throughout the night I was highly aware that what I was experiencing was a cliché. That it was indeed pathetic that a chemical reaction was behind all this. It made me sad that through all of my martial arts training I could only reach glimpses of this while here all I needed was to swallow two ‘all natural’ space cookies and bang the door was finally open and there was ‘no spoon’.
Yet the fact that I was living through a cliché also helped me calm down and not freak out. When I felt extremely paranoid just by someone walking behind me, or doubted if I would ever return to ‘normality’ I knew it was ‘natural’. In fact, I could finally truly understand some of my friends I had baby sat through a similar ‘trip’.
KiwiBurn Is a real ‘trip’ even without any additives. pic by Raúl Fragoso
It was a cultural cliché in the widest meaning as my knowledge and memory tried to make sense of the present. Ramachandran’s brain ‘map’ and his work on synaesthesia came to mind when light, sound, gravity, emotions, pain, words and body movement all manifested as one (although for the life of me I couldn’t remember his name when I was high). The sound of a car passing by was manifested by me being crushed to the floor, my head throbbing everything darkening. The word religion had black smoking fangs coming from it stabbing me. Music literally did lift me up or take me down. People passing me by would manifest in me rubbing my hands together. I could see my thoughts as light threads bouncing off from one area in my head to another, (the girl with me said I was tracing a round halo over my head even though it didn’t feel round to me).
I tried to apply Turing’s test to people when I wasn’t sure if they were figments of my imagination or not by asking them to teach me stuff I didn’t know (I finally believed the girl was real when she apologised for something my selfish self would never in a million years think about apologising for).
I thought about Jill’s stroke of insight (without remembering her name again), in the way she, as a brain scientist, reacted to a stroke in her left, ‘rational’, hemisphere. With her ‘serial processor’ gone, her right hemisphere took control and gave her the feeling of interconnectedness and bliss in ‘the now’. My left hemisphere was working, although perhaps not at full capacity, but it wasn’t shutting up my right side.
As I was ‘coming down’ for hours and hours thinking I had finally reached the ground, just to discover another shell was being peeled away, one of the best star trek episodes floated into being, Riker is mentally tortured by aliens, awaking from one delusion just to discover ‘reality’ is another delusion.
When I felt each of my limbs move separately without asking ‘me’, as I moved through the dancing crowd, I thought about the book I am reading now. The Rainbow and the Worm, a prominent biologist gives proof of a proto-network of communication between cells. She claims this network is our ‘body conciseness’ and is enabled by quantum coherence, as the cell is actually a liquid crystal allowing quantum coherence on larger scales.
As I could feel each separate thought fighting to gain control over the others Meme theory became a reality.
When I described these things to N, the Israeli girl who had to convince me she was real (well, what are the chances of meeting one of the two people I came with to the festival, and the one person I could speak to in my native language, just as I made it to my PostArt exhibit and was the most lost I have ever been?) told me, “Just because something is a cliché doesn’t mean it’s not true,” which I ferociously wrote on my arm.
Slaughterhouse five I haven’t read this sci fi book byKurt Vonnegut but as I was describing my sense of time to N she said it sounded like this book so I wrote it on my hand to make sure I remember to read it.
‘Outside’ time slowed down while ‘inner’ time became faster. I looked at people dancing and it seemed as if they were dancing in slow motion. To test this I tried walking between them without crashing into them. It was almost too easy it was the Spiderman fighting scene where the world slows down.
The pirate ship at the lake pic by Raúl Fragoso
I would think a million thoughts and one minute would go by. After 3 minutes of talking to the camera it felt like two hours had gone by.
Time became a series of elongated beads threaded on a line. At the end of each bead there was a cutoff point after which there was a nothing ness I could slip into until the next bead arrived yet all the beads were still treaded together continuously. The ‘paradox’ of oneness vs. separateness was so strong yet so un-paradoxical. Time was one endless moment stretching forever filled with little black holes that sliced and diced it or was it actually a series of still images that were almost, but not quite, glued together into a movie? Well, it was both. This is being god I thought and laughed at my overdramatic reaction.
Guess which bottle in this art project is mine? Yep, even when I was high as a kite I had to be different
All is Yes and No
It is the ‘mystical’ cliché which I have been rambling on about for most of my life yet I still was compelled to write it because it is yes… and it is no. Because when people were talking to me, half the time I didn’t understand one word they were saying but I understood it all! Because a circle doesn’t have a beginning or an end yet it has both… because I could keep on spewing this new age shit forever.
A volume of dimension As this whole trip began I felt the volume go up. But it didn’t go up linearly or even exponentially it blew up in all dimensions, and there are way more than 3! (or even 4 if you count time).
Everything went to extreme. If I had to say something I HAD to. If someone didn’t understand me or someone was worrying about me it was the WORST.
My ‘survival’ instinct went up to the maximum, keeping me away from the edge of hills and electrical fences (yep they had those on the grounds), forcing me to limp slowly on my aching ankle as not to hurt it and warning me of people that were not ‘good’ for me, even if they were just ‘draining’ me. I suddenly understood an artist I had talked to a few hours before this all began. He had been ‘high’ and I had drained him by not ‘going in’ to his world. I felt the GUILTIEST I had felt in my life. But not only did the volume go up separately in each dimension but the interconnectivity between these dimensions went up causing synesthesia (as I have explained above).
The burning of the ‘Temple’ pic by Raúl Fragoso
Yet as the volume went up the energy and information available to me went down.
My body only needed minimum movements to cross the dancing floor and there was a very high potential barrier that wouldn’t allow me to do anything more than the minimum. When I needed something, like standing up, all facilities of myself would focus and gather together to allow me to do what I wanted but in general everything was delocalized.
I didn’t know anything except what I needed to know. That’s how I made my way from the dancing area to my tent, one step at a time, having no idea where the actual tent was just where my next step needed to land. I didn’t even know if I could speak English until I spoke it.
My dad’s idea that the whole Quantum uncertainty principle is a computer programmer’s way of saving processing power stuck to me. This was true efficiency, why waste time/power/worries on what is so far away. The next step is the only thing that matters.
Remembering one memory:
Remembering 1 Memory!
Each thought was a wave in an ocean filled with thoughts and memories all connected to each other and spreading out to infinity – one memory! Once I got on a wave all others were forgotten in the sea underneath me but it was so easy to fall off a wave and crash in the ocean since other waves were trying to reach me and pull me in. I had to try and surf the specific thought to reach its completion and arrival to shore.
I told myself this is how Alzheimer’s feels and wrote ‘Alzhemer’s is fun’. I kept on thinking maybe Alzhimer’s patients aren’t forgetting things, they are remembering one thing so strongly that that memory takes over all others.
The formula for solving square root problems has always been my way to prove I wasn’t ‘drunk’ or too out of it. So once I started doubting my sanity I tried to write it down on my hand to prove I could still think logically. But I couldn’t! I knew what I wrote down was wrong but for the life of me I didn’t know how to fix it. I tried checking it by trying to give myself examples to solve but the process was too long. I couldn’t stay focused long enough and the more I looked at the equation the wronger it seemed, the letters began losing their meaning.
No worries I did this after returning to ‘earth’
I knew doubting my sanity was a good start at proving I was still o.k. but I needed proof. Then it dawned on me that I didn’t have to ‘remember’ I just had to solve this problem. I could cheat! So I started asking the people around me. But they had no idea so then I asked GOD for help, and in GOD I mean the real one, GOOGLE. I don’t think I’ll be exaggerating when I say this was the hardest and most complex task of my life. Turning the internet on in my phone, typing in search words, all when everything had so much meaning most things had lost their meaning. My thoughts were leaking all over the place. And GOD was messing with me, sending me to Wikipedia pages filled with proofs and equations that made the world go round and round. I was so close to giving up but I knew I couldn’t. So I invented a story in my head. There is a girl; her mother is head of the earth defense systems. Aliens have attacked the earth with psychic warfare and the mother is incapable of turning on the defense system. The girls is the only one who knows her mother’s password which was specifically designed to check if one is ‘rational’ enough to turn on the defense system. The girl knows it is the square root equation but she can’t remember it because she is under attack too. She can’t remember it but she manages to solve the problem by using a computer that isn’t under attack. I was that girl, I had to save the world, to save myself.
Once I succeeded in finding the equations I realized it wasn’t enough, I had to prove to the world that I was sane, not only to myself… so I did the only rational thing and posted the equation on Facebook 🙂
I painted some of the back of the green women on the left. pic by Raúl Fragoso
Neil, a New Zealand military veteran, a builder in trade and my Couch Surfing host, decided to see if he could build a cheap self-sustainable house. So he bought some land outside the city of Raglan and went to work. This is the cool result! Read on…
Even has a flat screen TV
The house is built out of shipping containers but from the inside you’d never guess it because it’s so warm and homely. Wooden panels on the inside and insulation between the container and the wood provide for a welcoming environment.Solar panels on the roof provide most of the energy needed and there’s a backup generator just in case.
The roof is also used as a water collector with drains collecting water to into a container under the house. When the container fills up Niel turns on a pump and the water is transported to a container at the top of the hill. The height difference from the main container to the house allows for a gravity pump so water is pressurized. In the kitchen there is a water a purifier for drinking water.
Lucky New Zealand has loads of rain
Hobbits do like there food 🙂
The toilet is a compost one, which means no water and no sewage. When I asked Neil how it works he took out a big fat manual. Well, I didn’t RTFM it all but the basic idea is this, there is a huge container under the toilet which is built in a diagonal way so that the oldest material flows down and outwards. In the container there is an ongoing ‘chemical factory’ whose workers are germs eating the nitrogen in human waste. For the ‘factory’ to work you also need some carbon in the form of leaves, saw dust or even vegetable left overs (although from Neil’s experience vegetables draw rats trying to get in the container) and oxygen (which means the waste can’t get too packed due to access moist – which means peeing in the garden if the weather is nice). After 12 months you can start shoveling out the compost and using it to nurture your garden.
No flushing!
The toilet has a pipe leading to the roof and a ventilator which airs it out. It didn’t smell like roses but I’ve been to plenty of regular toilets that smell a lot worse and as long as the toilet seat is kept down there is almost no smell.
Niel at a town party
Neil’s next project is to build an underground house that will be even more self-sustainable and be protected from the wind which is really fierce and causes the house to shake sometimes because the shipping container is flexible. Best of all it even look like a real hobbit house!
Sort of Related: Neil’s also trying to prevent the sand from the west shores of New Zealand from being mined by the Chinese. The black beach sand contains iron and the New Zealand government is planning to sell it to the Chinese. In order to try to resist this decision Neil made these sweet bracelets (which are way better than the stickers I’m used to giving out) and is trying to increase awareness so support the cause, check out the site kasm.org.nz and spread the word.
Ten hours after landing in New Zealand and I find myself one of only two girls in a packed gay bear pub.
How? Why? Read on…
I guess I can blame it all on P, the most vibrant, outspoken, potty mouth lesbian I’ve ever met. She told me she’d take me to a queer party but before that we had to pick up her gay friends from the urge.
need I say more?
The urge is a lot like it sounds. I mean, there were TV screens showing hardcore gay porn and real life previews in the dark corners. P said she wasn’t sure they would let us females in, but never the less, she strut her stuff straight past the guard without hesitating and I tried to follow. Nobody stopped us but boy did we get some strange looks inside until she found her friends and they came over and gave her hugs and kisses. How come gay guys are so happy friendly and energetic? Could it be a byproduct of their life style which provides them with as much effortless sex as they want regardless of their age, their looks or their social status? What would the world be like if sex wasn’t so repressed? Would all of us be so ‘gay’?
We did leave through the back door so as not to ‘scare’ the bears again. We continued on to the queer party which was also completely dominated by gay men. Where are all the gay women? Haven’t found them yet.
It was a relief to discover that the no smoking laws are very strict. Unfortunately, when the gay guys took off their shirts there is no law against sweaty backs touching you. Yuck! Even though some of the guys were drop dead gorgeous and again super sweet and nice, apologizing when they stepped on me by accident or spilled water on my shoes.
Anyway happy new years from Auckland.
Just to get you jealous. A beach near Auckland I went to today.
