The Journey Ahead

So, on Monday I'm leaving for a 10-day trip to the South Island. I'm going to be essentially bussing from Auckland to the southern tip of New Zealand and then halfway back. Here's a map of New Zealand with my route colo(u)red in. Each different color is a different day of travel.

And here's a closer look at the South Island part of the map (click to enlarge).

I started thinking about the trip in May or June before I left home. Originally, it was one of those "wouldn't it be crazy if I could bus down to the bottom of the South Island?" travel ideas that are usually quickly dismissed. But, the more I looked into it, I realized that it was not only possible, but due to the well-developed bus and hostel network here, something I could actually afford to do.

I spent several nights in late July planning my route, and was able to snap up some really good bus fares. Here's the route I came up with, after a lot of tweaking:

Monday 30/8 (you write the day before the month when you write dates here): Auckland - Wellington (11 hours by bus)

Tuesday 31/8: Day off, explore Wellington

Wednesday 1/9: Ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton (3 hours), bus from Picton - Nelson (2.5 hours)

Thursday 2/9: Nelson - Fox Glacier (10 hours by bus)

Friday 3/9: Day off, climb Fox Glacier

Saturday 4/9: Fox Glacier - Franz Josef Glacier (40 minutes)

Sunday 5/9: Franz Josef - Queenstown (6.5 hours by bus)

Monday 6/9: Queenstown - Te Anau (2.5 hours by bus)

Tuesday 7/9: Te Anau - Gore - Invercargill (3 hours by bus)

Wednesday 8/9: Invercargill - Dunedin (3.5 hours by bus)

Thursday 9/9: Dunedin - Christchurch (6 hours by bus)

Friday 10/9: Christchurch - Auckland (1.5 hours by plane: Air New Zealand #510)

It's a lot of time spent in a bus, but I found from my previous travels that the bus time was one of my favorite parts. Driving for ten hours through New Zealand is definitely nothing like driving down I-95 for ten hours to DC. It should be a good mix between travel time and time spent exploring these towns. And I signed up with a company to walk on the terminal face of Fox Glacier, which is pretty awesome.

I'm going to be staying in various hostels every night, which are set up with bunk-bed dorm configurations. I tried to select some of the best reviewed hostels in each location. Some are larger facilities with close to 100 beds, others are much smaller and sleep 15-18 people. I've never stayed in a hostel before, so I honestly have no idea what to expect.

I'm not going to be taking my laptop, so I may not have any blog updates over the next ten days. I'll try to get on a computer and make a post or two if I have the chance. I'll definitely be sure to take lots of pictures, and I'm going to bring a notebook to make sure I don't forget anything I see.

In other travel news, thanks to a grant from the Wittman/Roth foundations and the generous support of Readers Like You, I'm going to be going to Sydney, Australia, on my birthday weekend from Thursday 23/9 to Sunday 26/9! I booked myself some interesting flights (including an early taste of the A380), and it should be an awesome weekend. I also just found out my finals schedule, and I have two one-week periods of time that I can travel around. Anyone have any suggestions of where I should go? I'm thinking Tasmania...

So, I'll be back in a week and a half! Leave your address in the comments section if you want a postcard from somewhere cool.

I guess it's called INTERNATIONAL House for a reason...

Yay!! Six weeks of classes have passed, and it's time for my one-week mid-semester break! I have some really exciting travelling and some really painful studying for several after-break tests awaiting me in the next two weeks--more details on the travelling later.

My building is planning its yearly International Night, and they put up a poster showing where everyone was from so that people could contact others from their country to arrange their presentation. I'm going to be away that weekend (more details on that later too), but I snapped this photo of the poster so you guys can see where the people I'm living with are from. (Click to enlarge the photo)

If you can't read the text, here's the breakdown of the countries and how many people are from each place:

South Africa (3)

United States (8)

India (5)

Germany (8)

Canada (1)

Malaysia (15)

United Kingdom (6)

Hong Kong (4)

Australia (3)

Puerto Rico (2)

China (11)

Burma (1)

Denmark (1)

Norway (1)

Korea (7)

Thailand (1)

Cook Islands (2)

Japan (3)

New Zealand (73)

Singapore (3)

Papua New Guinea (1)

Sweden (1)

Philippines (1)

Zimbabwe (1)

Kazakhstan (1)

Vietnam (1)

Brazil (1)

Taiwan (1)

28 countries in all!

Food Shopping

Grab your OneCard and ready your trundler, because you're coming along with me to Foodtown!

Foodtown (also known as Countdown and Woolworth's) is one of the major three supermarket chains in New Zealand. The others are New World (which is sort of a SuperFresh equivalent) and Pak `N Save (the Costco of New Zealand: lowest prices, huge quantities). Pretty much any town in New Zealand will have one or more of these supermarkets.

There are two such supermarkets close to me. There's a Countdown on Quay (pronouced "Key") Street across from the harbor (as pictured above), about a ten-minute walk from the central Britomart station, and a Foodtown on Dominion Road in the neighbo(u)rhood of Mt. Eden, about a 15 minute bus ride from my location. The Quay Street Countdown can be more of a pain to get to, especially when it's raining (in other words, almost always), but the prices are lower and the store is nicer, so it's worth the walk usually.

I visit the supermarket once or twice a week to stock up on bagels and other snack items. Shopping at Countdown isn't much different from the supermarkets at home, but there are always a few interesting things to be found amongst the aisles:

--They call shopping carts "trundlers" here. Must be a British thing.

--One of the biggest challenges can be converting the metric system to what makes sense to an American mind and the far inferior Imperial system. Math question: if apples are NZD $3.75 per kilo, what does that make them in $USD/pound? And kilograms are relatively easy--I have no clue how many ounces are in 150 grams.

--Terminology: Potato chips may or may not be called potato crisps, and french fries might be chips but they might also be fries. Cookies are definitely biscuits though, and they're all crunchy--no soft-baked varieties to be found here.

--Some things are surprisingly expensive, like paper towels and cheese. For someone whose meals at home often contain a bunch of cheese and dairy, I've pretty much cut most cheese out of my diet here. The dining hall almost never serves meals with cheese, and with the prevalence of Asian restaurants and food places, it's easy to survive without it.

--On that note, for reasons that I can't explain, plain cheese frozen pizzas are not made here. They all have meat toppings. Even at pizza shops, plain cheese pizza doesn't ever seem to be an option.

--Some things are unsurprisingly expensive, like Hershey's chocolate syrup. I came across a regular-sized bottle in a specialty store for over NZD$9.00.

--They have chicken-flavo(u)red potato chips/crisps. Yep.

Once you've got your groceries, it's time to check out. If you're a Kiwi, you're probably going to be paying with Eftpos. New Zealanders LOVE Eftpos, which is a proprietary debit card system found only around these parts of the world. You swipe your card, select "CHQ" (Chequing) or "SAV" (Savings) on the PIN pad, enter your PIN, and you're good to go.

US debit or credit cards only work on Eftpos terminals when using the "CRD" (Credit) option, and you have to sign--your PIN won't be recognized. I found this out the hard way on my first day here, as I tried in vain, jetlagged and tired out of my mind, to swipe several cards and enter my PIN at a sporting goods store as I tried to buy trainers (sneakers) to replace the crappy ones that fell apart during the flight. After I had finally figured out how to use the "CRD" option, the skeptical store clerk, who probably thought that I was either an idiot or had stolen the cards, handed me a two-foot long receipt (or "tax invoice") to sign, filled with "TRANSACTION DECLINED" notices.

You can find an Eftpos terminal in even the smallest and most obscure places here in New Zealand, and many of them do not accept credit, including my University's Business School bookshop (!!), rendering my US cards unusable. Therefore, I found a bank willing to open an account for me for four months, and I have my very own Eftpos card. I enjoy using it to pay for purchases after my accent has given me away as a foreigner, as if to show "Hey, look, I'm not just a tourist!" Invariably, however, I always seem to swipe the card with the stripe facing the wrong direction. So much for that.

After you've paid, grab your groceries in their nondescript, transparent plastic bags with no store logo on them, and take the free City Circuit bus back home (and by home, I mean a 10-minute uphill-both-ways walk to my residence hall). Congratulations! You've just shopped at Foodtown! Now enjoy your chicken-flavoured crisps.

Donburi

Japanese restaurants have been eating away (heh) at my food budget recently. In fact, when I do go out to eat, it's been almost exclusively at Japanese restaurants for the last two weeks.

There are a few reasons for this. Asian restaurants, and particularly Japanese and Korean ones, are by far the dominant takeaway option here. I'd say that Asian restaurants of one kind or another outnumber other choices (excluding kebab shops) by a ratio of 3-to-1, at least. A good portion of my recent Japanese food spree is due to my discovery of donburi.

Donburi is probably one of the simplest foods ever. Take a half-full bowl of rice. Fill up the rest of the bowl with veges (that's "veggies," for those of you playing along at home) or some sort of meat topping, if you're into that sort of thing. Pour some soy-based sauce on the top, and serve piping hot. It's probably the closest that Japan gets to comfort food, and I've never seen it sold in the US.

Donburi is also the ideal student food for three reasons: it's fast, filling, and cheap. One donburi costs me NZD$9 (USD$6.25) and comes with unlimited water and green tea. I've been to a few different donburi shops, but two stood out enough to warrant repeat visits.

Renkon is a tiny place hidden on an unlit pedestrian-only side street off Queen Street. I found it one day after I had already had dinner, and literally couldn't find it again to try it the next time I went out. Probably about the size of my dorm room, Renkon has a little bench with six seats along one side, and three small tables along the other. It's an authentic Japanese place (you can tell by the way they say "tofu teriyaki") and attracts a busy mix of white office workers and Asian students of various ethnicities. Their tofu teriyaki donburi is amazing, with two slabs of panko-crusted tofu on top of a little salad, complete with bright pink purple ginger. It's claustrophobic, but the food is awesome.

The other place I frequent is called Bian, which is located next to a kite shop up Symonds Street, the opposite direction from the university. I can't tell if it's a chain or not; there are a few other places in the city with the same logo (just a red background with "Bian" spelled out in Japanese and English), but those other places call themselves "Bien." Since the Japanese definitely spells out "Bian," and since "Bian" is cheaper than "Bien," I choose the former, thinking it's somehow more authentic.

Yet Bian, like most Japanese restaurants here, is run by Koreans. I get their Vege Ten Don, which is rice topped with nine-ish pieces of assorted vegetable tempura. The tempura can always use a few more seconds in the fryer, but Bian's portions are bigger and they serve better tea than Renkon. It's equally busy but larger than Renkon, so I take a seat at a small table flanked by little poster of a Mark Rothko painting and am able to enjoy my meal.

Unfortunately for my wallet, both of these places are in walking distance from both the uni and my residence hall. I'm meeting the other people here from AU for dinner tomorrow night...let's see if I can spread my donburi addiction onto others.

The Natural Pace of Things

I've spent a lot of time thinking about pace recently.

My mind is wound to live life at a purposeful tempo. Or, to put it another way, I move through most of life with a destination in mind. Once I arrive (and I've been fortunate enough to be able to arrive at many of my destinations, both tangible and intangible), it's not long before a new destination and a new path is chosen. There's often not much time spent in between. Some would call this type of behavior "Type A," others "neurotic," or perhaps even "results-driven." Perhaps that's why I like the process of travel and transportation so much; when I'm en route to a destination, there's an empty space created where I don't feel immediately responsible for setting a new path. It creates a tangible sense of relief.

I don't think that this is necessarily a perfect way to live life. That's not to say that there are certain advantages; I'm able (and almost obligated) to multitask. I plan ahead--sometimes to an uncomfortable degree. I walk at a relatively quick pace. But all of this decision making keeps my mind spinning at times. I get impatient when things don't happen quickly. I've never been someone who can fall asleep easily--I usually take 45 minutes or more to get from lights-out to sleep. And if I'm ever stuck in a place with no destination in mind, I get antsy.

I think part of this is just my personality, forming a Mobius loop between defining me and shaping who I am. But I'm sure my background as an East Coast college student has something to do with it as well, needing to jump from commitment to commitment seamlessly along with the rest of my peers, and with no dip in performance along the way. In my case, the rhythm of the city acts as a metronome, a hi-hat tapping in the background at 150 bpm to make sure you don't stray from the beat.

The reason that I'm waxing philosophic about this is that New Zealand, as well as (I'm sure) many countries that I've yet to visit, is at times incompatible with this pace of life. Things simply don't happen as quickly in the New Zealand countryside. It's been interesting to see how my mind, devoid of its usual ocean of stimuli, handles adapting to a few hours in a place like Thames.

Thames is a small town of 7,000 at the base of the Coromandel peninsula, two hours east of Auckland. It was a gold rush town originally, and at one time was the second largest city in New Zealand. As the gold dried up, people started to move to Auckland and elsewhere, leaving Thames as a quiet reminder of what it used to be. One guidebook I looked at described it as "small, and rather dull."

To be honest, planning for this trip was a perfect example of what can go wrong when moving at a fast pace. I had booked the tickets a few weeks ago--I found $1 seats round trip, and snatched them up without doing much research into where I was going. But the day before I left, I started to panic. I had scheduled six hours in Thames...was that too many? It was forecast to rain...what was I going to do with myself?

I spent hours on Saturday making backup plans and new itineraries. Maybe I could bus up to Coromandel Town and take a ferry back to Auckland. But the marine forecast called for rough seas...what if the ferry was cancelled and I was stuck in Coromandel Town overnight? I'd miss a critical lecture on spreadsheet-assisted constrained optimization problems, directly related to a problem set I was having trouble with! Or I could buy a bus ticket leaving Thames at 1:20 PM instead of 3:35 PM, but that was expensive. I had even created an itinerary going through Hamilton, turning the day into a six-hour, three-bus tour of central New Zealand.

It seems ridiculous when I write it out like that, but these were really the thoughts running through my head as rain poured down on Saturday afternoon. All I could concentrate on were those four words: "small, and rather dull." To put it plainly, I was reacting to the possibility of being trapped with no destination--nothing to do. As I look back on it now, it's clear that it was a reaction of fear.

As these things always turn out, I had nothing to fear. After three hours of tossing and turning before I got to sleep, I woke up at 6:30 AM to catch my 7:30 bus. The notoriously inaccurate NZ weather forecasts ("showers, some heavy at times") translated to a partially cloudy day with no rain. I had booked a few of the contingency plan routes, but I decided to just stick with my original plan.

The nearly empty bus snaked its way through awesome vistas for two hours before arriving in Thames. At 9:30 AM on a Sunday, the town was still sleepy. Most of the attractions and shops on the main street were closed for the day; even the i-Site wasn't open until noon. I headed to one place that I had researched and knew was open: a vegetarian cafe (what are the odds?) near the end of the two-kilometer-long Pollen Street. I ordered some breakfast and a hot chocolate, and read my Haruki Murakami book for a little while.

There's something about coastal towns that permits me to slow my pace a little (although I guess Auckland is a coastal city too). Maybe it's because the rhythm of the waves and the calls of the gulls--the metronome of the sea, so to speak--operates at a slower tempo than the city. I wandered around town for a while, heading for no place in particular. I decided to see a movie at the Thames Multiplex (three screens). The power went out for a few minutes during the movie because some car had hit a power pole, leaving me alone in darkness in the empty theater before the projectionist ran in to apologize. I went back to the cafe for lunch, and had a nice sandwich with kumara and some other veggies in it, with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Thames itself is sandwiched in between sea and mountains. On one side, verdant peaks separate the peninsula in half lengthwise. On the other, the Firth of Thames and its murky brown coast separate the Coromandel from Auckland. There's a walkway down the coast, appropriately named the Thames Coastal Walkway, that winds its way from a boat landing, behind a shopping center and a Pak `N Save, and past a small-gauge railroad track to a residential area about 4 km away.

It was an awesome walk. The skies were blue above me, but rain in the distance covered the rest of the peninsula in a gray cloak. There were heaps of great vantage points of the Firth--not to mention that turning around at any given time would give you a mountain vista. This was the kind of town that I could imagine living if I was a writer or an artist. Here are views from two ends of the same street:

Mountains looking one way.

Sea looking opposite. Who wouldn't want to live here?

Before I knew it, six hours had passed. The bus I had taken to Thames had already made it to Tauranga and back, and the same driver greeted me on the way back to Auckland.

Thames presented one of those moments that reminds you why you [and by you, I really mean me] need to travel. While I'm probably never going to permanently change the pace at which I live my day-to-day life (as even my relaxing day in Thames was the result of a bunch of planning), this trip truly felt like a one-day mental departure from my current reality. There were no partial differentiation problems floating in the Firth of Thames, nor essays to write on social class or exercises in set theory. Just the sea, the gulls, and a boardwalk that had collapsed decades ago and floated into the sea.

L&P

L&P stands for Lemon & Paeroa, and it's probably the only soda endemic to New Zealand. Paeroa is a town south of the Coromandel peninsula, about 45 minutes from this weekend's day-trip destination of Thames. For years it was apparently made by combining lemon and other secret flavo(u)rings with Paeroa's natural mineral water. Now it's made locally by Coca-Cola, so it's probably just artificial flavors mixed with Dasani.

Nevertheless, L&P proclaims itself as "World Famous in New Zealand" (I'll give you a minute to get the joke there), and it was one of the things I wanted to try most when I came here.

First point of note: soda can be really expensive here. It's not out of the ordinary for a 600 mL (20 oz) bottle of L&P or any other soda or water to cost NZD$3 ($2.10) or more, especially if you're out to eat. The vending machines at my school sell it for NZD$3.60 per bottle, which is even more expensive than movie theaters. On the flip side, you can get Coke and L&P in old-fashioned style glass bottles, which somehow always makes the soda taste better. Schweppes' carbonated lemonade (sold only in a glass bottle) is also very good.

Both bottles and cans of L&P open with a satisfying hiss, accompanied by an effervescent white mist that eminates from the container like it's some sort of magical potion. This is especially noticeable with the glass-bottle variety, but even with standard 355mL cans, the mist of carbonation hovers and swirls over the top for a good few seconds.

I thought L&P was going to be NZ's answer to lemon-lime sodas like Sprite, but it's really quite different (hence, Sprite is also sold here). Most of the sodas here seem to be more carbonated than their American counterparts, and they're made with real sugar instead of artificial sweeteners or HFCS.

L&P has no direct taste analogue in US sodas, which makes it very hard to describe. If I were to try to do so in a word, it would be "dark." L&P itself a dark amber colo(u)r (incidentally, they call the middle color in a traffic light, which would be "yellow" in the rest of the world, "amber" in New Zealand), and it has a pleasant, almost maple-syrup like quality to it. The lemon taste is definitely present, and the bubbles from the carbonation give it more of a kick. It's almost as if you made Sprite more sour, and combined it with equal parts Coke and root beer. That's as close as I can get to describing it using American counterparts. And since L&P is only sold in New Zealand, you'll just have to take my word for it.