Not according to plan

The last week hasn't really gone according to plan.  Unfortunately, my ultimate team did not do as well as I'd hoped, and we lost to some okay teams because of drops and throw-aways, two things that are extremely frustrating.  I couldn't really enjoy the party, I was too tired and the beer on tap was terrible.  I have had many a fun night on the likes of Natural Ice and Coors, but for some reason this was impalatable.  Later, many supposed that the stuff had perhaps been watered down. The day after the tournament, I had planned on staying for an extra day in Christchurch with my roommate Ben, but he bailed at the last minute to take a temp job this week, so I instead hung out with some other ultimate players on the Monday following.  Still among the group were two good friends, and things might have been fine, except I was still very tired, the weather was shit, and I had to pass up work at my favorite Preschool to do it.  No on in New Zealand that I have talked to likes Christchurch.

I came home and it fell to me to take care of the details of acquiring the new Minivan (Honda Odessey '95) Joey, Ben and I bought during the previous week.  This wasn't really a big deal, but I did have to pass on another day of employment, and deal with paperwork, plus foot some vehicle start-up costs (until we divide these up by three) such as registration and the first tank of gas. Having bought this car a little quickly (only cost $1,100 USD) to get a good deal, we overlooked little things like parking permits, and I got a small ticket on day one.  I have since been the one who has had to bike half a mile to the nearest free parking space to park the behemoth of an automobile when it has needed parking this week, and I had to take it to work with me on Wednesday.  Driving it through downtown in rush hour sucks.  I'm adjusting to driving with most of the car itself on my left instead of on my right, which is taxing on the brain.  And I don't even like cars.  

This week I worked on a stencil during almost all my free time, and after considerable investment, I'm unhappy with it.

Baxi was absolute garbage last night.  My trike broke down on numerous occasions, until I finally called it an early night.  I made very little money, and this in the face of four other successful pilots working last night.  As the Kiwis would say, 'Unlucky'.

I was supposed to play Ultimate all day today, but it's raining bullets. 

The significant difference in what I had planned to have saved by now, and what is actually left in my bank accounts is worrisome.  And the fact that I am a supposedly unusually talented and well educated twenty-three year old WITHOUT a job that even allows me to save money, is, though doubtless reasonable and common, frustrating.

The things that sound like the most fun to me right now (Working at BICAS, starting work on a couple of long-time good ideas I've had like T-shirt Trading, stenciling, sewing, hanging out with Wig before he leaves the country for who knows how long) are all things that are better accomplished in Tucson.

Downtime

When I am not working, I have time to myself during which I have been pursuing some creative outlets.  These exploits vary in intensity, some in fact are just ideas of things I might like to do.  But all float around in my head in some unsatisfied space, and I wish I had the dexterity in one medium or another to let them out.  I'm working on refining some skills...

Here are some of the ideas:

1. Stenciling.  I've got two ideas that are fleshed out in photoshop and need cutting, but others swimming to the surface all the time.

2. Sewing.  I have a machine that I bought on the cheap, but no patterns.  I even bought fabric, but NO PATTERNS.  I need to get on this.

3. Web Comic.  Mostly I just like reading them, but xkcd.com tends to make me do some extra research on the side to really get all the jokes.  Somehow it feels constructive to do this.

4. Blogging.  I am only now branching out into the world of Blogs (the Blogosphere) and learning something about how other people use these things.  The successful ones aren't usually as introspective... the same is true for the ones that are fun to read.

5. Writing.  I have taken a couple of stabs at creative writing, both of which came out somewhere in between poetry and prose, says one reliable editor.

6. Cribbage Boards.  I have vowed to make a cribbage board for a friend as part of a mutual xmas gifts to each other.  Ideas abound, but no physical progress yet.

Baxi

I am a bicycle taxi pilot.  I use my leg muscles to ferry the nightlife of Wellington from here to there in groups of one or two (but never three! Unless you offer me extra money…).  I charge $5 to $20 per fare depending on the distance and how much I think a prospective customer is likely to pay.  I accept tips.  I am trained and qualified to operate a three-wheeled vehicle.  I have heard a better title, and it is “Professional Tricycle Driver”.

I have stories, oh do I have stories.  I have driven three transvestites to Marion St.  If you are from Wellington, you will roll your eyes and say ‘Of course Marion St.” because that is where all of the transvestites, and the people who are into transvestites hang out.  I have driven at least three different passengers who claimed to be the mayor.  One, while probably not the mayor, did play a mean harmonica.  He played me a blues tune while I rode all about how great I, the Baxi driver, was.  I have received payment in the form of coins, bills, kisses, drinks, and massages.  I have received a $40 tip for a $20 fare.  Joey has been paid $100 to drive two strippers around for an hour while they sipped champagne.  Ben had a date last Wednesday with a customer.  It was an average date, he said.

I know the street performers, the cab drivers, and the bouncers, and we are all tight.  We are all apart of the exclusive club of cab drivers, bouncers, street performers, and Baxi pilots.  The people who ride, love me.  The people who do not, well, most of them do too.  As I ride down Courtenay Place, cars honk approval, and pedestrians cheer!  I reply with my bell, BRING BRING!  The yay-sayers abound.  I am a hero!  Once, I drove a homeless woman who jumped on my Baxi thirty meters to the next bench for free, and everyone on the patio of Hotel Bristol cheered.  “Good on ya!”  My passengers flirt with me.  “You must be fit to ride one of these, ay?”  “Look at the size of his calves!”  The girls pinch me in places it is not appropriate to pinch girls, and their boyfriends don’t care.  The women give me kisses and think I am cute, no matter how dorky and unimpressive my helmet and mountain bike shorts make me look.  When I am in the saddle, I might as well be wearing Armani. 

Then there are the nay-sayers.  There are cheap, stingy drunkards, who plead with me for free rides.  Drunk women are the worst.  So used to having drinks bought for them in the bars, they jump on the back and say “Mush!”  I know better than to talk long.  I give them my buzz-kill face and tell them to get off.  I insert profanity in the above sentence if it is called for.  There are unfunny, unclever boys who jump off without paying.  I can spot them better now, and demand payment up front.  My Baxi isn’t built for speed, and some streets are one way, so I cannot give chase, but the last one to jump off my Baxi fell and appeared injured, so I was satisfied. 

The waterfront is the most pleasant place to ride in nice weather.  It is quiet, and the starts are beautiful.  The ocean laps against the warf and beaches, and the customers there are friendly and appreciative.  Cube street, between Ghuznee and Vivian is a great place to find passengers, because it is quieter there than on Courtney, and I can schmooze a bit.  Establishment is one of the biggest bars around, and one of few that stays open past 3:00am, when the final bump in business comes.  I make rounds to and from Estab until 3:20 when it is time to call it quits, and go home.  I return to the depot, where the other Baxis are stored, there are four that work, two that do not.  There all the pilots have a cuppa and count their earnings.  A slow night can be anywhere from nothing to $50, and a good night as high as $140.  Above that is a great night, and I have once kept $191.60 after paying out the mandatory $40 rental fee.  I do not pay taxes.  I am an independent contractor.

In my underwear drawer, I have over $50 in coins, which I try to spend at the farmers market on Sundays.  I keep close track of my money, and write the totals on the ziplock bags the cash goes in.  I pay cash.  I sleep in on weekends, and occasionally miss ultimate Frisbee practice on Sunday mornings, but I forgive myself.  Sometimes, I have seen the sunrise as I fall asleep.  At noon, when I awake, I share stories with Ben and Joey, my roommates, and they with me.  We are heros.

 

Thanksgiving

Ten days after the real day had passed, my roommates and long time friends Ben and Joey and I put on a harvest festival.  We had been planning this since day one in New Zealand, anticipating the myriad friends we were likely to make before the special Thursday in November, and ordered ourselves a turkey from the local butcher well in advance.  We bought fresh produce from the Sunday farmer's market that we love, and made a traditional menu including from scratch stuffing, root mash, green beans, cornbread (with honey butter), turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, salad, and apple crumble with whipped cream for dessert.  To prepare all this food was a task for the three of us in a sarcastically small kitchen with an electric range.  We were also lacking some key kitchen accessories, such as enough bowls and baking dishes.  Still, with some strategic day-before work, and Pulp Fiction playing in the background we managed to crank out enough food for 15 people by 2pm.  That's right, this even went down on time.

Our dining room, which lacks a dinning room table and volume, wasn't gonna cut it for this little soiree, so we crossed our fingers for the weather (a considerable gamble in these parts) and planned a picnic style feast.  Some of our guests helped out by driving the food down the steep hill on which our house is perched to the park tables at the community center below.  We threw all semblance of class to the Wellington wind and used our own bed sheets as tablecloths, any available receptacles including tupper wear and unused electric skillets as serving bowls, and the public rubbish bins for our empty beer and wine bottles (no, it's not really okay to drink in the parks here, though interestingly and scarily, it IS okay to drink in cars as long as you aren't the driver).  

Dinner went off without a hitch.  Our company mingled beautifully, and there was just the right amount of food to go around.  Nothing ran out too quickly, but we finished almost everything.  Every dish was highly praised, especially my cranberry sauce and apple crumble.  The day was sunny and warm with a light breeze, and we played bocci with a set that Ben and I won at a recent ultimate tournament for being co-MVPs.

Early Childcare

I have been working as a day to day substitute (relief) early childcare (preschool) teacher for a little over three weeks now.  It has become a very suitable replacement to working at Leuven, I've never looked back.  Basically the job begins, or rather has an 80% chance of beginning, each weekday morning at 7:45ish when I (maybe, here's where the 80% kicks in) get a call from Megan or Emma about a gig that day at such-and-such early childcare.  Unless I have a compelling reason to turn down the job, I take it and am off for 7-8 hours of fun with tiny humans.  

Fluid oozing, toy throwing, tag playing, block stacking, nap taking, nappy pooping, pick-me-up arms giving, little 0-4 year olds.  I'm sure you're familiar.

All in all, it's a fun job.  I get to see kids learn so much, though not in the way my secondary teaching background has made me used to.  These kids aren't learning academics, they're learning how to roll over and crawl, how to use their arms and legs to run and jump, how to make noises with their mouths, how to speaking english, how to make jokes (exploring the seemingly endless supply of humor within the topic of poop and pee--i remember doing that), and how to deal with inconvenient feelings like sadness, jealously, and anger.  They are little learning machines, and are indiscriminate, so I have to be careful.  I can't pick Emily up every time she looks up at me with those adorable little eyes and reaches her hands up high, for she is already learning that she can expect all the attention she wants with this little maneuver.  I shouldn't sit little 0 year old Zoe up on her bottom whenever she cries.  She needs to learn to roll over and crawl, to use those arms, or she might end up like Todd the bum-shuffler, whose hips are turned out at a worrisome angle from scooting around on his butt all day.  

Some of these kids have clearly learned that crying results in all the attention they want.  They have also learned that if they want to play tag with someone who doesn't want to play tag, grabbing a toy out of the abstainer's hand and running away with it will get them something almost as good.  Some of them have unfortunately been taught that screaming and whining will result in a suspension of consequences, and it falls to us at the center to try and re-teach no hitting 101 to some misguided 4 year olds.  

I get to see some pretty monumental moments in a human's history at the centers.  Like when Quinn negotiated his first ever whole spoonful of yoghurt into his mouth, or when Dov learned how to connect two Lego train cars together--the potential for an indefinitely long toy!  Or when I came back to Early Years Tory Street for the second day a week, and found out that a little boy who can't even speak intelligible language yet missed me.  I learned how little you have to do sometimes to matter a great deal in one persons life.

Photos of New Zealand

There are more photos, beyond the few I selected of my hiking trip, available with the continued help of Google, here (http://picasaweb.google.com/HenryRScharf). Currently, there are two albums. One is of the hiking trip, the other is of a 16km walk I did in Auckland on my second day in the country.

Time and Leuven

I am going to leave behind the third-person voice I have been using, at least for the meantime, as it is beginning to feel worn out. It’s only anticipated purpose was to make my reading my blog feel a little less like one was reading my blog, and it isn’t really doing that anymore. Now it’s just making it hard to come up with a variety of subjects for my sentences besides ‘Henry’.
My expected duration here, I find, changes lengths in my head constantly, despite its normalcy on paper. Let me explain this strange sentence. What I mean is that sometimes, I am thinking in terms of months within a year, while sometimes I am thinking in terms of hours within a week, and the constant oscillation between the two perspectives is a little unseating. As a traveler, the month of February, when I will begin a 6-ish month tour of the south island in the form of outright hostel-style traveling, seems around the corner. Which makes me think, Gee I ought to save some money! but that only brings me to the time scale of a job seeker, when I am trying to use my minutes as efficiently as possible. I squeeze as many errands into my day as possible, and make every meal and trip as economical as possible. And yet, holding onto an extra dollar here and there, does that really impact my three months of savings?
I got a raise this week. This is probably due in a large part to the peculiar way in which I joined the staff of the Belgian Restaurant, Leuven. It began not with my employment actually, but with Joey’s. Joey was brought on board a few days before I, in fact he was the one who told me that there were still positions available. So for a period of a few days, Joey and I were both gainfully employed at Leuven, but during this time, Joey was growing increasingly unhappy with one of the managers, specifically the one with whom his schedule most overlapped, the owner of Leuven, Todd. Finally, the night before his 6:30am shift, he decided he’d had enough and the minimum-wage (with no tips, tipping is not common practice here) job wasn’t worth it. He called in and tendered his resignation immediately.
I had, at this time, successfully avoided all contact with Todd, the manager who provoked Joey’s abrupt retirement. Instead, Tony was the one nurturing me in the beginning, and anyone who has worked at Leuven will tell you that Tony is The Man. He is endlessly patient and forgiving, and delivers his thoughtful criticism without any of the exasperation and condescension that Todd includes with every heaping batch. Here’s how great Tony is: on day three I spilled a glass of red wine on a customer’s jacket and purse, ultimately shattering a glass, though thankfully, no one was hurt. As I emerged from the wreckage with a wet red rag and a terror stricken face, followed on my heels by a furious woman with two expensive white accessories now no longer white, Tony did the only thing that a good manager would, he simply let me off the hook. I disappeared from the situation, into another section of tables, and away from the mess of heated emotions and staining liquid that realistically I could do very little to repair. “Leave it to me, mate” and Tony was taking care of everything. He even talked to Todd, notorious for not understanding these sorts of things, leaving me out of the conversation completely. What could I offer to these people anyway? I’d happily have said “I’m sorry” indefinitely, but the value of these pitiful mutterings would only decreased to nothing quickly. Tony saw that this was simply something that happened sometimes, and that there was really nothing for it. Hey, what better reminder could I get to hold the goddamn tray flat? Too bad it was at the expense of an innocent Kiwi.
But that isn’t how I got my raise. The same day I spilled the world’s most potent red dye was the first day Joey didn’t show up for work. Tony was surprised at this, he being entirely ignorant of Joey’s brewing frustration with Todd, so he asked me if I knew what happened. I explained that Joey, like every employee who’d had a chance to tell me, didn’t care to work with Todd. I think Tony filled in the rest, that a minimum wage-paying job doesn’t have a lot going for it in a city where minimum wage-paying jobs are widely available if the manager sucks, and he presented this information to Todd. My raise, I believe, is due in part to what I’ve been referring to as a backlash of niceness. As it happens, Leuven is actually under a fair amount of stress right now, having lost many experienced employees in the past month, and relying heavily on new workers. Todd must have gathered that a little bit of extra generosity might be a worthwhile investment, and whom did he need to convince most to stick around? Me. Joey’s friend. Despite spilling a glass of wine, I have learned quickly, always show up on time, and work hard, and even more importantly, my impression of Todd was at least partly up for grabs. I got a warm handshake and a short speech about how a restaurant manager has to account for these sorts of things. “Just don’t make a habit of it,” he said, and all was forgiven. I was, until then, potentially responsible for the dry cleaning bill. A few more days of hard work, and me offering to come in on short notice to fill a morning shift and Todd decided to up my pay a buck an hour. Still a meager rate, and less than most temp jobs offer (I’m still searching for better pay), but a step in the right direction.

Tramping in Tararua

Faced with an open three-day weekend, thanks to New Zealand's labour day, Ben, Joey, and Henry made plans for their first backpacking adventure. Ben was the driving force behind the two-day, overnight hike. He went to the Department of Conservation (DOC) center in downtown Wellington and collected a wealth of information on the local tracks. He came home with a topographical map of the Tararua Forest Park (http://www.doc.govt.nz/templates/PlaceProfile.aspx?id=34979), tickets to pay for camping in the public huts out in the bush, and even detailed directions about how to cheaply and quickly get to and from the trail. In a place like NZ, the benefit of a resource like the DOC cannot be understated. An ambitious route was planned, though ultimately revised part way into the hike.

Henry was obliged to work from 8-12 on the first day of hiking, so this made for a late start. By the time Henry and company had made it to the trail head, it was after 2. The three kept up a quick and steady pace, knowing that there was a lot of ground to cover between them and the Alpha Hut (camping is only allowed in certain locations, but simple huts have been constructed along most trails), but after passing two fairly fit-looking hikers coming back the other direction, some prudent thinking and a return to the map resulted in an alternate course. According to the two guys coming from Alpha Hut, there was plenty of still-frozen snow ahead, and the trip downhill had taken them nearly 6 hours to complete. Instead of trying to reach the apparently icy summit, Henry, Ben, and Joey decided to take a route that ran along a river to a nearer hut. This turned out to fit the trio perfectly, as they made a safe arrival just as dusk was setting in.
The photo to the left is of a local bird Henry saw along the trail. At first it seemed the epitome of exotic, and so Henry stealthily approached it and got this candid shot. However, upon further consideration, Henry decided that bird really looked like nothing more than an over-sized pigeon. And indeed, as the hike continued, he learned that these birds were not as unique as he'd thought. The hikers passing the other direction as Henry snapped his digital shutter probably has a feeling similar to one we might have of watching a foreigner carefully immortalize a squirrel.

The next photo shows Henry as he skillfully made the one and only water crossing on the hike. It may look routine, but what the camera cannot show you is how staggeringly cold (beyond refreshing) the water was.
In this one, you can see some traditional gray rocks in the foreground, and then behind some red-orange stuff that is in fact lichen-covered rock. Wild lichens in New Zealand.

Here are Henry's good friends Joey and Ben enjoying a sandwich at the highest point of the hike. The snowy mountains in the distance are where the three amateurs thought they might go before plans were altered. Not shown in this photo are Joey's very breathable shoes, and his comfortably warm toes.