Don’t drink and fry?

Excessive drinking seems to be a pretty big issue for NZ government and they work hard to promote responsible alcohol consumption in many different ways. The fire brigade takes an interesting standpoint; apparently the amount of people causing serious accidents when cooking while drunk is a big enough target group to launch a massive campaign to inform people about the dangers this behaviour innvolves. And the offer them a solution too! Various drunk people inform the public about their favourite midnight snack joints. It’s not the drinking that gets adressed, drinking is fine, just make sure to visit Burger King before you head home. Ministry of Health’s gotta love this one…

Subterranean photo tour

In an attempt to still our hunger for history we visited Wrights Hill Fortress some months ago. During WWII, rumours were that Japanese might be heading south; this was reason for the secret project on site “W” to be constructed. An underground network of tunnels, operation rooms and gun emplacements was built in Karori  to protect Wellington City and environs from possible attacks. Luckily, the attacks failed to occur and the guns were fired only for testing purposes, after the war. This led to the breakage of the Fortress’ windows. In spite of it’s insignificant role in history Wright’s Hill is a great place to play hide and seek, take cool photo’s, have a look at some outdated machinery, experience total darkness and spot some Weta’s.

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Having just finished the last specialisation of my TESOL course I am now officially qualified to teach English. To speakers of other languages that is. People who weren’t born out of English speaking parents. People who didn’t enjoy their primary education in English. People who live, think and dream in another language than English. People like myself. And I am supposed to teach them all about this wonderful language that still sneakily tiptoes behind me and decides to jump on my back screaming and laughing at an inappropriate level way to close to my ears on a daily basis.  Because native speakers might think English is as ordinary as clipping your toenails every fortnight, it certainly is not. From my point of view, the English language is just weird.

For example, when picking up a parcel at the post office, the lady working there requested for me to print my name on a form. Print? PRINT? Do they expect everyone to walk around with a Dymo labelwriter (why this printer is called a writer is yet another unsolved mystery) in their handbag?  Turned out print just means write, but then clearly.

Not to mention the disappointment when I ordered a praline cupcake. No chocolate! Just hazelnuts and sugar! Apparently Dutch people, together with Germans and Belgians, are the only ones in the world to use the word praline for what the English call filled chocolates.

And then there’s spelling. Why is it refrigerator but fridge, until but till. And, most of all, what on earth is the idea behind diarrhoea?

That’s where all doubts start coming in.

Because how can I teach people if I am going through the same process as they are?

How is it possible that words like ewe and you have the same pronunciation? How do you make the words radish and reddish sound different? And how come the name Seth is pronounced like sieve here in NZ?

Guess it will be a few more years of training before I can pass for one of those flightless birds…

More notes on beverages, this time caffeinated ones

Next to Scandinavians, Dutchies are the world’s #1 coffee consumers. New Zealand seems to be putting a lot of effort in their race to the top though. Whereas Dutch people feed their addiction behind closed doors, refilling their cups over and over again either at home or in the office, NZ’s coffee culture is very visible. Takeaway coffee cups are the number one accessory and this dark brown liquid gold is marketed very strongly as one of life’s essentials. Coffee is the magic potion and coffee machines are God. Therefore, people working those machines are demi-gods. In my search of a job I considered working in a bar, this being something I’ve done before and always enjoyed. What I found looked like this:

Barista wanted

Min. 3 yrs full time coffee making experience

Three years of hospitality experience I can still understand, but 36 monthts, full time, just making coffees?? Apparently that’s what it takes to be able to differentiate between a latte and a flat white, to master the art of making the perfect macchiato, moccaccino, frappuccino blabla. Seems to me that this whole coffee business is just a cover up for selling warm milk. Yuk.

 

A few notes on alcoholic beverages

Imagine you’re off to a friends house, stopping somewhere along the way to grab a bottle of wine to take along. You managed to make a decision and there you are at the till, with your one bottle of wine and your mature behaviour. The boy who is helping you utters some murmurs  which you guess probably have something to do with the amount of dollars you owe him. So you’re all ready to pay, your card hovering  just above the machine. Nothing happens. You slowly tilt your head to examine the boy with a questioning look. What’s wrong? Some technical malfunction?

‘Uhmm, I actually asked for your ID’. Your expression turns from questioning to stupefied, which is easily achieved by just letting your jaw drop and dimming the brightness of your eyes by a couple of luxes. What? ID? Is he for real? I mean, I know I still look quite fresh for my age but come on, everyone can tell I’m not 15 anymore. After an awkward minute the light in your eyes returns  and you remember to pull your jaw back in. Of course, you’re in New Zealand and their policy on letting teenagers drinking themselves into a stupor is different. If you look under 25 (not sure who decides on that) you should carry your ID when buying liquor (yeah ok, liquor, but come on, one bottle of wine, since when does that fit into that category???). A bit embarrassed you start rummaging through your bag, knowing that of course you did not bring your passport. Uh, a Dutch drivers license? The boy treats you to a pedantic stare after checking out the birth date on that silly pink piece of plastic. ‘Ok, I’ll let you off the hook this time, but we don’t accept foreign licenses, you have to bring your ID next time’.

Sure, I’m very sorry I didn’t know, you reply in your Dutchest accent. You scurry off, pretty determined there is not going to be a next time.

 

Then there’s the widespread concept of Bring Your Own, which implies you’re allowed to bring you own bottles of wine into a restaurant, only paying a small corkage fee. I got the impression that this is especially popular among students who want to grab a bite somewhere while getting drunk for cheap. This is however not always the case; fancy restaurants offer this service too, giving their customers the opportunity to celebrate special occasions with a personal wine dug up from their private wine cellar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this phenomenon in the Netherlands, people who stash bottles in their backpack to secretly refill their glasses under the table excluded.

That’s just weird

According to Mels this is the sentence I use most in English. This might be due to my still somewhat limited vocabulary in speaking English, but I, of course, prefer to blame it on my surroundings. There’s just so many out of the ordinary things happening all the time. Not too sure if this is exclusive to my current surroundings though, so some feedback from Utrecht might be useful here. Would you say ‘Dat is toch raar’ is the sentence I use most in Dutch? I might try and create a poll on that one later on, but for now I’d like to share something weird first. I noticed that I stopped noticing some of the weird things I noticed when I just arrived here! This must mean I am getting used to them. Which means I need to start writing this blog to share all my weird experiences before I forget they are weird.

One of the weird things that I now think are normal:

New Zealand supermarkets take a great joy in presenting their vegetables and fruits in a very structured and impressive way. They use a very clever designed display to create the optic illusion of unlimited amounts of fruit as you can see on this picture. If I get the chance I will make a video of the guy re-stocking the carrots, it is simply intriguing to watch this craftsman at work, selecting the right sizes to make the carrot stack both visually appealing as well as sturdy and solid, so much skill and passion devoted to vegetable presentation, it makes you feel like a bully jumping on sand castles when you’re doing your groceries.

Pumpkin time

While  the northern hemisphere is slowly warming up, encouraging people to drink beers in the park, flowers to bloom in the bright green grass and lambs to cheerfully frolic around on meadows neighboring train tracks for all commuters to enjoy, here on the other side of the world autumn is peeking around the corner. Daylight savings brought us longer evenings providing for that typical let’s-stay-at-home-on-the-couch-under-a-blanket feel. Dropping temperatures and increasing amounts of rain make us long for jerseys, cardigans, sweaters, pullovers, jumpers or whatever synonym you can come up with that keeps our upper body warm. Yes, the season of mushrooms, pumpkins (apparently also known as punkins) and chestnuts has arrived. Happy Easter!

Boring..

Whatever happened to this blog? We found ourselves a place, we got it all set up, we’ve got our own broadband internet connection, we are not affected by the Christchurch earthquake. So why aren’t we constantly updating this page with whatever wonderful Wellington is bringing to us? It’s not like the city isn’t trying; lots of events, amazing vistas and exciting little alleyways are seducing us on a daily basis. But something has changed in our brain over the last year. To get to that level of arousal, that itchy feeling of inspiration, the need to share your stories on the world wide web, we need BIG stimuli. The constant change of environment and adaption to new situations got us spoiled. We need new cities, new countries, new worlds every week!! We are living in the same apartment for almost 5 weeks now. Hopefully our brains are in the process of adjusting and will we be able to get excited about small changes. Or even constant things. Until then, there’s this video.

Roadtrip South Island

Home sweet home

During our frantic apartment hunt in Wellington we occasionally had to pop out for some entertainment, we didn’t go to see Burlesque.. instead we saw Tron in 3D with stylish 3D goggles on.

Thanks again Chris for letting us stay with you until we found our own bed. When we heard that we could move into the place straight away we went out bargain hunting for fresh new bedding supplies.

Nothing beats the simple things in life like sleeping in your own bed and cooking in your kitchen. Good to be home.

Welliecome

Our last bit of travel for a while started off with waking up early, racing through rainy Christchurch on a scooter, organising Sarah to wake up early too to transport Zepha and all the luggage to the airport, arriving perfeclty on time… so we thought. Turned out we were 12 hours early. Damn you AM/PM! To vent a little frustration Mels went wild with a gun at the airport before we left again for some unexpected extra family time.

Later in the evening we arrived in our new hometown Wellington. And what a welcome it was, flying over the city, harbour and mountains at sunset. Chris was willing to provide us with a home base again during our apartment hunt. Here’s Chris foraging for greens in his mum’s garden, where we had a great meal with a spectacular view.