9 to 5 or 6

After nearly two weeks of apartment hunting, car shopping, and sightseeing, it was time for Bryan to start his first job. His father had joked with him that he thought that he would never live to see the day when Bryan would no longer be a student, but twenty-two years and six months after he first set foot in a classroom, Bryan was about to embark upon his first day of work. He had had summer jobs, of course, but this was his first permanent job - one that he had to report to nine hours every day, five days out of every week. He would now have to get up early every morning and sit at a desk all day; quite a change from his easy, flexible days as an applied math graduate student. One consolation that Bryan had, one thing that helped him ease into the working world from the grad school world was the informality of his new office's dress code. His jeans would not have to be reserved for the weekends, and tucked-in shirts would not be required, a small comfort.

Much like Jane imagined he acted on his first day of school, Bryan woke up very early on March 17. His first day of work was St. Patrick's Day, surely an auspicious sign of the good things to come. He dressed in a new outfit that he had bought in Chicago weeks before he had left: a polo shirt, khaki pants, and a new pair of dress shoes. The dress code at Industrial Research Limited was a loose one, but Bryan wanted to look nice on his first day. Jane reminded him as he dressed of a Dilbert cartoon in which someone informs Dilbert that customers don't trust an engineer who dresses well - the worse dressed you are, the smarter they think you are. Bryan tucked in his shirt anyway.

Without his usual Sports Center to watch, Bryan had to content himself with a New Zealand morning show on TVOne. It being St. Patrick's Day, Breakfast had a roaming reporter stationed at an Irish pub in Auckland that had begun selling it's first Guinnesses at 7am that morning. This reporter even talked to one man who had already had three pints of Guinness and was preparing to head off for his day of work. It seems that every part of the Irish diaspora celebrates in style . . . or at least drunkenness. Bryan's beers would have to wait until the evening, though, because he was off to work by 8am.

Little Red Wagon

Since they had landed in Auckland, Bryan and Jane had been told that they would need a car. The city of Auckland is a sprawling metropolis, or at least as sprawling as a city can be with only 1 million people in it. With only a mediocre bus service and ferries connecting the two sides of the city together, Bryan and Jane knew that if they wanted to see more of the city than what was within a mile or so of their apartment, they would need a car. And so they spent several days walking through used car lots trying to decide on their right-hand-drive car.

Before coming to New Zealand Bryan had been enchanted with the idea of owning a vintage Mini. As if his American Miata wasn't a small enough car, the compactness and character of the original Mini intrigued him and now that he found himself living in a former British outpost, it became the car that he decided would be his next toy. Every time a Mini crossed their paths, Bryan always pointed it out and said, "Now wouldn't that be a great car to drive around in?" Of course, he recognized that it wouldn't make a very practical every-day car; for that, Bryan and Jane went to the Asian importers.

Because of strict emissions laws, most Japanese car owners replace their cars every four years, selling their old car to Australian and Kiwi importers. Like the former British colonies, the Japanese also drive on the left, so their cars are perfect for the ANZ market. The one thing about Japanese cars that Bryan found a bit disturbing was the tendency of Japanese drivers to trick out their cars: big stereos, race-car seats, spoilers, and lots of other little extras that made almost every car look like it had been on an episode of "Pimp My Ride."

Car lot after car lot, Bryan and Jane circled around the Toyotas, Hondas, Subarus, Holdens, Fiats, and Fords peering in the windows to see the car was automatic or manual. Before they were married, Bryan had warned Jane that her Saturn would be the last automatic she would own, and she had sold that car off on a snowy night in Chicago in late February.

They were at first looking for a Subaru (pronounced Sue-bar-ou by Kiwis), but it turned out that they did not age well in the Pacific. The last Subaru they test drove was missing chucks of its body, and Bryan felt that it did not handle well. It was all rather unfortunate for the salesman who had been helping them, for he thought that he was going to have a sale that day, but as they drove back to the lot, Bryan and Jane both knew that they would not be going home with that car. All of the car salesmen they had met thus far had been pleasant, non-aggressive people - so unlike American used-car salesmen. They allowed Bryan and Jane to walk around their lots and did not pressure them to buy a car they did not like or try to get them to look at cars outside their price range. The salesman at Buy Right Cars was no different, but he had been looking forward to selling a car to the two Americans. Not to be defeated, the salesman invited them to look around a bit more and see if there was anything else they might like. "We've got a manual Toyota at the edge of the lot that you might be interested in," he informed them.

Mostly to humor the friendly salesman, Bryan and Jane checked out the red Corolla wagon. Bryan had been of the opinion when they began their car search that there were only two types of cars worth owning: a two-seater or a wagon. As they neared this particular wagon, Bryan and Jane also noticed that it had a sunroof, another one of Bryan's car desires. It was also not as tricked out as many of the other Japanese imports they had seen had been. During the test drive, Bryan further found out that this little wagon had a lot of power. Bryan and Jane left the lot after the test drive, but they returned four hours later to buy the red Corolla wagon. The Mini would have to wait.

Waiheke Island

As the day for Bryan to begin work drew nearer, Bryan and Jane decided to spend some of their remaining free time exploring the more resortish aspects of Auckland. Finding a beach or a bush to walk through are not difficult even from the center of town. Go fifteen minutes or less in any direction, and you will be in the middle of nowhere with nothing but lovely vistas around you. On one particularly sunny day, Bryan and Jane decided to head a little farther afield than they had thus far been and hop a ferry to Waiheke Island.

Waiheke Island lays about 17 km across the Hauraki Gulf from the city center, just beyond Rangitoto Island. Heavily populated for a Gulf Island, Waiheke boasts a thriving art community and is a popular destination for international tourists looking for a couple days on the virtually deserted beaches. To get there from Auckland, Jane and Bryan boarded a ferry in the harbor along with what seemed to be a traveling cadre of British biddies. These women (it could be gleaned from their conversations) had left their husbands behind in Bristol, Kent, and Sussex to come out and enjoy the tail end of New Zealand's summer. What a post-imperialist would have to say about them! They all worried out loud about how their men back home were getting on and laughing that at least they didn't have any washing up to do while in their own private paradise.

The ferry ride lasted for about half an hour, moving swiftly through the salty water passed inferior islands that don't have ferry docks. Landing on Waiheke, Bryan and Jane picked up a map and decided to take the two mile walk to the Mud House Winery. Waiheke, it turns out, is home to several wineries. Though not as prolific as those in Hawkes Bay or Marlborough, the Waiheke wineries put out decent wines at fairly reasonable prices, but their main attraction is their magnificent location. Following a series of deserted roads up the mountainous terrain of the western edge of Waiheke, Bryan and Jane came upon the Mud House Winery. The humble entrance to the winery belied the beauty that existed within. Walking up the dirt road surrounded by grape vines, Bryan and Jane came to the heart of the Mud House: two house-type dwellings, one offering wine tastings and the other a restaurant. Bryan and Jane entered the first of these buildings, blinking as their eyes adjusted from the sun, and were greeted by a friendly woman behind a counter. This woman then proceeded to tell them a little about the winery and got them all set up for a wine tasting. Having never done a wine tasting before, Bryan and Jane were a bit self-conscious as she poured out the seven different wines, describing the scents and flavors that could be found in each as well as a bit about the process that went into making them. To Jane, at least, they all just tasted like wine, some better than others, but she could not pick out the many things she knew she was supposed to be sniffing and sipping for. Bryan, however, did not seem to be as flustered, offering up comments to the woman behind the counter after each glass.

Having drunk their $5 worth of wine, Bryan and Jane reemerged into the sun and walked around the winery and its vineyard, the beauty of which can really not be described. Up a hill to look out over the entire island and back down again, passing fully ripened white and red grapes as they returned to the path that would lead them back to the road.

As they had walked up to the Mud House, Bryan and Jane had noticed a sign tucked between some bushes that announced a tramping path to Blackpool Beach. Intrigued by this sign and the indiscernible path that was promised behind it, Bryan and Jane left the main road and set off into the bush of Waiheke. It turned out that this tramping path was not for the faint of heart. It went first straight up the same hill that Bryan and Jane had climbed in the winery only to immediately send them back down it. On the way down, they encountered obstacles in the form of barbed wire fences and horses; it seemed that the path had lead them onto someones private property. Trying to rectify the situation, Bryan and Jane set off down a muddy path alongside a wooden fence that looked as though it headed to something that looked like a beach. Knocking brambles off their socks and pushing past palm branches, Bryan and Jane found themselves on the promised beach. They walked the length of this beach back to a main road, which took them to the center of town.

Now to say "center of town" is a bit misleading, as the center of Waiheke consisted of two cafes, a video store, three real estate agents' offices, a vegetable stand, and a cleverly-signed butcher shop. But there was a sign prominently displayed along the main street that pointed in the direction of a beach. Bryan and Jane decided to check this beach out as well, and so headed in the direction indicated by the sign. Little did they know that this sign would lead them down the steepest walking hill known to man, with switchbacks periodically placed on the way down so that you could actually walk it. The beach at the bottom, however, made up for the difficulty in getting down to it. White sandy beaches, only a few people dotting the shore, and about a dozen boats anchored about 100 yards out to sea. As they walked along this beach, Bryan and Jane saw that the British biddies had also found this hidden treasure (though they probably took the bus to get there).

With the sun beginning to set, Bryan and Jane took the road back to the ferry. As they traveled back to Auckland proper, it began to sprinkle. "We left just in time," Bryan said. And indeed they had, for it began to rain harder as they made their way from the harbor back to their hotel.

Ki te ingoa o te Matua

One of the nice things about being Catholic is that you can walk into any Catholic Church in the world and know what is going on, no matter what language is being spoken or what the church itself looks like. Bryan and Jane had been to many Catholic churches in their lives and did not expect to be too surprised by anything they would find in Auckland. After all, this was an English-speaking country with ancestral ties to Britain, just like the US. They figured that there would be some differences, but no more than you would get in the US going from parish to parish. Some people like rock-influenced music and some think that any instrument besides an organ has no place in a church; some priests use their homily time to perform deft acts of literary criticism on biblical passages while others like to start and end with a joke; and, of course, there are churches where it's so quite you can hear the little kids fidgeting under the pews and others where the you fear that the stained-glass windows are going to shatter with the force of the congregation's participation. This was the spectrum along which Bryan and Jane anticipated finding the Catholic Church in New Zealand. What they actually found, however, was quite unexpected.

By law, there are two official languages in New Zealand: English and Maori. Maori are the native peoples who sailed from the Polynesian Islands to New Zealand sometime in the fourteenth century. Today they make up about 18% of the total population of the country, outnumbered as a minority group by both Asians and Polynesians. Still, as the original New Zealanders their culture and their language are protected by the government in Wellington. Instructions and some signs are printed in both English and Maori, much like Spanish in the US, except that in the US, there are a lot of people who actually speak Spanish.

With this in mind, it should not have surprised Bryan and Jane to be standing in St. Patrick's Cathedral in central Auckland and be greeted with Ki te ingoa o te Matua, o te Tamaiti, o te Wairua Tapu. Amene. Confused at first as to what was going on, they soon realized that the priest was leading the congregation in the sign of the cross in Maori. The priest, of South African origin, was leading a congregation that was 80% Asian and 20% European (with 2 Americans), in the Irish-immigrant built St. Patrick's in Maori prayers. Talk about your multiculturalism. This must be the face of the new Church.

The rest of the service continued on in English, and Bryan and Jane were comforted to see that Auckland churches pulled their musical repertoire from the same Glory and Praise book that many US churches use: plenty of Marty Haugen and David Haas. Much of the service, in fact, was familiar to Bryan and Jane, living up to the Catholic claims of uniform universality. That is until they got to the Nicene Creed. The Kiwis, it turns out, use the same translation of the ancient Latin text as do their British cousins. Jesus is not born of the Virgin Mary, but made became incarnate; and he did not suffer, die, and was buried, but suffered death and was buried. Small changes that don't change the meaning of the Creed, but it is enough to throw off the rhythm of something you've been intoning for over 25 years. The Our Father they found to be different as well. Kiwis ask God the Father to save them from the time of trial instead of asking Him to lead us not into temptation. Again, not really a significant change in terms of meaning, but enough to make Bryan and Jane feel like poinsettia-lily Catholics. It looked like going to church was something else they were going to have to adapt to.

Sorry for the delay . . .

We've been experiencing some technical difficulties out here in Auckland that have prevented regular postings to this blog. My computer has decided to stop accepting a charge, and so, to conserve the tiny bit of battery power left, I have been unable to access anything on my computer, including the pictures that are so essential to maintaining this blog. As I've now been about two weeks without my computer, and with little hope of getting it fixed soon, I will continue to put up posts, and the pictures will just have to come later. Sorry to all of our regular readers who have been without an update in quite a while; we're glad you enjoy reading about our adventures and misadventures!

What It Means to Live on an Island

As every graduate of elementary-school science classes can tell you, islands are created when the shifting of Earth's plates cause underwater volcanoes to shoot liquid rock to the surface of the sea where it cools and hardens. Volcanoes, thus, are a vital part of island life - the whole island's reason for being, so to speak. Volcanoes also, however, can be a destructive part of island life because they don't just skulk back to their watery homes after giving birth, but they stick around to shake things up a bit every now and then. On an island, you never know when a long-dormant volcano will reawaken or when a previously unknown spewer of lava and ash will arise to surprise us all.

Bryan and Jane had known all of this when they arrived in Auckland, but it was not until they took a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum that they realized just how much a part of their lives volcanoes now were. The Auckland War Memorial Museum is located in the center of the Auckland Domain, a large park situated between the center of town and the suburb of Parnell. It hosts exhibits on both the natural and human history of New Zealand, including a film strip that explains how the Age of Reptiles ended due to a giant asteroid, ushering in the Age of Birds. Yes, that's right - the Age of Mammals did not follow the Age of Reptiles in New Zealand; it was not man who inherited the Earth, but birds: lots and lots of birds.

Besides the surprising overlordship of the birds, the Auckland Museum also runs an exhibit detailing Auckland's special relationship with volcanoes. The Auckland region is home to 48 known volcanoes; the most recent eruption being Rangitoto 600 years ago (the ash from this eruption could be seen as far away as Rome). But, as the cruel exhibition repeatedly pointed out, you never know when the next one will be or where it will happen. One corner of the room housed a television with an imaginative news alert announcing that a volcano had erupted covering downtown Auckland in ash and taking the homes of Parnell and Mission Bay on a lava-ride. "That's my office, right there where that bubbling lava is," Bryan said, pointing to the images in the alarmist TV program. "You better hope we're at home when that volcano blows."

After learning about the awesome power of volcanoes to shape Auckland's history, Bryan and Jane decided they needed to see one of these monoliths in person. They chose to check out Mt. Eden, Auckland's largest volcano at 196 meters high or 643 feet. The trek up to the top began with a steep staircase, which appeared daunting at first but paled in comparison to the open road that actually lead to the top.

Close to the top of the volcano were a series of craters, the biggest one dipping down 50 meters or 164 feet. Due to erosion concerns, people are not allowed to walk down into the crater, but you are allowed to peer in from the top.

Upon reaching the top, Bryan and Jane were greeted by hordes of Japanese and British tourists who had taken the easy way up: buses. Views from the top were exquisite, taking in the surrounding suburbs, other volcanoes, and the bay.

Going down the volcano, Bryan and Jane stumbled upon a small herd of cows. "Are those wild cows?" Jane asked, confused as to why and how there came to be cows living freely on the side of a volcano. It seems that there are in fact 15-20 cows, left to graze on the volcano by the city. They wondered if the cows knew just how much danger they could potentially be in, living on the side of a volcano. The cows, however, didn't seem to mind.

Beer and Bowlers

Auckland is a diverse and friendly place - the kind of city where you can go from towering buildings to secluded beach in a matter of minutes with people giving you directions and pointing out interesting points along the way. Bryan and Jane took some time in their first week in New Zealand to explore the variety of Auckland.

They began their explorations by walking to the University of Auckland, where Jane was hoping to make some connections with their history department. To get to the University from the center of town, you first have to walk up a steep hill and then cross through a park filled with trees that look somewhat like giant spiders. In the center of the park stands a statue of Queen Victoria, for whom, it seems, the students have very little respect. The University itself is what anyone coming from the US would expect: some neo-classical architecture intermixed with awful, awful buildings from the 1970s. Why they allowed architects near universities in the 70s, we may never know.

After touring the university, Bryan and Jane traveled a little further afield to see what was going on in the suburbs. The suburb of Ponsonby is known for its arty yuppies and personal trainers. Bryan and Jane were drawn here because Bryan had read of a Belgian beer bar there, and with his love of beer, they had to check it out. The bar was not difficult to find as it was located at the very top of Ponsonby Rd, the place, supposedly, to be seen in Auckland. The bar itself did not disappoint either, especially when Bryan and Jane ended up with free beer. A fire, it seems, had broken out in the office space above the bar as Bryan and Jane sipped their Belgians, and when the bar had to be evacuated, the staff told them that there would be no charge. Bryan was very glad that he had opened a tab instead of paying when he picked up the beer.

Bryan and Jane's journey through Ponsonby took them by the Ponsonby Bowling Club. Now, Bryan and Jane are avid, though not necessarily skilled, bowlers as many people will attest, and so they found this "Bowling Club" intriguing. Was it indeed a place where people came to roll balls down an alley, knocking down as many as 10 pins at the end? Luckily, there was a slit in the green-tarp covered fence, and Bryan and Jane were able to peer into the club. What they saw was not what they had expected. There was a wide expanse of green lawn with small white squares laying on the ground on either end. As they watched, a largish croquet ball rolled gently into view. "Ha, ha, beat that!" crowed out a remarkably posh British accent. A woman in her early 70s came into view, and when she saw Bryan and Jane standing at the fence, she called out to them, "Do come in and have a look."
So Bryan and Jane walked around the side of the building and entered through a small door that led them into what looked with a hall where people go to play bingo and chain smoke. This room gave out onto the lawn they had seen from the street, and when they reemerged into the sunshine, they could now see that there were two women in white holding balls while a bevy of older men looked on. Bryan and Jane took up posts sitting next to the largest of these men, and through puffs on the butt of his cigarette, he tried to explain to them what was going on. "Ye' see, they roll the balls down the pitch, trying to get as close as they can to that one out there but not so close as it makes it possible for the other one to squeeze in." Bryan and Jane nodded sagely, though neither one really understood what he was talking about.
The two women seemed to know the rules of the game, though, as they skillfully launched their balls down the lawn to the jeers and cheers of the men sitting behind them. It was a "battle of the sisters" Bryan and Jane were told - a very civil affair with an undercurrent of sibling rivalry. After many minutes of watching, Bryan and Jane thanked the British retirees for allowing them to witness bowling close up, and they left just a little more wiser than they had gone in.