Mercury Bay
Trip Start
Feb 12, 2007
1
4
15
Trip End
May 22, 2007
Where I stayed
Mercury Bay, New Zealand
Friday, March 2, 2007
It was quite a weird experience in Paihia, watching the 5 person group I was hanging out with going their separate ways. It all felt quite final watching it all happen. Their Kiwi Adventures have ended, whereas mine have only just begun.
But I do know what it's like saying farewell to good friends - the end of Uni, for example. Even this past week I've also had to say goodbye to some close friends - the bacteria living in the same pair of socks I'd been wearing for 5 days. We'd become very close during our time together. But times change, and I finally did some washing.
I've got loads of sand in my shorts, so I'm leaving sandy deposits wherever I sit. It's sort of like having incontinence.
I left Paihia on Tuesday, to go back to good old Auckland. On the bus back, I watched a Kiwi film called The World's Fastest Indian. It's an excellent film.
Back in Auckland, I stayed in my beloved Auckland Central Backpackers. This time I'd booked myself into a dorm room. But when I tried to check in at reception, they told me that I'd cancelled my reservation. Which was odd, as I hadn't. So they put me in a small dorm, consisting of only 4 beds. So in I walk to room 518, and there's stuff on every bed. And lying asleep on one of the beds is a shirtless, middle-aged Chilean man with a beard. So I walked out of the room again, and stood outside saying to myself "What the fuck?" for a couple of minutes; and checking my key to make sure I had gone into the right room. Then I walked back into the room, and the man had woken up. He was a top bloke actually, although language proved a bit of a barrier. He was staying there with his son and daughter. He even tried to give me his daughter's phone charger. They were really nice, I just hope that I didn't disturb them too much when I staggered in at 3am. It's not easy to climb onto a top-bunk in the dark at the best of times, let alone when drunk.
I had another gig at The Classic in Auckland on Wednesday night. It was a bit of an odd gig. I went along to watch, and was sat in the green-room at the interval before being asked 3 minutes before the end of the interval ended if I wanted a gig, as 2 people hadn't turned up. So I quickly had to write a set-list on my hand. Not ideal preperation. The gig went okay. Nowhere near as amazingly well as my previous 2 gigs in NZ. But okay, I didn't die on my arse by any means. The bad side of gig 23 was that I finished with Winchester - which will be familiar to those of you who saw me 'tear the roof off' with it at the Pompey Uni Talent Show, where I successfully managed to offend almost everyone in the room - and it went down shit. Partly as I don't think it's actually very good, and partly as I didn't have the crucial letter and couldn't totally remember what it said. But on the plus side for gig 23, the first half of my set consisted of entirely new material, all written within the past week. My Fuck a Kiwi stuff did well. But the best laugh was reserved for a poem about a one-night stand. So all in all, it wasn't a bad gig. I've had many worse. The fact that my new stuff did well and old stuff didn't, at least shows I'm improving. But in retrospect, I should've ended with Country Ramble. And I also think Winchester will now be retired.
So I'm now in Mercury Bay for the next couple of days. Today I went to Hot Water Beach - where the water is actually fucking boiling! I don't know the exact technicalities of it all, but it's something to do with geothermal activity I believe. I also went on a trek up to an old Maori look out post, which was pretty cool. Putting my mowgli abilities to good use. Which was not that easy while dressed in flip-flops and swimming shorts.
I'm in Mercury Bay until Sunday, before heading off to Rotorua.
