Weekend 2

I know 25 isn't exactly old and wise, but before I left Seattle I had the profound impression, for the first time in my life, that I was actually happy. I attributed this to finally knowing the sort of niche that I like to occupy. Certainly, this niche is pretty narrow — there's a reason why I hadn't really settled into it before 25. A life in the 'burbs listening to top 40 stations in a car on the way to the mall just won't satisfy me. But knowing myself and exactly the niche I like allowed me to have a good personal life, social life, work life, and an apartment perfect for me in the couple months before I leaving.

This brings me to my second trip into what was the City Centre of Christchurch. On my first full Friday, Wayne gave me the choice to come into work or take another day off. I chose to take the day off, explore the city by myself, and try to get my phone and bank account sorted. My experience of Christchurch had thus far been through the lens of Coach Wayne. This time I could see it with my own eyes.

Sadly, the damage was worse the second time around than it was the first. My first impression of Re:START the week before was that it was a life-affirming statement for a city in repair. The second time, the whole affair was exposed as sad. It became apparent to me that there used to be an international city feel to Christchurch before the quake: there are still signs above awnings on abandoned buildings that are reminiscent of New York or London. But that there is not longer there. Instead, a mall, which is ultimately the purpose that Re:START serves, is acting as the entire City Centre. This block-long set of temporary structures is the entire "urban" area for the city. In this sense, Re:START is actually quite sad as it is more a dispiriting reminder of the total destruction Christchurch has endured and what it once was than it is a new start.

More interesting might be the Pallet Pavilion. While Re:START has a level of corporate, BID-ish sheen to its whole affair, the Pallet Pavilion is far more grass roots. Hosting an occasional concert, it acts as a place to lounge, grab food, and drink coffee during the week. Most importantly, however, it provides one of the few free wifi spots in the entire city. Presently, it just raised enough money to survive for one more summer. I must admit, it looks a lot cooler in the photos they have on their website then it does in person, but it is still an important thing for this city to have. I grabbed a disappointing Soulvaki (gyro-ish thing) at the food truck there. Photos below.

Wandering around, I decided to tour what's left of the Christchurch Art Gallery. Serving as the art museum before the quake, it was pretty well wrecked during the second quake. While the building gets rehabbed, the museum has hosted several small shows around town in surviving older buildings. They were featuring Tony Oursler at each, who I find unimpressive. He takes fairly pedestrian, yet trying-to-be-disturbing film and places it upon irregular shapes. Boring. I was surprised that there wasn't more earthquake-focused art in the city. In fact, as an artist, if I lived here I would be making work about the earthquake and Maori/European culture clash. It'd be enough material to last two lives. Why I don't see more shocks me. I did see the knock-off of Candy Chang below, which made me laugh. I guess there are some natural crossover between post-quake Christchurch and post-Katrina New Orleans.

Fortunately, at the end of my gallery tour, I finally found the first vestige of that niche that I described earlier: C 1 Espresso. In a repurposed pre-quake post office, it felt like a New Zealand/Stumptown fusion, interior design-wise.  After a frustrating morning, it was a desperately needed discovery. I could enjoy a fine cappuccino and listen to quality, Washed Out-esque electronic music, unlike the pop and club tracks I've heard everywhere else. They even had several pamphlets littered about featuring the cool things to do in Christchurch.

I decided to pounce on the opportunity and went ahead and asked the baristas where to find more cool stuff left in town. I figured I should take advantage of finding a sort of place I like. The baristas told me that cool stuff does still exist in Christchurch, but is just strewn around town in a non-concentrated fashion. They actually spent half an hour brainstorming a list that I grabbed on my way out. Now, at least, I have a checklist in hand. This gave me hope. One of the baristas also had a t-shirt with what is now my favorite abbreviation for Christchurch: Chch.

For the first time since leaving the Auckland airport I was full of optimism again upon leaving C 1. That was quickly erased when I got to Kiwi Bank to open my bank account. I had gone once before and the teller had given me a form to fill out. I brought it back with my passport to open my account, but apparently the form was completely wrong. They then charged me 60 cents to photocopy my passport and turned me away. And there went my optimism...

Before my game Saturday I moved into what the Kiwis call a backpackers (which we call a hostel). Wayne said Teague did it and was able to meet people. Quite frankly, as lovely as Betty and Ramesh had been, their cat had driven my allergies up a wall and I couldn't take it anymore. I moved into "At the Right Place"'s long term stay house, which has been great because there are actually people my own age to meet. My job at the plant should supply enough money to afford my stay with plenty of money left over.

My rugby first game in New Zealand was against Syndenham, which had the same kit (uniform) as Valley Rugby Club in Seattle. It was their club day, the day each team in the club has home games, so there was a crowd milling about. We played like crap. Dropped balls, missed tackles, stupid kicks all game long. We're at the top of the table and Sydenham was at the bottom, and, even though Sydenham brought a few Div 1 players down for the game, we were good enough to beat them soundly. We just kept making stupid plays, and it ended up losing us the game by 12.

I expected to play a total of 10, maybe 15 minutes. Instead, I got an entire half at wing. This totally surprised me in a most pleasant fashion. Now, since I am essentially in pre-season form while everyone else is in mid-season form, I thought I was out of position the entire game. Talking to a few of the boys afterwards, though, it turns out I didn't screw up in a noticeable way, which pretty much everyone else did. Go me? While I didn't screw up, I also didn't succeed much, as I didn't even get a single touch on the ball. It's bad for a team when the wing doesn't get one touch all half. I did make a tackle, the highlight of my game. The center who had torn apart our defense all day broke the line, and I was crossing the field to tackle him. Going down, "this is going to suck" crossed my mind as I assumed it would be a tough hit, judging by the team's success rate tackling him so far. He went down in a synch and seemed pretty soft. This sort of echoes the USA Eagles' reputation for being a hard hitting team. We may have few skills in the US, but we can lay a hit. This bodes well for my time here.

I went through the same speech process as the week before, this time as team-member. After speeches, we watched the All Blacks and France game. A majority of the club took off, but most the Div 2 team stayed around, which was fun. I was rooting for France and had to celebrate quietly under the table after every French try. No one was up for going out, so we all headed home afterwards. I kicked it with some Germans back at the hostel.

Sunday brought a return trip to C 1 Espresso and more reading of Murakami's 1Q84 which I bought at Re:START on Friday. More soon...

Week 1

I was able to afford this New Zealand adventure because I had a job upon arrival. As mentioned in my last post, Wayne's family owns a mine and mineral processing plant outside Christchurch. They strip mine clay from a nearby hill and process it at the plant, creating some agricultural products, as well as the binding agent for paper, Bentonite. I required this job because, as I'm starting grad school in August and am about to go deep in debt, this needed to be a money-neutral trip. The catch-22 is that I don't really want to work much, just enough to recover my losses.

I was supposed to start my first Monday, but a broken part closed the mine for a day. Which turned into two days, which turned into three days. I finally had my first day that Thursday, but it quickly turned into a half-day. Wayne and I went to pick up a forklift transmission before the work day in town. We were able to get the transmission, but a broken hydraulic pump lead us on a four hour goose chase around town that ended up back at the place we started. They did 15 minutes of research and realized that only one shop would have the needed piece. That shop gave it to us for free. Oy.

The work at the mine is messy. The clay sticks to absolutely everything, so all employees wear overall covers. The dust forces us to wear respirator masks. Add my hard hat and I look like some sort of post-apocalyptic soldier after the decades of chemical warfare has destroyed Earth. Most of the work involves using heavy machinery like front loaders and forklifts. The processed clay is dumped into the mill's funnel with a frontloader. The mill then processes the powder and is hosed into bags that are then manually placed on pallets, which the forklift takes away to be wrapped. Seems easy enough, but everything breaks down constantly, so the plant is constantly a mess. The mess needs almost constant cleaning. Plus, the early shift starts at 6 or 7 AM, which is way too early for me. Again, I want to work as little as possible, so I'm planning on taking a 30 hour schedule. Fortunately, the CEO, Philip, traveled similarly to me so he is understanding. I think I'll also take my final two weeks in the country off to travel to some places around NZ between rugby trainings. I think I should get a real vacation before I start grad school.

Rugby followed a similar pattern. I was supposed to have my first training Tuesday, but obnoxiously Seattle-like rain rained out the ground. Unlike the USA, clubs actually care about their fields and will cancel a training if a wet field would be too damaged by long-spiked rugby players. They moved the training to an off site indoor training ground, but by the time my ride showed up, I would have only made the last half hour of practice after traffic. Not worth it. I was able to train Thursday. After filling out some paperwork, it was a whirlwind with the Div 2s. Apparently, the rugby vocabulary is different in NZ than the UK and US, which means I spent and hour and a half trying to translate. I had to learn that a cross is a switch, a zero is a drifter, and what the hell "points" and"castles" were (terms that I hope Eastside adopts...). I made some solid mistakes in early drills because I  had no idea what was going on. Fortunately, I did catch a "nice skills" from under the breath of the big coach (both figuratively and literally) during one drill. Ultimately, I was so busy trying to learn plays and patterns of play that I never really had a chance to enjoy myself. Too much going on. I spoke to the backs coach, and he seemed confident that I would play, which was good news for me to hear.

I got a ride home with the Div 1 coach, a former Scotland international. He was funny, saying a few things: 1) it's easy to find a flat with somebody on the team. I should expect to get one in the not-too-distant future. 2) The Div 2 boys are a "social bunch." Interesting. Perhaps, not coincidentally, they are also the youngest team. 3) Christchurch is completely working class. 4) People settle down early in Christchurch. This seems true, as everyone that appears to be my age is married and often has at least one kid dragged behind them.

In the meantime, with work not available, I've had time to explore more of the city. This has brought about several issues. First of all, I have an incredibly difficult time finding my bearings. While New York came naturally, even during Sandy, Christchurch has been nearly impossible. This is largely due to a few simple factors. First, as this is my first time in the southern hemisphere, I'm not used to the sun being in the north. I didn't realize how often I subconsciously use the sun for direction until coming here. I've been completely turned around. Second, since the earthquake destroyed the city centre, there are very few visual cues around town. The Southern Alps aren't really visible to the West, the southern hills are only seen on a clear day, and there are no hills in the city, and there are no tall buildings left. Even my conceptual map of the city is messed up. Like Seattle, Christchurch is ocean, city, mountains. Except Seattle runs that order west to east, while Christchurch is east to west. Receiving directions is very difficult. Lastly, Christchurch is not on a street grid. On multiple occasions, I was close to something and decided to take a short cut on what should be a cross-street. Instead the street would take an 80° turn and I would have no idea where I ended up.

Adding to my frustrations, I still have no phone. Tuesday I made my way down to the Riccardon Mall and purchased a pay-as-you-go SIM card from Vodaphone, only to find out that my iPhone was still locked. Unfortunately, since the account is in my mother's name, she is the one that needs to contact AT&T for me. There was a fellow upstairs at the mall who would unlock the phone, but for $80NZD, which I wasn't willing to spend.

I've been discouraged to find out that Christchurch post-earthquake is mall land. While there used to be a supposedly vibrant urban center, all that's left are the suburbs, which, much like the ole USA, revolve around shopping malls. I've been told that the place to be before the quake was SOL Square, in the Sodo district on the south end of the city centre. There were bars lining this alley where the entire population under 27 used to go on a Saturday night. Reminds me of Pike Street on Capitol Hill. Now the best bar scenes are at malls. Malls! This is not generally my scene.

Surprisingly, though, spending time at the mall was a generally interesting experience. It reaffirmed my awkward relationship with Starbucks — I hate it in the United States, but it proves a lifesaver when I'm traveling internationally. The coffee may be pretty bad, at the barely acceptable level, but at least you know what you're getting into. After a couple weird coffee experiences in Christchurch, I was relieved to drink something familiar. Yes, Starbucks acts as my Seattle embassy in foreign lands. Sadly, the internet wasn't free.

First weekend

My rugby coach in the United States, Wayne, is the entire reason I've been able to go on this trip. A Christchurch-native and Christchurch Football Club old boy, he was able to coordinate my housing, work, and rugby in New Zealand while I was still in Seattle. I owe him much.

After picking me up from the airport, he took me to his parent's house in the Christchurch neighborhood of Fendleton, apparently the Newport/Mercer Island of Christchurch. He also stays with his parents when in town since his permanent home is back in Seattle. He knows the workings of the family mine better than anyone, so he came back to help in March when they were on severe backorder.

The house was my first sign of the earthquake damage: doors don't close, light bulbs lack the expected level of decoration, every room has a draft, and there are cracks everywhere. I didn't think too much of them when I first arrived, as I was too busy meeting his lovely mother, Betty, and being exhausted from the plane. I barely had time to shower and drop my bags off before Wayne took me on a tour of the City Centre.

Keep in mind, I am a city kid. I like hanging around in downtowns. I love density. I lived on Capitol Hill, of all neighborhoods, in Seattle. I'm moving to New York.

There is no longer a City Centre in Christchurch. There are more empty, gravel lots in the City Centre than there are buildings. And most of the buildings that are still standing are slated for demolition because they are structurally unsound. I could tell there used to be a city centre there, but the operative phrase is "used to be." Every block seemed to have backhoes and asbestos suits. I wish I could do this scene justice, but it's practically impossible on a quick travel blogpost. The closest things I'd suggest is to go to google maps and search "City Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand." Note the number of empty lots. Now take the remaining buildings and mentally block out 3/4 of them. The remainder is the amount of active built environment left.

The highlight, of course, is Re:START, commonly called here "container city." This area, for those of us who follow the built environment, is an acclaimed example of temporary architecture, activating the aforementioned empty City Centre with a mall built out of a series of shipping containers. Each container is painted brightly and houses some trendy clothing store or cafe. They've stacked them in some places, which results in a pretty cool view. Obviously, I geeked out pretty hard. Hopefully, as Christchurch gets rebuilt, this mall will be unnecessary.

What I didn't realize before visiting (and I apologize for the grad school vocabulary I'm about to use), however, is that the shipping containers represent a colloquial architectural language in post-quake Christchurch. Shipping containers are used often as structure to hold up historical facades that were preserved in the rebuilding process or as a barrier to keep rocks from falling onto streets. They are everywhere. Re:START then represents the sort of critical regionalism preached by Kenneth Frampton (who I saw lecture three weeks ago) — it acts as a comment on the present, very temporary state of the city in a positive and, if I may, life-affirming way.

The still under construction cardboard cathedral was a couple blocks away. Wayne had no idea that it receives praise praise from the architectural community. Apparently Christchurch views it as a waste of money to build an expensive, temporary structure. Go figure. Wayne warmed up to the whole concept when he actually saw the building.

It was at this point that Wayne took me for a pie. These have been revelatory. They contain meat and sauce in a 4 inch diameter pie crust. All for $1.50NZD. You can get them hot at gas stations. Why we have spinning hot dogs in the United States I know not, because pies seem to be one of the best inventions of the modern age. Somebody get on this.

Wayne's brother, Phillip, who acts as CEO of the family company, picked up a set of tickets to the Crusaders v. Waratahs (Sydney) game that night at the new AMI Stadium. For those of you that don't know, these two teams compete in the Super Rugby competition. Think the NFL for rugby in NZ, Australia, and South Africa. These are the games that I stream late at night. The whole affair was a great deal of fun for me, obviously. I took a few pictures, some included below.

The Crusaders play in AMI Stadium, a, of course, temporary stadium built on a former horse show ground. Pre-earthquake, they also played in a stadium called AMI Stadium, but on the other side of town, permanent, and seating 45k. The temporary version only seats about 15k, but it made for a more intimate setting. Naturally, any time I see something live that I'd only seen on TV, I'm a happy man. Add rugby and the whole night was great. There I got another pie and watch the Crusaders win uncomfortably, as the Waratah's first five-eights missed a game-winning penalty attempt. It really shouldn't have been that close.

Amazingly, I lasted the whole first day without a nap, but I crashed pretty hard after the game.

Saturday was also a rugby day. This time Wayne took me to a few games of my new club Christchurch Football Club. We watched the Div 3 and Div 1 teams take on High School Old Boys at Hagley Park South. Each came away with a win, which was especially significant since HSOB were at the top of the Div 1 table. There was a pretty massive difference between the two in terms of quality of play and athlete. At the park, we met Mike O'Donnell, the Rugby Development Office for CFC. He is a full time employee of the club, making sure everything runs smoothly. He placed me on the Div 2 side, one of the club's two competitive senior teams. This is pretty exciting considering I just got off the boat from the USA and it's halfway through the season — I was expecting to play on the Div 3 side. Big honor.

Later than night, we went to the CFC clubhouse for team speeches. It was like nothing available in the USA, as it includes a hotel, a restaurant, squash club, physio, two buildings of changing rooms, and a two story bar. I had some expectations after playing in the UK, but this out does everything there. After games, all the teams assemble in the clubhouse for speeches from each side about their game. Each team has a table to themselves, including the kids' teams, whose players run around between everyone's legs. There is even a table for the club's booster group of old boys, the Axemen. Their table is marked by the picture to the right. My club in Seattle is also called the Axemen, so this gave me a good laugh.

Later, Wayne's nephew, Derrick, picked me up and took me on a night out. We met a couple of his mates from New Brighton Rugby Club at a pub and made our way out to Christchurch Casino. Like most everything else, the nightlife of Christchurch was devastated by the earthquake. The best bar scenes are now at malls. MALLS! The final stop of nights out appears to be the Christchurch Casino, which is exactly how I imagine the Snoqualmie Casino looks. Very lame.

The next day Wayne took me out to the southern part of Christchurch towards the "hills." An old volcano formed a sort of hilly point at the southern end of the City. Most houses on the hills were badly damaged in the earthquakes from landslides. However, the little town of Sumner was beautiful. It's a small beach town with nothing but surfing, a few beachfront bars, and a rugby pitch at the center of town. A further excursion lead to Taylors Mistake (yes, no apostrophe), a small beach front community made of eight, one room-ish houses that were only accessible by walking on the beach. The view was gorgeous and I could imagine myself there in the summer spending all day surfing and hanging out on the beach. I don't even surf. It's probably a good thing I didn't grow up here, because I would have been a beach bum.

The plan was for me to start work on Monday, but due to issues with the mill at the plant, it was pushed back to Tuesday. Monday is a holiday, anyway in NZ. That got pushed back, again. But I'll mention that later.

The journey

First of all, apologies if I don't end up posting on this often. One of the first things I've found out about New Zealand is that there is not exactly an abundance of fast internet and free wifi is about as available as, well, something really American. In other words, it might be difficult to update this regularly, so don't check too many times.

The best place to start was probably the plane flight and the awfulness that is LAX. It was my first time there since I was 11, and I found out why everyone hates LAX — the logic of the airport runs counter to any other airport I've ever found. Anywhere. Except Auckland, but more on that later. If you've never been, LAX consists of a series of six or seven unconnected terminals, a la JFK in NYC. The difference, however, is that there is nothing connecting each terminal. Usually, a traveler might hop on a connector train, like the airtram at JFK, which rotates between the terminals at regular, five minute-ish intervals for no charge. LAX, however, much like LA as a city, is only linked by roads and cars. No car, no luck. I arrived from Seattle at Terminal 6 and needed to only walk a block to get to Terminal 2, but there was no way. Fences block every path. After meandering, being lost, and walking four blocks out of the way, I did safely get to my terminal. Relaxed and back on track, I was reminded how easy the "is the passenger from the departure point or the destination" game is on international flights.

Luckily, on my 13 hour LAX to Auckland flight I was able to sleep about eight hours. This isn't to say they were the most comfortable hours of sleep in my history (I may have slept eight hours, but I was awoken that many times, as well), but I slept. And had a bizarre series of plane crash dreams. I blame turbulence. And the Speight's beer they offered me for free. Yes, Air New Zealand actually serves beer that one needn't purchase. Astounding.

I complained constantly for two weeks before I left about how this whole affair did not seem real. Nothing set in. I finally had my "I'm traveling again" moment at the Auckland Airport. There, after customs, there is actually a 15 minute walk between the "international" terminal and "domestic terminal." In all my travels, I've never had to do said walk outside between terminals, and I did it twice in a day. Anyway, it was 5am, cold, and raining when I stepped into the Auckland air, which immediately reminded me of several experiences in my time in Europe (the Belfast airport comes to mind) and I felt right again. On the road, like I like it.

New Zealand border security was interesting for reasons it shouldn't have been. The initial lines at customs were separated into several sections: one for NZ nationals, one for Australians, one for everyone else, and, most importantly one for the French rugby team. I wasn't aware, but les bleus are starting a series of three tests with the All Blacks this Saturday. See below.

 

 Makes me simulatneously happy and disappointed I chose not to bring my les bleus jersey. The border was almost too easy until the baggage check. Apparently the kiwis are strict about bringing in foreign organic substances into the country. This makes sense considering the uniqueness of the New Zealand ecosystem (see, kiwi bird). They were so concerned that I had to declare that I was bringing in two pairs of rugby boots. I was forced to show them and, when one was deemed too dirty, they even cleaned a pair. I joked that I should come through customs more often. The customs worker did not find it funny.

Eventually, I did make it to Christchurch. The flight between Auckland and CHC reminded me quite a bit of flying over Scotland. Highlands and water and all that. The flight was a few minutes late because of a systems failure. Not sure why they needed to tell of the passengers that bit of information. Of course, Coach Wayne remembered my arrival time wrong by 15 minutes, so I spent 10 minutes wandering around the Christchurch airport looking for him. I did eventually find him and was happy to see the man.

This was the end of my A to B travels. It seems a waste to spend an entire post about the plane flight, but too late. Deal with it. I'll post a first few days update soon, but it largely deals with things getting put off, just as a spoiler alert.

Cheers,

Craig