Well, I’m finally here in New Zealand. Auckland, to be specific, at a decent (read: average) hotel near the airport.
Communication’s going to be a little bit spotty – I’m only allowed 20 MB – that’s MB, not GB – of bandwidth for my stay tonight. I’ve gone through about half of it making about four phone calls to my family and my friends – one to the person selling me the car, which I’ll probably pick up tonight.
So – my adventure. First, a big thank-you to Andy, who suggested that I get a trolley in LAX. They charged $4 for ‘em, but it was so much easier once I got it to transfer everything. Actually, LAX went a lot easier than the first two times – apparently, I arrived only one terminal over from where I needed to be, so it was a shorter walk. Both Southwest and AirNZ charged me overages – that was to be expected – but AirNZ said the big bag was five kilograms beyond what they would allow on the flight.
Cue the frantic and haphazard effort to shift weight from the big bag to the little bag, a process that resulted in my left shoe and my right shoe sailing across the pacific in separate bags. Thus checked in, I proceeded to the flight.
Most of you know I have sleep apnea – and for sleep apnea, I sleep with a medical device known as a CPAP machine. All it does is force air down my trachea while I sleep. Now, Air New Zealand is aware of sleep apnea and CPAP machines, but unfortunately, my CPAP machine is not on the list of approved brands to be operated in flight.
So, I had two choices – I could try to sleep on the 13 hour flight, but I’d be up, gasping for air every 30 minutes or so, which is not pleasant. Now that I’m used to sleeping soundly, I now notice apnea attacks, and awake violently to the sensation of being strangled to death by my own tongue.
The other alternative was just to ask the ANZ stewards to try to help me stay awake for the entire flight.
I had reserved my seat selection online, so I was able to get an aisle seat, which is like gold for these long flights. I could get up and stretch out any time I want without bugging the person next to me, I’d have just that much more elbow room… it’s wonderful.
I was seated and ready, but it was not to be. The stewardess came up to me and asked me if I would be willing to give up my aisle seat – it would mean that a mother could sit next to her panicked child.
Well, hell, I’m not a monster. And 13 hours of a fat man’s discomfort compared to 13 hours of a panicked child and worried mother… no brainer.
Thus began the flight.
I immediately turned to the in-flight entertainment – I was looking forward to watching a few movies, maybe a few TV shows… last year, I had finally seen “The Dark Knight” in-flight, and a few episodes of the Mythbusters, along with a few Australian comedies that were good. But flipping through the selection screen, something was amiss. The top choice was “This is it,” the Michael Jackson tribute.
The movie selection was indeed very poor – mostly technothrillers and horror movies. I tried watching “Eagle vs. Shark” which supposedly has one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords, and was NZ made – but here’s the thing. I don’t actually like the Flight of the Conchords, or their style of humor. That doesn’t mean they’re not funny to other people. In fact, as a student of comedy myself, I know they’re hilarious – but in an academic way. That is – they’re masters of the craft, but I don’t find their style of comedy funny. (I don’t like poetry either, but I know that e.e. cummings is good at poetry.) I could talk about why I don’t find them funny later, but that’s another post.
The movies I did end up seeing was “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs,” an animated family flick about a mad scientist – passable – and Juno, which is one of those movies I actually did want to see for years, but never got around to. (Is it just me, or has Michael Cera been playing the same character in every movie he’s been in?)
That, and about 8 Simpsons episodes.
The stewards on Air NZ were great – they kept me plied with caffeinated drinks, chocolate, and nudged me back awake when I started to nod off. And I did indeed when my body gave out on me - a seamless and unnoticed transition from Flight NZ5 to sitting a 7 engine plane with geometric shapes, fireworks, and my graduating class.
I had been awake for 26 hours when we landed. Getting off the plane, I was greeted with this sweet but earthy smell of Auckland International Airport. I don’t know if it was something they sprayed in the air, something in the carpet cleaner they used, or if fresh air just smells sweet after being on a flight with 500 other people for 13 hours. That earthy, sweet “new life smell.”
And that’s the thing. New Zealand – you can *see* and *hear* New Zealand on the Internet or on the TV occasionally, but it’s the three other senses – the feel of tree bark, the smell of the air, the taste of a nice L&P or petrol station pie – that give you that sense of “you’re really here, and this is not an electronic facsimile or a trick of the light.”
I don’t know what it is about this place, but here, my smile comes much more easily. Sometimes I just break out into a grin for no reason. It’s not that I feel that I belong here, but… somehow, I feel like whatever problems I may have – they’re manageable. It gives me a feeling of confidence and of optimism – as if the land itself is reassuring me.
“Don’t worry, Brian,” New Zealand says to me. “You take care of your life, and I’ll take care of the sun, wind, rain, the land, and all the other big stuff.”
They really should change the tourist slogan from “100% pure” to “Chill. I got this.”
I was a little worried – I was the last one waiting at the baggage carousel, worrying that shipping my shoes in different bags had cursed me to lose at least one of them in an irony too good for Murphy to pass up. But no – it was merely the last bag off the plane. After that, customs was easy – they were a little confused about something in my bag which showed up as a big orange blur on their X-ray. I said they could check, of course, but they asked me to guess. I honestly didn’t know, but thought it might be DVDs I had brought with me. They were fine with that and let me go without checking it personally.
After that… shuttle bus to the hotel, check-in, shower, call my mom (who insisted I tell her I arrived safely), twitter my friends, and take a good, long sleep.
For four hours.
I think I was just overtired; which is possible. Or maybe this is a manic episode, brought on by the giddiness of a lifelong dream realized and a brand new world in front of me. At any rate, I woke up around 5pm, and figured that I didn’t want to go back to sleep. So I called up David & Haley, who had the Toyota Corolla "Windy G" I had bought.
The plan was to wait until the next day to pick up the car, but I really had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Additionally, I’m the type of guy who comes up with things that are almost clever.
For example, I packed all my clothes into space-saving vacuum seal bags so that they would take up less space and could come with me on the plane. This worked; only I found that I packed my underwear, shirts, and pants into separate baggies. Not opening them would mean wearing the same disgusting, sweaty, stinking clothing I had departed Austin in. Opening them would re-inflate them to previous volume sizes. Which means that I don’t think I can get my clothing back into my luggage now. The only alternative – have a car to stow the stuff in.
David got home around eight-thirty, and got the car ready. I called a taxi to take me to their place in Remurea, a 20 minute drive or so – the driver was himself an immigrant from Fiji and we talked about what it’s like to restart everything.
They invited me in, we talked for a while (they were interested in why I moved and how I got a job here,) filled out paperwork, and so it was around 9:30pm, that I landed the car. I then proceeded to make a wrong turn out of the driveway and got incredibly lost.
Being the almost-clever type, I had handily printed out driving directions before I left on the journey for my taxi driver to follow. I had, however, planned to depart for Tauranga after picking up the car – not driving back to the hotel – so I did not have the reverse driving directions from Remurea back to the hotel.
Complicating all of this was the fact that everything that was right was now left, and left was now right. If it was just driving on the left side of the road, I think I could handle it. But I instinctively crane my neck to the right to look at the rear-view, and see nothing but open road. I instinctively look over my right shoulder to look behind me when reversing, and there’s nothing there. The gearshift is on the left as well.
And, because I’m used to driving on the other side of the car, my mind instinctively wants to line me up with the right-hand side of the lane, which, if I am not careful to avoid it, means I would place the entire left side of the car onto the sidewalk.
Finally, the blinkers and wipers are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel of my old car, so every time I want to turn, I turn on the wipers.
I avoid these problems by going an average of 20 km under the speed limit, greatly annoying the people behind me who are neither lost nor disoriented. So – that 20 minute trip took about 90 minutes or so.
Hopefully tomorrow, in the daylight, as I head to Tauranga, driving will be a little more comfortable, the daylight will guide my way, and no one on the island will be in any sort of hurry to get anywhere.
-- Brian Boyko
-- 26 January, 2010.
Posts
