Everyday is a new adventure

Tall one and Small one met in New Zealand, in the kiwi fruit orchards of Tauranga back in early 2009. From there spent 2 years travelling across Australia together; penniless in Sydney, 15 hour shifts in a Blue Mountains Hotel, picking Blueberries with spiders in Coff's Harbour – watermelons with snakes in Charters Towers, pushing their campervan, 'Tony' through the flood waters of Miriam Vale, breaking down in every state through the outback, and working and drinking side by side in an Irish Pub and Backpackers in Melbourne.

Across the globe through Vietnam, Thailand & Moscow before spending a year in Canada; through the seasons in Toronto, 35 hour Greyhound buses across the provinces, dog sledding in the Rocky Mountains, shovelling 3 foot snow in the Yukon, Kayaking in Haida Gwaii, sharing a beer among the icebergs of Newfoundland and spotting whales in Nova Scotia.

Before returning to New Zealand in Oct 2012 to live the beach life in Mount Maunganui, experience the earthquakes of Wellington and finally getting married on Te Ahumairangi Hill, Wellington in Oct 2013. Finally on 2nd Oct 2013 they embarked on an 80 day honeymoon back across the globe, through the south island of New Zealand, up to Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and finally through north India before returning to Ireland, where they are now attempting to make a home in Galway. Many miles travelled together, many sights shared together, everyday is the start of a new adventure.

Please feel free to contact us about our 5 year trip around the world - conorhegarty81@gmail.com

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

New Zealand: Life in Wellington, Feb 9th - 30th Sept 2013

Monday 30th September 2013

Up at 7am, and small one resumed the position in his comfy sofa, feet up – looking out at the City lights as dawn broke. Tall one handed him a cup of Barry's Tea, and the free newspaper that was delivered outside our door at 6.30am. We could see our old 'Classic House' office block from across the harbour, and saw the level 12 lights come on as (presumably) Louis arrived to start work.

Small one phoned home, and spent the early morning online. He started reciveing good luck messages from family and friends who he had thought he had kept the wedding secret (until on the day itself), but turns out his mother has (despite being told to keep stum) spreading the word. Even small ones third cousin messaged him about the big day, leaving small one wondering who his mam hadn't told.

Headed along the harbour and back to our old apartment for 9am, where we met Maureen the estate agent (reeking of fags), who took a cursory look around the flat and said it was fine and she'd already lodged the Bond refund form anyway. Went for a Bagel and Coffee near work (using the back entrance to avoid bumping into smoking staff from the old office). Stopped at Thorndon ANZ to draw out all our daily budget for the south island trip in cash. Small one returned his waist coat for another size, though they wanted proof of purchase so had to go back to the bank to print off a transaction report from a few weeks ago. Into the library for a short time to download and to keep up to date with the staff 'stuff.co.nz' quiz. Back to the Hotel room to meet Joel for a while, who showed us the hole in his trousers caused by a Jack Russell bite doing door to door sales. Then tested out the Hostel swimming pool, which was advertised as heated – but was more like room temperature, and not quite as luxurious as the photo made out – but was our first swim for quite some time at least. Back into town for New World to collect our button hole rose flower for our suits tommorrow, and the nibbles and booze for the (hopeful) picnic up on the town belt lookout. Today's weather started cloudy, but turned into thick fog, mist and drizzle drowning the town belt and harbour, though tomorrow is looking sunny. Ended with Home and Away at 5.30pm (best signal we've ever seen it) followed by the old favourite Dominos Pizza combo.

Sunday 29th September 2013

Awoke still feeling a little hung over, and muscles still aching from the Go Karting. Did a final polish off of the flat, scrubbed the shower and every possible shiny thing with white vinegar until the place stunk like a Chippy. Today the clocks went forward an hour and also the North Island switched off analogue TV – so we couldn't watch those endless church tv shows on our sunday morning. By the time we were done went for a walk as going a bit stir crazy in the flat. A nice walk into Thorndon village, and round a very busy botanical gardens..... some kind of festival was going on, with stalls run by dutch people selling dodgy looking cakes. Gardens were colourful, with tuips in full bloom. Nearer to 2pm we struggled on with the backpacks and made it up the harbour walk (with a few rest stops) to check in to the Copthorne Hotel, Oriental Bay – for the next four nights. Thee receptionist was a bit of a misery, we thought it was because we weren't the usual clientele, but then we noticed she was an utter misery to the guests who followed us.

Up to our room, number 807 on the top floor, corner room of the front harbour facing building. Enormous room, and great sliding doors opening out to a balcony looking over the City and Harbour. Tall one was a bit concerned that there was no soap dish provided, and and such the hand soap kept slipping down into the sink and wouldn't sit anywhere – but other that that we're over the moon with the place (oh, and the wifi costs $20 for 50 MB...!!!).

Went out for food – and stopped in Kitty O'Sheas for their $10 menu. Didn't have any drink, and sat outside for what seemed an eternity, whilst small one pretended to be on his phone so some local drunk chatty lunatic didn't come over. After the quite nice food we headed back through the City to the flat to pick up the suits and last bits and pieces. On route we bumped into Alix and Clare in Public – on their second bottle of wine. We joined them by the fire and chatted about the wedding, and how Alix had buzzed a burglar into their apartment block when she moved in. We left them to it just as one of the local tramps with the gravelly voice turned up looking for free fags – Clare and Alix saw him coming and hid them under the table, but small one told the fella that the girls had plenty. Back to the flat and collected are final bits (though we'd be back at 9am tomorrow to sign off the final bond and hand back the keys to Maureen). Then the walk back to the hotel – starting to get sick of the harbour walk! Back in our giant room we sat down and relaxed by the great view.

Saturday 28th September 2013

After only a few hours sleep, for some reason we were awake at 8am – feeling dog rough. We managed to watch 60 Minute Makeover, and our final Come Dine with Me. Small one brought us a slightly dodgy Subway breakfast roll from downstairs, though the coffee was very much needed. We weren't in much of a fit state to do anything, though somehow managed to walk up town and do a little shopping. Went for a $12 lunch at The Grand, where Tall ones lamb sausages and mash were a bit pink – though the gravy was nice. Whilst there, Alix and Clare turned up – and we discussed the previous night and our last day of work. Back along the harbour and home to watch the final (somewhat depressing anti climax) of Dexter. Then dozed off and awoke in time for Ice Road Truckers.

Friday 27th September 2013

Final day of work.... finally it's here after painfully counting down the last days and weeks. They had completely cocked up the whole interview process for tall and small's replacements. So had told all candidates they had failed to get the role (Canadian Johnny included, who did not come back to work in his usual role after that) – but out of the two candidates that were picked, one changed his mind (Brian) and took another job he'd been offered, and the other (Pearl) wasn't too sure if she wanted it. The positions were only finalised this friday morning, and so ended up with no replacement for small one (Mark, “Top Hat” would look after his work until sorted), and a hesitant Pearl started one very crammed day of training with Tall one.

At lunch time we met 'Maureen' from the estate agents at the flat for a 'trial' inspection (before the final one Monday). She had been utterly hopeless since she took over from the pregnant woman, forgetting to send us gas bills or sending us the bill for the wrong flat. We were worried that she'd want the place immaculate, and she would charge us for the water stains on the shower or the stainless steel bin which had a broken lid. But she turned up full of beans and chat, had a glance round and said it looked perfect – she even suggested she might even send off the bond return form that day instead of waiting for the final inspection on Monday???! We still don't trust her to send it off after how useless she was sending us the bills.

Tall one's training was quite lengthy, and as a lot to explain in terms of different role aspects, different processes and new and existing cases to get up to speed with. Then there was the team coming over to say their goodbyes and meet the replacement, then there was the 'BCU' team oscar awards at 4pm.... so a lot to work around. They key to tall one's role is probably organisation, and making sure you action each case and update the report as it comes in without delay..... So tall one a bit dubious of how Pearl will get on with this when he had been sending her some things to practic processing, and when he went over to her desk to see what she'd done, his emails were sat in her inbox along with 1500 other unread emails... wasn't looking good, but not his concern as he'd only been allowed to give one days training, and had written 8 A4 pages of notes for her, so goodluck now.

Had our goodbyes with the upstairs case managers, and then gathered round for the plastic Oscar awards at 4pm. It was an “every gets an award” affair, and small one did the speech when they gave us the leaving card and gifts. Then we all had some wine and beer for the last hour in the office, though tall one was still trying to finish his work whilst drinking his beers. Small one sent out some invites to the after Wedding drinks on Tuesday. This resulted in lots of excited girls coming over to hug small one, whilst tall one pretended to still be busy. Small one then after discussing the wedding plans, told each person “see you next Tuesday” which could be misiterpeted.

We then left to hit the town, as it was our last day of work – and essentially a joint 'Stag' night – before the wedding on Tuesday. We met Alix, Clare, Mark (Top Hat), Will and Adam outside the Thistle Inn – and had expected to just be working our way into town through a few bars, but then Mark turned up in a shuttle bus taxi waving from the front passenger seat. Tall one and small one were hustled in to the back without a clue what was going on or where they were going. The taxi headed out of the City which was more worrying – then small one started seeing ferry terminals and a railway station so had no idea what was planned. We then stopped 20 minutes outside the City in this small industrial park. There was a large antique shop with a giant wooden crocodile outside the entrance (for $10,000) – and next to that a real, grungy looking, rough building with a few different banners above the door.... this was where we were taken inside.

Up the stairs, down a halway much in need of a clean and a lick of paint. Then through an indoor mini golf area and out the back through a rough working man's club type room with a few brown second hand sofas and an old tv – then out into a hall area, which was an indoor go-kart track. Mark and Will paid, and we were given hairnets to put on, before the helmets. Two surley looking mechanics then gave us driving instructions and started our lawn mower like go-kart engines – and off we went. Having spent the last hour drinking in the office – it was all a bit fast and frantic round the track. Supposedly a non contact pursuit, the two surley mechanics kept wavings and pointing at people with unhappy expressions when we started to crash into each other or go too fast. It was a fast paced 30 minute session, and at the end of it our legs, arms and hands ached like hell (and worse the next day). Tall one came last.

Outisde back into some taxis and back to the City to the G.P. Bar. There we were on the cheap jugs of beer (and Jager shotss....). Small one discussed with the team how earlier this week he had mistakenly sent an email update on a case through to one of our stakeholders, and instead of saying “this complaint is ongoing and we shall be speaking with the IRD (Inland Revenue Department)”, he had written, “this complaint is still ongoing and we shall be speaking with the IRA”.... That certainly would stop the person complaining. Then when it got to 9.30pm we tried to convince the bar maid to switch the bar tv over from the cricket to housing show, Location Location Location – apparently, no dice. After a good long session in the bar we ended up in a Korean Karaoke bar. We were joined by a few others from work – and soon it descended into chaos. An hours Karaoke session in a private, sound proof room – everyone (except tall one) having a sing song.

Though small one mugged the second microphne from most people's sessions to add his own lyrics to each song, mostly consisting of saying our manager's name to his face, over and over again in tune to the music – this didn't seem to ware thin over the next hour (“Adam Chown.... Adam Chown....Adam Chown”). Previous temp from our floor, Bonnie got into the singing – doing some bizarre pop rap.... which had us all sat there confused, though enthralled, When the 1 hour selections ran out, we found the micophones still worked and small one started singing without music – a bizarre medley of 'Nancy Spain' 'Leaving Athlone' and 'Bright Blue Rose' with small bursts of the new Adam Chown song. Clare was also in tears at the bar as it was small one's last day, whilst Mark discussed with Asian temps, Bonnie and Wei-Nung how they couldn't carry his baby as he wants a white one.

We left the Koreans around 2am, and now just being Mark, Will and Clare with us went to a bar that was still open. The bar man really didn't want to serve Mark who (in fairness) looked fucked. Small one somehow convinced them to serve us by saying that as an experience bar man it was insulting for them to suggest that Mark could not be served. We only stayed for the one, and Mark was on the phone to Sarah, the girlfriend at 3am – and for some reason handed the phone over to Tall one to speak to her (having never spoken to her before), it wasn't long before Sara said “can you put Mark back on now...”. We then departed, and small one refused to walk, so we got a taxi for $10.

Thursday 26th September 2013

This morning the Americas Sailing Cup finally finally came to an end, after over 2 weeks of excessive news coverage, and the Kiwi team going from a 7 to 1 lead to a 7 all draw, the final race was this morning and the 'American' team, Orical (made up of Aussies, Kiwis and Brits??) finally won. Pieter spent his last mornign of work watching this and then making phone calls to discuss. We also finally thought we'd have the news of who got the permanent positions for the new team (our team). Mark (Top hat) and Will were confirmed as staying in the team (though we don't know if in the same position yet), and then we found out Pearl and the quiet lad, Brian got the other two positions.... though the only thing is after the news was announced, Pearl said she was not sure if she wanted it, and Brian said he had another job to consider. So by the end of our second day we still had no idea who was replacing tall one and small one, and had still done no training at all! We then had a gather round for a goodbye to Pieter. We had a very brief team meeting in which Pieter gave us all an official, teary eyed farewell. Later in the office Pieter did a fifteen minute speech about the history of his work, and then we ate some cakes. After work we rushed up town to buy a $3 replacement sweeping brush from the dollar store to replace the one we'd broke in the flat. Small one then had to carry it back through the rush hour crowds of the City back to the flat, where we spent the night packing our bags, and scrubbing the flat until 11.30pm (for a trial run inspection tomorrow by the Agency). Still can't get those water stains off the shower??!! Wrapped up all the variety of tv aerial cables we had, and plugged one in – and found that having swapped them round we now had a great signal for Channel 2 – after spending the last month watching Home and Away in double vision – static – and occasional black and white whilst the tv cable was hung out the window or tied to the wardrobe to find the better signal.

Wednesday 25th September 2013

After work that night headed out on our last official harbour walk (another last) – the last after work harbour walk from the flat (to the yellow bar or whales tales in Oriental Bay). Was shitty weather though, drizzle and full gale winds. We struggled through to finish our last walk and up in the harbour by the boat sheds the winds screeched and howled through the masts of the rocking boats lined up.

Monday 23rd – Tuesday 24th September 2013

Our last week of work begins. Everything we did being the last time we were going to do something. The last time we had to send our weekly stats on Monday, the last time we would wear that particular cheap work shirt. Still going to work using the back service entrance every morning, and noticed how every day at 8.10am down the side alley of the building is this lone man sat in the drivers seat of a car, sat wearing his seat belt just staring straight ahead in the car. We've walked past him so often in the mornings, no idea what he's doing there (get away driver?) that we've started to wave at him and he waves back.... The week started pretty easy though, small one bored to tears with no work to do, and Tall one busy enough to be ticking along.

Sunday 22nd September 2013

Small one awoke feeling very rough at 3am, and decided to sit in bed and watch a Celtic game he never knew was on. Back to sleep and up again mid morning to cheese on toast. Out at lunch time and up town again to the Wellington Market near Te Papa. Brought a lamb sausage for small one and a Vension burger for tall one. As we sat and ate in the market, a real rough Maori fella stopped by the side of the stall infront of us with a little 5 year old girl in a pink coat. He stood the girl on a spot, and infront of her put some pages of A4 paper on the floor, and put a pebble on the corner of each page, then he gave her a very small guitar (toy ukulele) and he put some change in the guitar case infront of her. He then walked off and left this little girl completely on her own strumming this little guitar (terribly) whilst she was also singing. Within minutes passers by were giving her change, despite her poor strumming, and no one being able to hear her singing over the wind. A few people were looking around wondering who she was with, and am sure they looked over at us and presumed she was with us. We soon left her to it and carried on with the harbour walk up to the Fisherman's Inn by the beach – for some photos of small one in his Athlone top. Then a long walk home, and moved the flat furniture around ready for the move out next week.

Saturday 21st September 2013

Saturday headed up town for some final shopping. Went to 'Toy Box' and two grown men purchased a small, toy Emperor Penguin for $10 – for the wedding cake (to go with the small Blue Penguin from Wellington Zoo). Round the city in the pouring rain and collected the engraved padlock from the jewellers which will be attached to one of the harbour walk bridges on the day of the wedding. Brought a few bits to replace some of the knackered bits from the flat, and tall one brought his waistecoat for the wedding. By then was soaked to our skin with the down pour, and went into JJ Murphy's on Cuba Street. Sat by the open fire and had a glass of Murphys each, with the small penguin on the table between us, while we waited for our clothes to dry out. Will from work joined us, and later Clare and Alix who had been wedding dress shopping. Whilst we were there we noticed through the window, sat on the tables outside was this young attractive blonde woman (with a violin??) who was aggressively getting off with this middle aged fella with a big nose. We thought it was a once off, but she kept on going at him. Sitting directly the otherside of the window (jnside with us) was this old lady sat alone with a glass of wine, sat casually facing out straight at them – watching as the two of the licked each others faces off. At one point they stopped to get air and looked at her sat there watching, and the old lady lifted her glass to toast them. They seemed to think it was funny, and small one even went outside wearing his Athlone Jersey, and asked how long they knew each other (they met that day?!). The old lady then got up and left, and stopped to say to us that she was only in town for a book review, and never thought she'd get such free entertainment. By the time Tall, Small and Will left, small one was pretty drunk. He decided we'd all go to the empty Asian restaurant next door where we ordered some food. Small one repeated several times to the cashier that he was allergic to fish oils, and the cashier in the end had to tell him in perfect English, “yes we understand, no fish oils”. Was quite a nice meal, and then tall one had to prop up small one as they walked home, and then past out without managing to watch Ice Road Truckers.

Monday 16th September – Friday 20th September 2013

Second to last week of work, still counting the days down slowly. Mark and Will went to interviews for their own job on the friday, and have no idea how they got on. Tall and Small one don't have a replacement yet, and no one will know the outcome until next week – so will only be two days to train the replacements. Tuesday after work rushed up town to Stationary Warehouse to print off 24 copies of the wedding service programs that tall one had designed and illustrated. Considering we were printing a program which clearly stated was for a wedding day (the most important day of people's lives) and was illustrarted with funny, cheerful drawings – we were stuck wiith the most joyless young fella doing the printing. He did not make a single comment about what we were printing, no conversation, no charm, just 'how many of these?'. Toook him some twenty minutes to print, and then tall one got to work hand folding each A4 page into the A5 booklet, and then stapled each one, whilst small one supervised. On the wednesday posted them home at lunch time – used some envelopes from work, but used the much abused tipex mouse to scrub out the company name first (Tall one's sister received her copy just 3 days later on the saturday post!).

Thursday morning up early to use the cafe at work's free wifi at 7am. Following numerous online complaints, the staff now seemed to actually say hello when you came in, and seemed to actually make half decent coffee. Small one watched his Celtic match, and tall one download the latest episodes of Dexter and Breaking Bad. Both were on their final seasons, which was nice as he had started watching both shows in Christchurch, New Zealand 2008, and was watching the final seasons now at the end of their travels, Wellington, New Zealand 2013 (final season of Dexter has turned out a bit naff though). Thursday night did our final weekly food shop at New World at 8.30pm – was dead quiet, with the exception of the two Malaysian cashiers who couldn't stop asking the generic travel questions.

We also re-printed our flights booked in May, but had changed about 4 times since. Reserved our seats for our flights Delhi to Dublin with British Airways – which cost $60 per seat per person to reserve, and the second flight a further $20 each – cost us more to book our seats than to book some of the actual flights. Though we were splashing out on reserved seats, we were saving money on work shoes. Booth of our pairs (from The Warehouse) had struggled to stay held together for the last few month – huge gaping holes in the soles, and the cheap base coming away from the soles. They should just make it for the last week, even if it is just vague, black tatters we are wearing for the last 5 days.

Monday 9th – Sunday 15th September 2013

Mark, 'Top Hat; returned to work after a 3 week absence for his shoulder operation, small one gladly handed back all his work to him. Tensions in the office when the Manager apparently interrupted the BCU team meeting to tell them he knows there doing fuck all work, they can't minimize their facebook screens quick enough and they can just shake his hand and leave now if they don't want to work......Our high profile team will be changing soon with small and tall leaving 2 weeks friday, and they still have not started interviews. Though they are making every role on our team permanent, and so everyone has to apply for even their own jobs, not just new people for ours.

Friday night went out for a few beers with Top Hat, Alix, Clare and Will at the G.P. Bar (can't get away from acronyms even out of work). William and Aidan of Waterford turned up in the pub back from their south island trip – though all a little awkward as they didn't seem to inclined to speak to any of us.

Early in the week the weather was shockingly wet, miserable with gale force winds. On the wednesday wrapped up our parcel (with junk to send home) in bin liners to carry it in the bad weather to the post office, ended up costing uf almost $200 to send home (weighed $10.77 kg!) - when we get home we're probably going to throw half of that stuff away. No harbour walk till Thursday because of the weather, and along the rocks we noticed the winds had been so strong a lamp post had been torn out the ground. That same night saw the blue penguins back, and phoned Joel who came down and had a look. Earlier in the week small one had a phone call at 7am from a job recruitment agency, and he was a bit confused as he's not applied to recruitment agencies for 6 months, but turns out they were looking for Joel as they had work and his phone had been off for days (small one was down as his emergency contact). Small one then phoned and emailed the Cambridge Hotel and messaged Joel's facebook for someone to wake him up, got there in the end and Joel got a labouring job.

Saturday headed out early to collect the completed wedding rings from the jewellers n Cuba Street. The woman had told us to be there 8.30am, though she didn't turn up till quarter to, and we helped her open up shop. They had to shrink small one's ring even more, as seemingly his finger size is dropping every week (this is 4 and a half sizes different to what it started at). They engraved the rings as well and gave us a small box for each, they came out very well – white gold, '375' 9 carot gold. The woman spoke about the old fella (who changed small one's watch battery), he'd been working there a while and today was his 50th Wedding Anniversary, but now he had altzeimers and so couldn't go the jeweller work he used to – though they give him little jobs to help out. Small one also wanted to surprise tall one by giving them something else to engrave, only when the woman said good bye to us, she said “oh I suppose I'll see you next week when you come to pick this up”.

After Cuba Street headed up Town Belt to Te Ahumairangi Hill. After the crap weather this week, today was amazing, hot sun and blue skies. Up at the lookout we met the celebrant, Sally - we discussed the ceremony script and she wanted to do a read through with us. Small one said he might need a tissue, and she rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a scunged up, old tissue and as she tried to smooth it out on the table said “there, I think that's a clean one”. We then stood on the lookout decking and read through the script, it all went very easily and put our minds at ease in terms of the pressure and how the day would actually run. Though a man with his asian wife and small child walked up to stand right next to us (at the lookout) just as we were rehearsing the “I do” lines. We just hope the weather is that nice on the day. Back to the flat for the afternoon and small one wasn't feeling too well so had a sleep whilst tall one did some sketches for the wedding program, and designed it on the laptop. Sunday was an easy enough day, lot colder than Saturday. Usual library wifi stop, and the table next to us had the same strange young girl doing this very acamdemic sounding homework with some other bored young lad, talking about mythology and odyessy's..... whilst we were sat there on the next table downloading cartoons. Back to the flat and small one fell asleep (again).

Sun 8th September 2013

Library in the morning for the usual wifi fix, sat upstairs in the cafe where the floor seemed to be constantly shaking (though no earthquakes were registered on GeoNet.com). Was an amazing sunny, blue sky day out – and the wharf was packed with people. We sat out in the sun and watched children struggling with kayaks, and aggressive seagulls attacking each other. Tall one had an Italian Hot Chocolate from the blue coffee truck on the wharf, whilst small one laughed at the fat girl who couldn't keep up with the jogging club. Further round the wharf and over near the 'yellow bar' and new complex being built we saw a dead blue penguin, slowly floating upside down in the crystal clear water. Very sad sight. Continued the walk round to the beach and sat in the sun for a while longer. Heading back along the harbour some foreign fella dressed in a chef's hat approached us holding a big bowl of broken chocolate pieces. He gave us a few bits and told us their was a Chocolate Festival around the corner, $30 each for entry (or $15 from him), e said there was no need to go as he'd already given us chocolate. Afternoon back at the flat was spent polishing off the wedding ceremony script.

Sat 7th September 2013

Headed up town to run a few tasks. At the bottom of Cuba Street the Chinese were out in force – getting signatures to create awareness for the harvesting of life organs in China. A small stage play on Cuba Street was underway, with a little man sat in a plastic cage crossed legged, whilst a man in a fancy dress Chinese policeman uniform generally abused him – there was also an operating table were a woman lay down with a pink stained sheet draped over her, whilst a surgeon took out some kind of pretend organ and put it in a box and handed it to another actor. We signed the petition for them, though at every corner there was another Chinese lady holding out a pen for you.

Did some shopping around for wedding cakes, and then into the jewllers on Cuba Street to ask about the wedding rings (which we'd paid in full a week ago). They said small one's was still on route, but tall one's was now resized. Small one had been looking around to get a new battery for his watch (the one given as a leaving present from Toronto Eaton Centre). We had priced $15 for a battery change down on Manners Street, but held off – so thought we'd ask in this same jewllers. The old man lept for the watch and said he'd take a look. He never gave us a price or anything, we thought he was just 'having a look', when we noticed he had his magnifiers on, screwdriver at the back of the watch and a new battery out..... We asked how much is this going to cost, and was told $25!!! We just went for it in the end as he'd pretty much already done it, and they'd already given us a discount on the rings.... but still, the cheeky old bastard.

Met Joel in the awful Four Kings Pub for our free $10 lunch voucher. Small one's didn't work and the cashier said that it says its already used. After a bit of arguing we managed to get the free meal anyway. Sat amongst the hundreds of TV screens with various sporting events - Tall and Small had a BLAT each, whilst Joel had recently turned vegan, and could only have the Pumpkin and Coconut Soup. He even sent the bread roll back to the kitchen demanding they provided one without butter. Though we had met up to have a meal together, Tall and Small ate their BLATs whilst Joel was in the men's toilet having a nose bleed. Joel confirmed he was heading home soon after our wedding and was looking for temp work until then. We then all went out separate ways, and outside the pub on the road was the body of a seagull. On the way back stopped in the dollar store and brought a $2.50 pair of sunglasses each (Small one's being a bright green child's pair).

Monday 2nd – Friday 6th September 2013

Fourth last week working at the office, and counting every minute as we count down. A group of fellow workers had been up to Tongariro / Ruapheu ski fields over the weekend, and Alex came back with his cheeks burnt red from the sun – infact hos whole face was red except for a racoon like band of white skin around his eyes where he had goggles on. Had some new 'EPA' case managers in for training by Will – and 5 of these middled aged women crowded into Tall one's pod. One of the (on hearing Tall one's name) asked, “oh are you a rat bag? Every Michael I know is a rat bag”. Was a busy week all round, so we headed to the pub after work with Will, Clare, Alix and (unfortunately) Inge (the dutch Stapler thief). Before we left we all subscribed to their free beer vouchers (again) using a different email address, so twice within the week got another 2 free beers each and a free dinner each – we were wondering if the same staff would be on, but if they were they didn't say anything to us.

Travel and Wedding plans are progressing. Small one collected his turned up suit trousers and turned up jacket sleeves. We also went to the bank and ordered $1000 New Zealand dollar's worth of Indian Rupees. These turned up a few days later, and the poor cashier counted out 45,000 Rupees in these colourful, Gandhi illustrated 50 Rupee, 100 Rupee, 500 Rupee notes..... it took quite a while to say the least. The week ended on a high when Will confirmed he had managed to block Donna the Bull Dozer' from our inbox and case manager software program, which she is still insisting on using to nose her way into new cases, despite the fact she changed offices and roles weeks ago. We await her reaction to being blocked, and also noted how she has now authored the company newsletter, and provided a link to a customer compliments log, of which she quoted to compliments examples, both for herself.

Sunday 1st September 2013

Watched Come Dine with Me on the dodgy VHS player. Hike up the Town Belt hill, but found a lot of the paths were blocked by huge fallen trees, to big to climb over and too many in a row – completely uprooted from the storm from a couple of months ago (the night Arran left). Got to the top and walked around the Te Ahumairangi Hill lookout and other flat grassland lookouts to find the best spot for the wedding ceremony in exactly a months time. A lone woman jogging stopped at one of the benches, and stroked the plaque dedicated to a deceased man, then sat down and cried for ten minutes. Another family had a young brown dog that was running round manically like it had rabies. Headed back down the hill through the gardens. William of Waterford was leaving Wellington in a few days, and had had a going away night friday (which we missed) so we went down to meet him mid afternoon at the Green Man pub (were we had gone St Paddys Day). We had text a code to some sign up number and received 2 vouchers before hand for 2 free pints each and a free meal voucher of $15 each. Following the Green Man, went to Four Kings and had text for a free pint for there – so after a couple of hours had had 3 pints each and shared a platter of wedges and nachos, and not paid a cent – leaving both pubs after not spending a penny and being very unlucky to return. Though then went to 'Public', which seemed a bit too flashy for us, but had $5 pints. Discussed the unhappiness at work and hid the salt and pepper pots from the table in William's carrier bag (which contained a box of chocolates, a mobile phone and some deodrant). Tall one then forced small one home early for 7.30pm.... Top Gear, Mid Summer Murders.

Saturday 31st August 2013

Taped Come Dine with Me and headed up town to go suit shopping. After a few tentative looks in some stores with some very strange, unhelpful bald people, we found we were not impressed with the rentals which seemed the same quality (and less choice) as ones to buy. Though, Hallensteins' suits were quite nice and for $149 could get suit jacket, trousers, shirt and tie. Tall one wwent for a brown suit, with purple/lilac tie and shirt, and small one a light grey suit with blue shirt and tie. Back and forth in and out of changing rooms to try different sizes and colours, and the girl was very helpful and patient, and seemed quite a genuine help, opposed to all those false people butting in in the previous shops. Brought the suits then shopped round to have small one sleeves and trousers taken up. Then up to Cuba Street to pay in full for the white gold rings. Settled in for the afternoon, Ice Road Truckers and Wife Swap.

Thursday 29th – Friday 30th August 2013

Early to work to sit in the cafe on the Internet for an hour and a half. Small one on the edge of his seat watching a Celtic match as they managed to get the 3 goals up they needed for the Championship. Small one was also busy with the estate agents, who since the pregnant one left, we've been dealing with this dithering old woman who can't do a thing right. We've not had a gas bill (which they provide) for a month and a half, and despite reminding her twice she had said there wasn't one. Then today she sent us one for $10 (a third of the usual price). Small one questioned it, though she stuck to her guns and said just pay it, so we did. Then she emailed another gas bill and said, oh I just found this one from 2nd August for $36 (the usual price). It was then we noticed the $10 bill was for a completely different flat number.


Wednesday 28th August 2013

At lunch time headed into town to collect the Marriage cert which we would sign on the day. Only we noticed they had made a typing error and referred to small one as a 'Bride' and so had to be late getting back to work as we sat and waited for them to re type it. At lunch we stopped in New World to buy milk, and found by the self checkout someone had left a glasses case and glasses. We gave them to the Indian fella cashier and after we paid and were on our way out we noticed he had the glasses case out infront of him open and he was trying on the strangers glasses himself??

Tuesday 27th August 2013

A new fella had started yesterday to replace the one who left friday. This one had spent the day wearing a bright green shirt, but today Adam got a call that the fella didn;t like the job and was not coming back in today (at least we didn't have to get him a card and cakes and a gather round).

Monday 26th August 2013

Back to the office, and still hurting from saturdays walk. Tall one was pleased to say that his Fantasy League football team 'Team Library' was currently ranked in first place, and beating everyone else who took it so seriously and knew what they were doing. Mondays are always the worst, and small and tall had very busy days Returning to the flat after work to find the hallway smelt of chocolate oranges.

The harbour walk that night was eventful, found the blue penguins out on the rocks, and they started shagging there in front of us, just a foot away. Did not expect to be shown free penguin porn. On the way back on the walk, past the same spot was saddened to see three backpackers actually clambered out onto the rocks on top of and surrounded the penguins and were shoving flash cameras in under the rocks to get photos. Small one told them off, that they should respect the penguins.

Sunday 25th August 2013

Up at 7am today, was was still early enough, Backs and limbs aching from being generally unfit people who spent the previous day climbing a mountain. Arran made porridge again. Drove out to Mt Ruapehu and up to Whakapapa Skifields whhere Arran and Lena work. Lena had phoned in sick yesterday to get the day off, so had to spend the day lying to cover her story. Arran got small one and tall one up the ski lift for free. Though small one didn't enjoy the ride, it was too wobbly – had an expensive cup of tea at the top of calm his nerves. Did a bit of a loop up the hill and were the only people who came back down the ski lift, as everyone else skied down. Weird mix of people up there, backpackers, and posh people and 3 year old children all skiing. Said our goodbye's to Arran and Lena and then we started the drive back down to Wellington around mid morning.

The drive was easy enough going back, with the exception of the usual pig ignorant kiwi drivers – no wonder there's so many traffic deaths on the weekend. When we stopped at a set of traffic lights in a town, the car beside us pulled up and some roough woman shouted out the window at us that we were doing 45km in a 100km zone and it was people like us that caused accidents. Small one pointed out to her that this was not a 100km zone, we're in a town – this is a 50km zone – and its people like her that cause accidents. Got back to Wellington mid afternoon without further incident. Returned the car after navigating the one way system in the City (the road map said a one way street went the opposite way than it actually did, which didn't help). Then after a food shop crashed out for the rest of the day. Though just as we were coming home for the first time, who did we bump in to outside the apartment front door, but our dope smoking, carrier bag shoe wearing neighbour, can't seem to get away from the fella!

Saturday 24th August 2013

Started the ascent up past the Soda Springs to the South Crater. Arran stopping to remove layers every few minutes, only to put the back on a few minutes later. The ground started to gradually get more and more snow covered. Starting with a fine, powdery dusting on the rocks, then clumps of frozen grass with stems like icles, then up to the proper rock hard snow. Put the $28 clampons on to each of our shoes, which despite looking cheap and tiny, ended up being essential. Got to the top of the South Crater to the junction sign pointing the way to the track, and the other way up the detour tp Mt Ngauruhoe (used as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings movies). Small one has a photo of himself at this sign from when he did the track in April 2009 without tall one, and not long before he had to turn around due to fog rolling in.

It was still pretty foggy and we couldn't even see Mt Ngauruhoe. We set off across the South Crater, which looked like an endless white void, with just the white ground and white sky and the occasional marker post to follow. At the other end started the next big ascent up the side of the Red Crater (though very white). Was thick fog, and hard snow and was a real struggle to get any grip in the ice, and try and stay upright in the strong winds. When we got to the first big rock, overlooking the valley down below, we all turned around to find that Mt Ngauruhoe had snuck up on us. The clouds had cleared behind us, and above a layer of clouds was protruding this huge white cone shape mountain as if floating above the clouds – was quote scary the way it just showed up after not seeing it for 2 hours.

We then continued up the uphill trek, this part was the worst section. It became a more narrow ridge, very steep and very windy. We could no longer see any markers, visibility was so poor. Tall and Small found they had got ahead of Lena and Arran and turned to see Lena struggling. She just couldn't stand up or get a grip on the ice and was essentially giving up. Ee managed to get her standing, and moving up the hill by stamping her feet into the ground using the middle of her foot (where the crampon is) instead of trying to use your toes to walk up the ice. Made it to the top of this last ascent, where there was a frozen sign post. The posts pointed ahead for the crossing to continue to the Emerald Lakes, but we could see no marker posts again, and just fog. After a rest we just had to go with the general direction of the sign post and follow some rough old foot prints in the snow. We had still not met anybody else doing the hike.

Through the fog got out to the top of the Emerald Lakes, where we then had to clamber down some muddy soft dirt slopes to the bottom. The fog lifted every 5 minutes and gave us some amazing blue sky views over the white topped mountain ridges and craters. Down at the Emerald Lakes, only one could be seen. Most of it was frozen, but a jelly bean shaped part was still thawed and the sulphur from the ground was steaming out the ground. Had a lunch stop and then headed across the Central Crater, another white expanse. The otherside of the ridge was the Blue Lake, which was (again) white. We now started to head out of the snow, but not before small one wrote something about the Queen in the snow.

Out of the snow and off the crampons came, and then we were hiking down the heathland of the Ketetahi area. Some mad man came jogging out the snow behind us and over took, we had no idea where he had come from. Over to our right was Mt Tongariro – Te Maari Crater – which was the still active volcano (which had closed the crossing from August till May). The crater was still smoking strong, and looked a lot like White Island. Down the hill got to Keteahi Hut, where part of the hut was closed off due to a large rock that had been spat out the crater during the August eruption and landed through the roof of the hut. By now we were all shattered, but there was deceptively more to go. Was another 2 hours of weaving back and forth through zig zag tracks down the hill, and the through the forest – which ordinarily would have been a nice walk, but not when you're shattered. Finally made it to the Ketetahi carpark after 7 hours (just after 2pm), and had arranged for one of the shuttles to pick us up and take us back to the starting point where the car was. As it was winter conditions the shuttles only pick you up if you are 'experienced climbers' so small one had told a white lie there. The fella was this tramp like fella with a white beard and a crappy old mini bus, but he seemed cheerful enough (though did make a dubious sounding comment about us being 'experienced climbers'). Was a half an hour drive back to the car for $25 each, we hadn't thought to just say the lift was for 2 people, and then we could have driven our own car back to collect the other 2 and save $50, but oh well.

Back at the village Arran cooked us lasagne,, though he was devastated that he had no Italian Herbs left and could not stop apologising. Had a few more beers in the flat, and a couple of locals came in for a couple. One fella named 'Roy' wanted to know all about Claire from our office, infact small one offered to get her to add him on facebook in exchange for a crate of beer. By 9pm we were all falling asleep so Roy had to go.

Friday 23rd August 2013

Left the flat early and headed into the CBD to drop off our wedding application before the queues started in the Internal Affairs Office. We arrived about half an hour early, as the office opened at 8.30am, and the lift would not let you select level 3 until that time – so hung around in the foray until then. Once inside we were the first to be seen, and was a quick process – though the fella at the counter wanted very specific details to be ammended, like profession is 'office administrator' instead of what we had put, 'office admin', and he wanted 'England' not 'UK' for home country, and a specific street address for the ceremony location (which is a city lookout on townbelt). But after all of this excessive details they never once asked to see any form of ID to prove we were who we said we were, very strange. Someone else left today, and so there was another awkward speech, rushed leavers card and some cakes.

At 5pm we walked very fast to get to Budget car rental to pick up our Mazda A3 before they closed at 5.30pm. Weaving in and out of the rush hour crows on the streets, small one's little legs and arms motoring like a Duracell bunny. Picked up the car, then back to the flat to pick up our bags. Had wanted to leave quietly so as not to draw attention to the fact that we were leaving our falt early for the weekend, but the second we came out our flat lugging our bags – we walked straight into the dope smoking neighbour with military jacket and carrier bags for feet, typical. Got out the city relativity easily, and soon on our way north to the Tongariro National Park for the weekend. Driving up the coast was a nice sunset across the harbour, and then endless little towns up the coast which all seemed to be identical, with the same New World supermarket. Stopped for a $4 Burger King Meal Deal, but decided to upscale to a $10 one each. Got to National Park town around 10.45pm, and the accommodation called 'The Park' where tall one had had his 25th Birthday back in 2008. Arran and Lena came out in the carpark and greeted us in the cold. Arran was sporting some rough fisherman;s beard. We then sat in their flat, which had a 1st floor of just their bed, and on the ground floor their fridge, sofa, single bed (for us) and a bathroom with a sliding door. The downfall being that anytime one of us wanted to use the toilet, you would be just a few steps away from everyone having a chat, with nothing but a sliding door between you. Small one rectified this by playing Arran's guitar (badly) everytime anyone stepped into the loo. Was a nice scenic spot to live, but they were going a bit stir crazy living in the middle of nowhere for the last 2 months. Then we sat and drank a few beers till after midnight, despite the fact we were all up at 4.30am to do a 7 hour hike.

Monday 19th – Thursday 22nd August 2013

Monday and the Office was back up and running after the earthquake on Friday. Top hat's last day was spent handing over his heap of work to Small one and Will before being off for 3 weeks.  Went to the small alterations shop in Thorndon, where this mad little Korean woman quoted us $30 and said next week for pick up. While small one was changing another customer came in and had an argument with her that she had agreed to do the job, but the Korean woman had said she hadn't agreed, and it all sounded a bit mental, so we decided to just leave quietly and find somewhere else. After work on Tuesday we caught the bus out to Wadestown to meet our 'Celebrant' who would be conducting our wedding on 1st October. She was one of many small one emailed, and she'd given the cheapest quote. After a maniac bus ride out we got off in the hills in darkness. Found her house eventually after knocking on the wrong door, and this friendly, white haired woman, 'Sally' greeted us by kissing both cheeks and telling us to wait upstairs. We discussed generally hows things would go, saving specifics to be ironed out later, was mostly a meet and greet. On the way out she introduced us to her 'blue eyed maori' husband, Jerry. Both seemed very nice, and Sally left by showing us the traditional maori greeting of touching foreheads and noses.... which was nice, though a little awkward. We decided to walk back in the dark, which took about 45 minutes, nice views of the harbour lit up at night from the hill road going back. On the email we'd also heard back from the 'Sunflower' wwoofer on Waiheke Island (who we were yet to cancel) – who was telling us to look out for White Island on the news (now active and on red alert). The wwoofer old us how she still strongly recommended we go there, this we still found bizarre as in our last email to her we had included a photo of ourselves called, 'White Island Trip' which was a photo of the two of us on the bloody island.

Wednesday we nipped out at lunch to get small one's combat trousers turned up at somewhere not run by a small Korean lunatic. A place on Lambton Quay was open, and two very large people greeted us cheerfully, offering to turn up the trousers for $10 less and by the next day. Small one was then led out into the back room where he had to get undressed behind a very thin curtain. When he came out a third person appeared to pin the trousers up for trimming. She was this odd, Polish woman who had been sitting in the next room listening to hits of the sixties, she said her back was killing her and she came over to small one walking on her hands and knees, clutching pins in her fist. After work we went back into the Indian Embassy to find it was actually open. Some fella in a high-viz top was infront of us and just handed over his ticket and said 'picking up 2 passports', and she handed them back to him. We did the same, and sure enough, there were our passports – with colourful visas ready – they'd been ready since Monday, though no one bothers to email you back.

Thursday was another busy day in the office, one of the temps girls (who we had originally met in March in Cambridge Hotel) came over to small one and sat down and said to him, “Clare said you think i'm a lesbian, and it's fine, I think is funny, but i'm not a lesbian”. Small one did not have a clue what she was talking about, and found out Clare had told her this when drunk, and presumed lare must have confused him with someone else, though the temp did not look too convinced, and reiterated that she was not a lesbian. Lunch time did a brief foodshop, where small one begged tall one not to buy Marmalade with Tangelo, and just to buy standard, tall one said he had no adventure in him, but would buy standard – though when they got home, small one was devastated to find that somehow they had ended up with Tangelo.... he's never had it before, and it'll probably taste the same anyway. After work back up town again, this time to buy gloves and scarf for the weekend from one of those naff dollar stores. We eventually found them with the help of two Asian ladies who barely spoke english – their selection of scarfs was most ladies leopard patterned evening scarfs. We also went to an outdoors store to get a quote on 'clampons' as had been told by several people we would need the to stop us 'dying' on the Tongariro crossing, due to the ice this time of year. Ended up buying 4 sets for us all for $28 each, instead of the usual $36 each.

Monday 12th – Sunday 18th August 2013

Another relatively quiet week at the office, small one managed to “dodge a bullet” by opting out of a meeting with the Auditors. Back on the harbour walk in the evenings and kept bumping into the smelly, dreadlocked fag smoking neighbour – with seemed to have repaired the heel of a shoe with a New World carrier bag. The harbour walk was cold, but quite popular still. Though a lot of young teenagers boozing along the wharf, throwing beers cans into the harbour, and girlfriends shouting at their boyfriend to “don't you fuckin' say fuckin' to me!”. Amongst all that noise and rubbish, we managed to see our little blue penguins still hiding in the rocks, and calling to each other – first time we've seen them for a month or more. Then back to the flat out the cold, to have a cup of hot lemon, ginger and honey.

On Wednesday (3am Wednesday morning) had the email from Tall ones mother that her cancer tests had come back, and it had not spread – so was not going to be a big risk. Small one and Tall one were much relieved. They also started making the wedding plans this week. Scouting out different hotels in the evenings, finally booked the Copthorne, Oriental overlooking the harbour over near the beach. Checked out some wedding rings on Saturday up Cuba Street, where some friendly woman had to tell some poor old man behind the counter to “go away, I have this” (they must be on commission), we started looking at $80 a ring for sterling silver, but ended on the white gold rings nearer to $500. Small one also contacted all 15 marriage celebrant available in Wellington to do the ceremony, and started haggling for the best prices and arrangements (the bill comes in to affect 19th Aug).

Friday (16th) ended up being an eventful day in the office. Around 2.30-3pm a small earthquake started (we hadn't felt anything for a good 2 weeks or so). We all tentatively got under the desks, thinking it was just a small tremor, but then it took off and ended up being a 6.6 magnitude. Was a real shake, with draws coming open, computer towers toppling over. Poor small one hid under the desk with tears in his eyes, clutching tall one's hand. As the building was on rollers in continued to rock after the quake finished. When it all settled, Rachel told us all to evacuate until the building could be assessed. So everyone up and left, leaving computers on, and most with final end of week/day reports unsent. We all assembled in the car park opposite, much to the frustration of drivers trying to us it. At 3.30pm it was decided we would not be going back in and so Manager, Adam led us down to a pub on the harbour front (no doubt for front row seats of a Tsunami). Small one and Tall one checked their apartment, which was undamaged, as per the cafe on the ground floor – though the quake had felt worse this time, there was less damage. Down into the CBD, and the railway station was fenced off with high viz topped men directing people away from the building – the streets were packed with hoards of City workers, and the highway was at a stand still with everyone leaving at the same time. Ended up going to the 'Red Dog' pub on the waterfront, Adam brought a few jugs of beer for the office to share, though we brought a bottle of Speights each. Aftershocks continued whilst we stood outside drinking, we could feel the unsteady ground and watched the buildings canopy rattling. Left around 4.30pm, and back in to Thorndon. We attempted to go into the Indian Embassy to pickup our passports / visas. We had emailed twice and got no reply, so had attempted to go in yesterday after work but was told it was an Indian public holiday, so tried again today but was told they had closed due to Earthquake. Ended up doing the foodshop in New World, which at least was quiet due to most customers staying away due to the quake.

Over the course of Friday evening and Saturday day and night the aftershocks continued, quite strong 5 magnitude to 5.5 magnitude. Some waking us up at 4am, as that familiar creaking, squeaking noise in the walls starts, and the ground under you starts to wobble – out the bed and stand in the doorway wondering if it will get worse or fade away. Got to expect them so much that you start feeling the sensation of the ground movement when there isn't even an earthquake, and you have to check yourself to see if there is one or not. One of our guides in the flat is to look over at the rosary beads that belonged to small one;s granny, which hang on the all over a map of New Zealand – usually if there is a quake, she starts wobbling from side to side. Other than the earthquakes, weekend was quiet enough, with the usual Internet stint on Saturday and some clothes shopping up town, followed by a trip to a book fair on Sunday held in the TSB stadium. Back to the flat Sunday afternoon to settle in to watch the video taped Come Dine with Me (it worked this time), and hope that there is no more earthquakes.

Sunday 4th August – Sunday 11th August 2013

Turned out to be a pretty busy week for everyone. Somehow, the core High Profile Case team managed to sneak in their daily staff quiz every day – just the four of us (Will, Top Hat, Tall and Small one) answering the 15 questions each day on stuff.co.nz. Miraculously small one is in the lead – which Top Hat is quietly furious about, though he assumes small one is cheating (and would be right, as small one found the quiz results do not count to your score unless you finish all 15 questions, so you can do the first 12-13 questions, then start again and do the same quiz, now knowing the answers). The new thing being integrated is Premiership Champions League. Even 'I don't do sport' Tall one got in on the action, creating a hideous team line up with randomly picked players, and a garish team strip design. That kicks off next week. We had also tried to convince the rest of the team to lower all the pin board divers between are desks, as currently if you have a conversation with the person opposite you either have to stand up or talk at your noticeboard.... no one was very keen though.

Also had spent our spare time trying to further plan and book our trip, that essentially starts after work ends on 27th September. Booking a hotel for the wedding ($250 a night!) with a Harbour view. After the expected wedding date we have 2 weeks to spare before our flight, so looked in to wwoofing for that time. Joel lent us his NZ Woof logon, and we emailed a few people on Wiaheke Island. One Alpaca Farm said they did not take people at that time of year, the other (a Sunflower farm?), was tentative, but said she's love to meet us as we'd been t Canada and she was actually from Ottawa/Montreal/Halifax/Vancouver.... we didn't know what that meant, and so decided against wwoofing. Instead we planned to spend our savings on a 2 week excursion into the south island, to tick off a few extra stops we'd not hit last time we were heard on our 3 week south island tour in April 2011. Taking the ferry across (which small one had never done), then Marlborough vineyard stop in Blenheim, down to Christchurch (to see the now reopened city centre), into Lake Tekapo, up to Mount Cook, then back round to Akaroa before flying to Auckland ready to fly to Singapore October 17th. Was a lot of planning in terms of bus schedules, bus prices, hostel prices, hostels closet to bus stops etc etc. But, though will cost a fortune ($2000? total) it will be a better final, lasting memory of New Zealand opposed to our office job....

Saturday (10th), walked into town after Come Dine with Me, to download in the library, on route was an Australian military parade. After the library we headed to the Embassy Cinema for the NZ Film Festival. We had booked the tickets 2 weeks ago to see Alfred Hitchcock's 'Dial M for Murder' shown in it's original 3D format. The place was a circus. Managed to get into our cramped seats (about 1 of 400), and then watched the place very slowly fill up. Similar to the screening we went to in Melbourne, any old movie seems to attract the usual strange combination of 'freaks' and 'film snobs'. In front of us sat two old ladies with fuzzy hair sipping glasses of red wine. A young fella headed down their row and was trying to get by to his seat, and they turned to him and said disgustedly, “oh can't you go round the otherside”....We were then surprised when a waiter from the cafe came in carrying a wooden platter with calamari and dips to hand to one of the 400 people (took him about ten minutes to find, and the food must have been stone cold). We thhen had the freaks, who was the giant of a man behind us, who insisted on rustling a huge bag of grub throughout the film and had this bizarre continuous, heavy breathing – snorting laugh throughout the movie (not a comedy). In fact most people were laughing joyously out loud at every line of dialogue as if they were in a Jim Carrey movie, this was a bit tiedious, and small one was very confused. Was a great movie though.

Sunday (11th) Awoke to the distant sound of bag pipes outside. Potted around in the flat whilst the weather was sunny outside, then when it started to rain we went for a walk. Spending $179 on a new hard drive for tall one, then walking up to 'Central Park', recommended by Top Hat. Was more of a forest walk then a park, but looked quite nice. We were shattered though it was wet and muddy from rain, so we had a go on the flying fox zip line in the kid's playground then left. Top Hat had told us his friend had walked back through there once and been accosted by an overly friendly man, who after walking for half an hour with him asked when he''d see him again.... then told him it was a cruising hot spot for gay men. As we left the park you couldn't help looking at every man walking on his own like he was on the prowl. On the way back stopped in New World Metro and brought milk and a capsicum (green pepper), until we got to the till and the fella wated $4.90 for the pepper, so we put it back.

Monday 29th July – Saturday 3rd August 2013

Early hours of Monday was a bit of an earthquake which woke us up and had us sleepily getting on to the bathroom floor for saftey, before getting back in to bed (was a mag 4.9?). Back to work and was thankful that the recruitment agency had kindly (though grudingly) decided to pay us all for the day off work we'd been told to take last Monday due to Civil Defence advising people to avoid the City.

Wednesday received the news that Tall one's grandfather (on father's side) had been taken to hospital with a stroke and he didn't look good. Last time we had seen Grandad Barton was last October before we were heading away to Kuala Lumphur, and he had mentioned how he was in Malaysia during the 1950's for the Malay war. Tall one had brought a book on the war ('War of the Running Dogs') and was just finishing it that day. The grandfather was currently at Pembury Hospital back in the UK, where Tall one's mother was also having her appointments regarding her recent cancer diagnosis and is also the same hospital where his younger sister works as a nurse, and the same hospital and Tall one and his two sisters were born in – so seems to be quite a magnet for the families events.

This week we were applying for our Tourist Visa for India, which was costing $115 for Irish citizens to apply and $310 for UK citizens. We went to the Thorndon Pharmacy and had 6 passport photos done, which consisted off standing infront of a roll of white wall paper draped over a shelf of medicine – while a young girl took our photos. After we paid for them we found that the visa form actually asked for 2 inch by 2 inch square size and shape photos for the form. We went back next day, and the girl kindly redid us two photos each at the new size without charge. Duirng our lunch time we went into the office block in Thorndon where the Indian Embassy was. Having to go through some police security gates, we then queued at the lifts. The lift arrived and a strange mixture of Police Chiefs in smart uniforms, and some fella in shorts holding a tennis racket got out. The Indian embassy was a very small office, with a reception desk and a waiting room (which was more of a board room) which was full of glass cabinets of old books on India. Handed the forms and cash over, and was told to come back in 2 weeks. When we got back to the office there was another small earthquake, though small one did not notice as he was standing in Adams office, and the only response from the other works was Pieter saying, “oh, is that another earthquake?”.

Good news at the weekend was Tall one's sister reported back that it was not infact a stroke, and the grandfather was improving, but would require a pacemaker – and had also suffered an ear infection which had caused the dizzy spells. Saturday was a gloomy day, though no all day rain as forecast. After the usual Come Dine with Me, had a wonder round town looking at suit rentals, second hand bookshops and a quick drink and catch up with young Joel – who had still not found his laptop, and was looking a bit bleary eyed after being out drinking till 5am. We walked back along the harbour where the sky had cleared and a rainbow was out over the harbour (the same sleepy seal was also back).

Sunday 28th July 2013

Caught the bus number 2 from the train station, $5 each and 45 minutes across the City and out to the Miramar peninsula. Was bright sunshine, blue skies, though still a little nippy (though locals seemed to be out in shorts and t shirts we remained in beanies and jackets). Headed to Weta Cave studios where they create special effects and props for movies, including Lord of the Rings. Small one was convinced (due to the places name) that we were heading out to an actual cave where they filmed Lord of the Rings, and was a bit confused when it was essentially just a shop front. There was free viewing of a few props, masks, costumes from various Peter Jackson movies from over the years, plus a 25 minute video on the effects studio. Nearby we had also driven pas the large outdoors green screen wall they used in the movies. Afterwards we headed home on foot, which took us some 2 and a half hours in total. Past the large 'Hollywood' like Wellington sign, then round the edge of Evans Bay. Lots of wind movement art sculptures lined the edge, and above us planes were taking off very low and noisy from the nearby airport. Round the otherside of the bay explored the boat docks and small beach, and look at the houses on the hills which had their own little monorail, cable cart to take them from the ground roadside up to the top of the hill. Carried on walking and after a tiring walk got back to the beach and the usual CBD Harbour walk. Stopped for a hot chocolate, and along the rocks near the underground market a group of people were gathered on the edge of the harbour wall. We wondered if they were looking at penguins (though a little early) this was where we usually see them. Then when we got closer we saw it was infact a seal sat there high up on the rocks. From comments made by locals, sounded like this fella came here a lot, though we'd never seen him before. Finally got home shattered to relax for the evening.

Saturday 27th July 2013

Come Dine with Me, and then Classic House cafe for free wifi and a manky coffee. In the afternoon walked into the City past a long protest outside the Beehive Building about new rules on spying. Down on Lambton Quay we saw the little old fella who juggles tennis balls for tips (he only juggles when he sees someone coming, he stops as soon as you walk by and occasionally makes a raspberry noise). Only this time he wasn't juggling, he walked past us and dropped his tennis balls into the rubbish bin and walked off. After our walk round town we walked back via the harbour as the sunset, stopping to take photos of our small plastic penguin.

Tuesday 23rd July – Friday 26th July 2013

Rest of our week relativity uneventful. Felt no other earthquakes, though some very small ones continued to happen. Small one was glued to that Geo-net website to keep an eye on them, and any time someone walked past heavy footed in the office, he'd be looking round thinking it was another quake. Had a few restless night's sleep as well, which will hopefully pass next week. The Vanilla cafe downstairs was up and running as usual by wednesday, we've chatted to the owner a couple of times whose nice enough. He said he's had to re-paint the whole of their new takeaway shop (due to cracks in the new paint job) that was about to open (on the other side of our apartment block entrance).

Tall one still waiting for his stapler to be given back by Dutch girl Inge, but has asked Top Hat to try and find it in her flat when he goes to this Christmas in July party on Friday night. Small one managed to sell our remaining $50 Chow food voucher, to asian girl, Bonnie for $30. Will has been promoted to our high profile team (though we are unsure what he does high profile), but he was dismayed to be moving seats next to tall one as now everyone can see that he's on football websites all day. Having taken over Steve's role, Tall one successfully closed the last remaining Media case – which Steve had failed to to in the last 6 weeks, tall one did in one email. Other than that enjoyed a relatively quiet week, though Pieter will be back next week. Thursday 25th was Jim Corbett's 138th Birthday, and that evening Tall one received an email from his poor mother that she had breast cancer.

Monday 22nd July 2013

Woke up to watch the news, Apparently lots of aftershocks during the night, though we felt none as we slept through it all being so shattered. Watched the news, and they had a lot of footage of the cafe below our block of flats and footage of the crowd of us being spoken to by the fire brigade. Could see Tall one giving out to small one who was heading back inside the building with the crowd and leaving him outside. Phone call to small one's mother again, and had the phone past around every family member to explain what had happened.

Checked out and headed up through the City and back to our apartments. Usually this walk to work would have packed pavements with commuters, but it was like a Sunday morning, streets near deserted, and half the shops closed. Mostly due to news advice to stay away from CBD today. We got to our apartments where a security man had been posted on the door all night, which was a bit of peace of mind. A van of work men were running pipes up to the first floor of the apartments to pump out the burst water and dry the floors and walls. The cafe on the ground floor had a group of confused staff standing in a pile of rubble. We spoke with a little fella stood on the door by the security guard, who had a huge bunch of keys on his belt. He said he was formerly the manager for 7 years of this building (when a hotel), and had come back to help as he knew all the access points for the works and inspectors (though why did he still have the keys we did not know??). He told us half the first floor was badly flood damaged, the other half fine. We were on the second floor and they believe we should be aloud in by end of day. Next went and spoke to estate agent up on the next block. The fella there told us he was on his way down there in a moment to see what the status was, told us we do not need to pay for last nights rent (even though we had essentially already paid it in advance), and he mentioned if worst comes to worse he has a couple of other flats up near the Botanical Gardens, but would see the status first.

Walked up the next block to our office block, only half an hour earlier had had a text from the manager saying no work until they assessed at lunch time at least. But we found the ground floor cafe open, other workers going in to other floors, and the girl serving coffee told us inspectors came last night and cleared it as ok. So we sat down with our coffee and used the Internet for the morning. Had a couple of tremors whilst in the cafe, was all a bit surreal as for some reason they were playing music from a gay bar.... “Love Shack”, “It's Raining Men”, “When the Going Gets Tough”, “Girls just wanna have fun”, “Wake me up before you go go”??? ..... music to die to?

Before we left the cafe, received a text that it was not safe to go to work today and to just take the day off work. We received this whilst sitting on the ground floor of our office block watching all the other offices on other floors hustling past us.

Sunday 21st July 2013

Around 7-7.30am, more earthquakes in Wellington. A 5.9 this time. In the same spot out in the Cook Strait, near Seddon. We stood in the bathroom doorway and watch the shower cord shaking, and listened to the walls creaking with the movement for about 15 seconds or so. Back to bed and then half an hour latr, another one – around 4.8. It takes a while to notice at first, as you start feeling movement, when there is no earthquake, and so doubt yourself when there actually is one. But then you hear the slight creaking and sqeaking noises from the walls and tv etc, and we noticed small one's Grannies rosary beads shaking where they were hung up on the wall. Had had over twenty mini quakes this morning so far, have only felt about 4 of them though.

We Skyped small one's mammy (for the second time in the last week). Was a confusing experience as we finally got connected with her (a young lad, one of her students was helping her), then her phone went and she left us just looking at this young lad the other end. We told mammy about the earthquakes and she wanted small one home, and asked if the quakes were because of the heat? Trouble was the heatwave was back home, we're in winter over here.

Afternoon in the library and then on to the cinema to see 'Man of Steel' (awful). Back home just before 5, and settled in to watch the new episode of Dexter with a cup of tea. Then just after 5pm a 6.5 earthquake happened. Both headed for the bathroom as nowhere to get under, and sat down in the doorway. Was the biggest shake we'd had by far, the wardrobe was literally walking out into the room as the floor shook. Tall one noticed he was still clutching his cup of tea which was spilling everywhere so had to put it down. Small one was convinced we were going to fall through the floor. Then it finally ended, and the building fire alarm was going off. We finally got up off the floor and could hear people leaving the building due to the fire alarm. There were a couple of superficial cracks above the wardrobe, and over the front door. We grabbed our coats and headed out with the crowd. The fire escape stairway had some huge cracks over the doorway.

Outside everyone stood on the street opposite, lots of people just blindly standing in the middle of the road on their mobiles, with cars having to drive around them. The 'Vanila' cafe under our flat (who we had stole free wifi from) was flooding. Water as pouring down the windows and from the ceiling inside onto the counter and floors. Ceiling tiles and electric cables then started falling down – all just from water damage, presumably from burst pipes. Subway next door also had water damage, with water gushing down the inside of the windows.

Then a lone fireman turned up on foot, without a truck. He looked round all the buildings and stopped people going inside. A fire truck and a news crew then turned up. They eventually turned our fire alarm off, though we could hear other alarms and sirens going off all round the City. Fireman when in and out of our block, and called everyone round after about 45 minutes of waiting. They told us that no one could go back in until the building had been inspected which would probably not be till tomorrow at least. They then said we could go in very briefly to get warm clothes and an over night bag. But he said the first floor was out of bounds due to flooding. A crowd of us then filtered back into the building up the fire escape stairs, which were flooded with water, and everyone had to duck under a waterfall of water gushing down the doorway.

We grabbed some clothes and anything expensive from the flat, luckily no flooding in our flat. On our way out we could hear a fireman knocking down a door on our floor, turned out a woman in a wheelchair was stuck inside and had to be carried out. Got downstairs and hung around for another half an hour or so. The young fella who pushes supermarket trolley's in New World turned out to live in our building and was outside dressed in football gear, emptying his boots and bag of clothes on to the street as they were completely water logged from burst water in his bathroom. They said again that no one would be aloud in till it was inspected so we headed off into town.

More sirens going off rounds the City. The Library had sprung a leak and was cornered off with yellow tape that said 'Hot Zone'', and a few shops had some stock fallen on the floors. No huge Christchurch damage though. We asked at a couple of places off Willis Street for a room and was quoted either $75 for the night or $229?? Made it back to the Cambridge Hotel, and blonde girl, Jodi was behind Reception who had taken our booking way back in January. She was nice enough to give us a private room ensuite for $50 for the night. They hadn't had any damage on the buildign at least. So we check in then headed out to get food as we were starving, having left all our food shopping back in the flat.

Thought to save money we'd use the 2 $50 vouchers for the Chow Restaurant that Small one was given from the recruitment agency. We sat down in the cafe, was given water and menus, and then told that essentially everything on the menu was either cooked or marinated in fish oils and so small one (being allergic) couldn't eat anything except for the steamed veg or the cheese dumplings. Though, the waiter managed to get us $50 cash back for the voucher we gave him, which was great (though still have the second one to get rid of now). We left Chow and went to the bar across the road where Claire, Alix from work and William and Aidan of Waterford were drinking. They had been here 3 hours ago when the quake hit as well, and were still here drinking. They said the street lamps were shaking, and it was still pretty scary even though on the ground. We did wonder what it would be like for people who were in Wellington - Te Papa Museum's Earthquake Simulator attraction at the time the earthquake hit.

We went for a drink with them in the newly refurbished 'Establishment' bar, who seemingly had just replaced the smell of old vomit with the smell of fresh paint. There we discussed a new news story online which said how New Zealand was placed over a ring of fire, of an unpredictable volcanic nature – and how this may also relate to William's arse. We also received a text from Manager, Adam – who told us our building had to be inspected before we would be aloud to go to work tommororw, so not to come in until we hear otherwise. Left after 9pm and went to the old friend Dominos, for the pizza and 3 sides for $10. Briefly met Joel and then fell asleep watching Dexter.

Saturday 20tth July 2013

Woke up to a headache and some how managed to drag ourselves out to New World to do the weekly food shop. Back home and into bed again to watch 2 and a half hours of Come Dine with Me. Received in the post $100 vouchers from the recruitment agency, they were for an Asian restaurant called 'Chow', we just hoped it wasn't the Malaysian restaurant from last night? Headed out into the drizzle of the City, for our now weekly stop at the post office to send something. Then walked back via Botanical Gardens and Thorndon village. Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Minute Meals, Ice Road Truckers, Wife Swap UK then Blue Bloods and bed.

Friday 19th July 2013

An eventful day. Firstly was Steve from Manchesters' final day at the office, much to small one's relief. Spent the first fifteen minutes of the morning destroying Steve's desk. Turned his monitor and keyboard up side down, lowered the desk, lowered the chair, turned all of his reference documents on his notice board up side down, took the hand set off his phone and replaced it with his black glasses case, wrapped everything in bubble wrap, cellotaped his chair to the noticeboard and dotted a whole pad's worth of post it notes around his desk. Steve arrived shortly afterwards, and spent the next 20 minutes cleaning up this mess.

While Steve was aggressively taking everything off his noticeboard, he was making the divider between the desks shake, which made Claire (fire warden) mocking shout “earthquake drop!”. But ironically within a few seconds of this (at 9.06am) the building started to shake. “shit, really drop!” she shouted again. Tall one sat down under his desk, small one ran back to his desk by tall one, William wondered out of the kitchen holding his cup of tea and sat down in his chair looking confused, and the two kiwi temps just sat calmly in their chair carrying on. We sat under the desk and felt the ground moving (on the tenth floor) for about 40 seconds. The building is apparently on rollers, so may have kept moving after the quake. Small one started to worry that it went on so long, with 'top hat' trying to hold him down under the desk, whilst the rest of the office were just laughing about the whole earthquake. Online we looked up the quake and saw it was 35km away in the Cook Strait sea between the north and south islands, was classed as a 'severe' quake at 5.7. Later in the afternoon around 3om, there was another temor, which was a 'strong' quake which didn't last as long. One of the new managers, Rachel said you feel up to around 6 quakes a year in Wellington and usually nothing to worry about.

Next poor Steven was the victim of a bigger prank. This time Manager, Adam, and Senior Manager, David had concocted a fake report containing 113 complaints made in the media that Steven would have to type up a report for each and get small one and top hat to phone each and every one of. The last Media case Steve had was over a month ago, but he still didn't twig when he was given 113 complaints to contact. Then as a little departing speech was given and some cakes provided for his going away, Senior Manager, David came down in on the joke and pulled Steve into the office to tell him his time should be better spent on these complaints not eating cakes, and we need all these reports done and all these phone calls made. Steve then started flapping about, asking tall one to help him draw up these reports, and small one and top hat to make calls. Adam had asked us all to play along, and pretend to make calls. Top hat (with his performance background) got a little too into it, carrying on extensive phone calls with nobody on the other end, acting as if they were heavily complaining after this supposed media issue. Tall one was busy editing some old media reports to make it look like he was working from the bottom up through these 113 reports. All these conversations took place between small one, top hat, william and tall one all for the sake of Steve – to make him think we were discussing cases. It got to the point where we didn't know what was real and what wasn't, tall one taking some 'real' work round to small one and having to tell him “now this is real”.... Steve was gradually getting these reports done, and sending each one through to small one to make the phone call – however small one was just pressing delete. The manager's continued to pressurize Steve to get all these 113 responded to, and Steve started to buckle. Then small one started phoning Steve's phone and putting on a voice saying his name was John and he wanted to speak to Adam. Steve then flapped about unable to transfer a call, and then small one hanging up, to phone back again angry that Steve had cut him off. These phone calls went on for a good half an hour – and after the first 2-3, the rest of the calls didn't even have anybody speaking to Steve at the other end. One of them Steve picked up the phone and just started talking, “Hi John, sorry I've cut you off, really sorry yeah, think it best I just give you Adams direct number and ..... hello?..... hello?” - there was no one there. Steve was back and forth to Adam's office about this angry man called John, who now he couldn't hear on the phone, at the same time trying to chase up these complaint calls and field all are fake queries like “they want to email someone will I give them your email address steve??”. The Steve in such a flap knocked his cup of tea over, he was back and forth with paper towels trying to mop it up off his desk and papers and keyboard, whilst his phone was still ringing. Small one started to think this had gone on too long (2 hours....) and asked Adam if we should pull the plug, Adam was adamant that it should go on till 12pm. Finally Steve sent a midday update listing all of the responses to the fake calls Top hat and Small one had made and sent this frantic email to all the Managers listing info on the only 8 complaints that we had had time to contact out of the 113. Adam finally put him out of his misery and responded that he had been pranked, and then asked us all to delete all record of these emails.

At lunch time tall and small headed into the city to the recruitment agency, who had phoned small one after hearing about these compliments from this goofy fella, and asked him to come down today as they had brought him something. Only when we got there they said the girl was not back with the voucher yet, so we would have to post it out to you – so rushed back to the office (hoping no one would notice we were 20 minutes longer out for lunch).

Towards the end of the day the office wound down and waited to leave as we were goin for drinks with Steve down on the harbour. We'd all been given this offer at 'Fox Glove' bar (near to where we see the Blue Penguins on our harbour walk) – and everyone in the office had text this number and all got 2 free drinks each. Steve's sister was also apparently coming out tonight, and we had heard all this week how the airport had lost her bags, and now she had arrived today with no luggage and to an earthquake. Before we left, Dutch lunatic 'Inge' asked if anyone had a stapler, Tall one gave her his one – only for her to out it in her bag and say “i'll bring it back on Monday??”.

We headed down to Fox Glove bar on the harbour front, and all queued up for our free tall glasses of beer. When these vouchers ran out, we found the beer usually cost $9.50, so didn't hang about. Steve's sister had still not shown up, so were were starting to think if she even existed, though we were hoping she did as William of Waterford had been given the challenge of stuffing a tricolor into her?? Next stopped off in Blend Bar, near Nomads Hostel, for $5 pints. We were then told to head to the Malaysian restaurant where Steve would be taken afterwards for the 'surprise dinner'.

We left Steve alone with Top Hat in Blend Bar, and headed to the restaurant. However, as it was bring your own everyone except Tall & Small one, and Aidan of Waterford went to the supermarket to buy booze. So when Top Hat lead Mark into the restaurant for his big surprise dinner, he was taken to a long table where there was only 3 of us sat there, “surprise!”. Steve's sister did turn up in the end, who was perfectly nice, with a tan like leather and blonde hair. We were really crammed into the restaurant with a long table of some other party on each side of us, which made it hard for anyone to leave their seats. The staff took our orders, and small one pointed out how dirty the waiter looked, to which the Indian waiter said “that is my moustache”. We then had to wait for almost an hour and a half for the food to be served. Mostly it was okay, small one's korma was more of a soup, and tall one ended up with rice and a fried egg which wasn't too convincing. We then all very slowly got everyone moving so we could leave and get the the Welsh Bar for another drink. We queued at the counter and the 'dirty' waiter was going through our tables bill to cross off our items. Small one had to flick the waiter's fingers out the way so we could see the whole bill, and a little Indian lady came busily through the queue and pushed small one out from the counter telling him, “you customer not staff”. William of Waterford responded by telling him “everyone at our table works for the Ministry, we'll be taking your card to report you to the tourist board”, to which the little lady said, “thank you, thank you”. William then cleared the restaurant by farting.

We waited outside waiting for a long time for everyone to leave with us. Then Canadian, Johnny started throwing the restaurant's outside sign around, so we ran to the Welsh Bar leaving Steve and the rest of the group behind. Steve hadn't wanted us to go to the Welsh Bar as it was his local, so we made sure the whole office was going just to show him up. Small one had convinced everyone to go there by telling them Adam had arranged a stripper for Steve for a certain time. When Adam found this out he asked what we were going to do if everyone expected a stripper, small one said he'd have a word with Steve's sister. Every finally got to the Welsh Bar where we successfully showed Steve up. A small band were playing piano and guitar by the bar, but in the next room Johnny had the other piano open and was banging his fists along the keys, much to the grief of the other customers. Dutch girl Inge handed Tall one her half drank pint and told him he could have it as she had to go as she was going 'tramping' tomorrow. Tall one took it and put it on the window sill, and told her not to lose his stapler. Small one then tried on Claire's big collared, big buttoned jacket, to everyone;s amusement. We then dropped the jacket and left the pub without saying goodbye to anyone, and walked home and went to bed. Apparently the rest of them stayed out till 3am, we were back by Midnight.

Monday 15th – Thursday 18th July 2013

Work was quiet due to the holiday period.

Monday 8th – Sunday 14th July 2013

An 'interesting' week at the office. Despite the fact that she had left, Donna the 'bulldozer' was back.... 4 days during the week she came in and sat by her old pod and logged on to a computer to look at her emails which she could quite easily look at in her new office. She had many discussions with her replacement 'Top Hat' about what she wanted him to do and what she would still be doing in the role she had now left.... she just cannot let go. But then again we also got the news (from Adam when we were walking home past Subway) that are roles were being made permanent and anyone who couldn't commit to a year would be replaced. He discussed this further on Friday morning, that essentially we were too expensive due to the payrise, but that the hard work had made such an impression that they wanted our roles permanent direct with the company and not through a recruitment agency. Our jobs would be offered to everyone in the office, but he confirmed there would be space for us somewhere on the floor. So essentially we worked so well that we are being demoted and replaced. This news kinda put a cloud on our weekend. That friday after work they decided to 'get to know' the 4 more staff (and 3 from previous week) by allowing drinks in the office after 5pm. Ironically only 2 of the new temps stayed behind, and small and tall only had one beer ad weren't exactly in the mood to socialize with management after this recent news, so went food shopping.

Small one got his stitches taken out this week (Wednesday), which was a remarkably quick, painless and cheap process (no fee). The lipoma also turned out to be non-cancerous, so this was good news for the week (though somewhat now overshadowed). Also received a gas bill for $552 for 4 weeks? Were a bit confused by that, but after we phoned up the miserable estate agent she confirmed she'd sent everyone the same bill instead of their personal ones, so some fella was spending $500 a month on hot water??. Food shop on friday had a few middle aged women giving out food samples. The first one had this god awful chip dips made out of powder and cream in a tin. Was vial, but we were polite enough to take a sachet and move along. The next woman was giving out little spoon samples of ready made meals. When she wasn't looking we left the 'dips' sachet on her counter. Though her ready made meals were pretty good and we actually brought a fish pie and a cottage pie.

Weekend was very wet with rain and harsh with wind. Skipped Come Dine with Me to take a walk in the shit weather and take our minds off our demotion. Went to the post office, then to the library cafe – where small one decided for a change we would sit away from the screeching kids in the creche end and sit by two loud hairy tramps. Soon the tramps left and the library opened on the floor below us, and 30 odd kids showed up to have a sing a long with some bald fella with dredlocks for side burns. So ended up listening to kids after all. Tall one then went for a haircut, where the same camp fella who cut small one's last month, asked him the same thing, “now run your fingers through your hair where I cut it....to see if you like the length??”. That evening walked to the cinema to see The Great Gatsby. Was a small cinema and very busy. We spent the first ten minutes of the movie more entertained by people asking other people to move out their allocated seats, and then watching them trying to find a spare seat only to be moved on by others who arrived after. Sunday was not much different, the wind was a lot worse though. Went to the library and downloaded the first 2 episodes of Dexter season 08, had also finished watching Season 2 of Homeland, so gradually narrowing down our tv shows.

Monday 1st July – Sunday 7th July 2013

An eventful week at the office... We had the unexpected news that Donna 'the bullldozer' next to small one was changing jobs to another office. We figured this was less of a promotion and more of a let's get rid of this pain in the arse busy body' after the Level 12 Managers had complained about her. She left on the friday, is being replaced by 'top hat' Mark (who small one started work with back in March at the other office). The handover never happened, Donna was clutching on to her work load like grim death, having to keep her fingers in as many pies as possible. So a simple task of giving Top Hat permission to her folders never happened and she claims she's booked him in for 2 hours next week when she'll be back. She didn't even clean out her desk, and so small one has just shoved everything of hers into a draw and told Top Hat to move up next to him.

Steve from Manchester still has had no new 'media' cases come in for over 3 weeks, and only has one still open on his spreadsheet – but despite there being no changes to this spreadsheet/case for just as long, he still insists on emailing it everybody at the end of each day, and printing off a new version of the non-changes every day to stare at for an hour or so. Small one was however much pleased when he managed to get Steve to finally admit when he was leaving, and he's confirmed his last day is Friday 19th July.... Small one has already booked a party, though still has another 2 weeks to put up with Steve asking for udpdates that he knows he won't have, and re-telling the same saga with his out of date passport.

Small one was handed half of Donna's work load to takeover (and share with Top Hat) next week. He queried what he was doing with all this extra audit work, and was told to 'shut it down'. This audit work consisted of auditors emailing him (as their contact) asking for updates – to which small one would (and could only) refer them to a man called J. Warner upstairs. Warner is a red faced, bearded, angry looking bear of a man. Not too helpful would be an understatement, anytime small one would go up for an update he'd give a 100 mile stare, or just raise his hand up into the air and say “No”. This we presumed was because he was busy, but most times we went upstairs we was on Google. During the week we saw Warner come down and go into Manager, Adam's office at 5pm, so small one quickly grabbed his things and we had to leave via the back service lift to avoid getting caught up with the man. Small one was thankful that this somewhat pointless role of being Warner's go-between had come to an end, however on announcing this to the auditors, they responded “please don't stop this support role we need you!” - so now he doesn't know what's happening.

In other office news, from our window we watched a fire blazing on the Wellington suburban hills – where a house had caught on fire. We watched as half a dozen fire engines went up the hill very slowly, and then a helicopter with a bucket attached on an end of a winch was scooping water out the harbour and flying back over the hills to empty it on the fire. While this was happening we had to listen to ex-Principal Pieter on the phone with his 75 year old sister, trying to explain to her how to find the news story for this on the Internet, “no no Google I said, what are you doing on yahoo??”. Strangley at the end of the week small and tall one arrived too find a dubious looking red apple left on each of their desks – turned out Pieter had left them one each (from his hotel – as he's flown in each week and out up to work) – we thought it a little strange role reversal to receive an apple from a teacher..

Tall one had tried to go to the cinema after work on 'cheap tuesday', however after the half an hour walk into town found the place heaving with middle aged woman, and young teenage asian girls going to see the same movie as him – he queued for 15 minutes and got nowhere in the line, so got annoyed and walked home. We had also received small one's amended hospital bill for his operation last week. This was the additional surgeons fee for Mr Menzies ($850 – apparently a discount), and also an amended bill for the actual hospital costs (an additional $45 to the $1700 paid last week). This addition wasn't too bad, though it was quite depressing to read the breakdown of what they were charging for. The itemized bill included items such as 'non-slip socks' $3.59 – these were the manky, purple socks small one was lent when he changed into a gown, and left on the ned when we left. Then there was also a charge for 'black marker pen' $2 – this was when Mr Menzies came in pre-op and drew a very small cross on small one's leg where the incision would be made.... and they felt the need to charge for a whole pen for this?? There was some 30 items listed in all, from the hair net to the anaesthetic to the dressing gown (though strangely the sandwiches and ice lolly were not listed).

Saturday, small one was feeling much better – his leg was much less painful and he could (thankfully) move around a lot more, put his own socks on and complain a lot less. We peaked under the bandage and saw some of the hideous looking coarse black stitches holding his leg together, these will be taken out on Wednesday. We then washed the quilt cover and bed sheets for the first time in 3 months, and then walked up town to the Warehouse to buy a mop to wash the kitchen floor for the first time in 3 months. Though small one had to walk back through town holding the new mop like a walking stick, and some tramp in an orange hi-vis top told him to “yeah this city needs moping up??”. Sunday was the usual processes, small one in bed, tall one downloading at the library, then Packed to the Rafters in the evening.

Monday 24th – Sunday 30th June 2013

Another week at work. Started off the week trying to steal more sugar from the staff kitchen to save us spending $3 on a bag in the supermarket. Unfortunately never got enough time in the kitchen alone, so ended up spending the $3 and living with legal sugar. Some overtime task was on this week after work, and we were told our 'high profile' team wasn't invited, only the rest of the standard team. Then small one noticed Steve from Manchester (off our team) was being trained up for it – so after sitting on his arse doing nothing all day, at the turn of 5o'clock he started the overtime task on time and a half. Small one pointed this out to Steve who never knows how to take anything small one says. After all his giving out, small one confirmed he didn't want the overtime anyway, but it was the principal of not being asked (and so tall, small and Donna ended up being the only people not getting overtime on the whole floor). 

Friday 28th, was the day of small one's operation to remove the lipoma lump on his upper thigh. It had finally come around, and the lump had got bigger and more painful in those weeks since the ultra sound. Tall one went with him on the train to Bowen Hospital in Crofton Downs. Tall one came into the check-in room with small one, where a nurse preceded to shave a large area on small one's thigh whilst telling him how she had once broken IN to Dublin jail, as her friend was working there? The surgeon small one had met with weeks ago popped in and said hello. Tall one saw him for the first time, and he did look a bit of a crumpled up fossil, with his arched hump back and skinny, pale arms. Small one noticed how all the nurses referred to him as ''MR Menzies' and not 'DOCTOR'. The nurses all made comments about how Mr Menzies didn't like patients to shower for 3 days after the operation, when no other surgeon insists on this, “he doesn't like people showering” said the nurse “another one of his quirks...”. Small one then had to baby wipe down his body, and was given an enormous white dressing gown which made him look about 5 years old. Then had to change into a gown – the nurse said he was aloud to keep his underwear on under the gown – however as soon as Mr Menzies saw this he said, “what are these still doing on?” and made him take this off (the nurses then had to run around to find a large bin bag to have small one drop them into). Tall one sat out in the large waiting room on his own, drinking tea, trying to read his book while Ted Dansen spoke to Ellen about no longer dying his hair. Meanwhile small one's surgery took an hour, when they had aloud half. Mr Menzies had said it was bigger than he thought and attached to the muscle – and as small one was conscious during the operation he could feel all manner of tugging, and cutting (Mr Menzies used a laser cutter, not a knife). The nurses insisted on covering small one with blankets, who sat awkwardly on his side sweating his bollocks off – he had to tell them in the end, “no more blankets your smothering me”, then when new nurses took over and saw he had no blankets, these ones had to be told again. Finally it was done and Mr Menzies showed him the tumour, which was this messy, ugly thing in a metal pan, about the size of two golf balls. Small one was wheeled out to a patients room, where he asked the nurse to go get tall one (“the fella sat on his own out there?” said the nurse). Tall one found small one lying in bed with a silly blue hair net on his head, shaking his head saying, “my God that was terrible”. Small one lifted his back gown to show the long white bandage, surrounded by all this disconcerting pink / red dye that Mr Menzies had smothered all over small one's legs and bum (this dye took days to wash off). Our jail breaker nurse then came in and insisted small one ate before he left, and so he was given a lemonade ice lolly. Once that was gone, she brought him some sandwiches which she'd kindly cut the crusts off. Small one wasn't hungry and kept trying to give them to tall one to eat, even when the nurse came back in – tall one was sat their trying to hide the sandwich he was holding. Were then aloud to get dressed and go, and not really given any instructions behind a leaflet. In fact one nurse had told us to take the bandage off when we got home, whilst another side leave it on until you come back in a week and a half to get the stitches out. Then we limped very slowly up the road and caught the train back into Wellington. Tall one brought lunch and then they both ended up going back into the office for 3 and a half hours of work.

The weekend turned out to be great weather, blue skies and warm sun. Though small one saw none of it. He was bed bound with his leg hurting so much, and tall one had to do all the cooking, and had to help small one take his little socks on and off. It was quite painful for him, and there was a disconcerting dot of blood showing through. We had phoned Mr Menzies mobile, and he had said as it was such a large cavity left in the leg there was bound to be a little blood. Saturday tall one left small one for an hour and went to a book fair up the harbour and brought a book for $2, whilst small one watched endless cooking shows. Sunday tall one left again for a couple of hours to download more episodes of Homeland in the library, and buy a cooked chicken for dinner. Tall one was having too get used to being the house wife, whilst small one was bed bound.

Saturday 22nd – Sunday 23rd June 2013

Tall one was awoken at 4am by small one fretting loudly in the bed that he could hear a mouse in the flat. Tall one tried to convince him it was just the rain and wind on the window, but then small one had to have the lights on as he looked around. After getting back to sleep woke up in time for 2.5 hours of Come Dine with Me at 9.30am. A walk up town in the rain in the afternoon. Tall one's trainers (that he'd brought when they'd arrived in London back in June 2011) stunk from the dampness – after walking out in the stormy weather. He mentioned that he'll have to buy a new pair in a couple of weeks, but small one sent him to the first shoe store and within 5 minutes they'd brought a pair for $25, and had thrown the old pair in the dustbin on the street.

Sunday up early and head down to the train station to see off Arran and Lena heading away to Tongairo for their new job. Saw them queuing for their tickets, so stood queuing in the adjacent queue until they noticed us. Small one waved them off with a tissue in his hand as they sat on the train. Back to the flat to sit through the Home and Away omnibus.... then to the library for the free internet – listening to screaming kids in the cafe, and then moving to the library when it opened at 1pm, tried to avoid the stares from the roaming lunatics dressed in camouflage jackets. Managed to download the next couple of episodes of 'Homeland', after Wei-Nung at work had given us the first 11 episodes, and we'd watched 5 last night. Walked back in the cold, but bright sunshine along with harbour – where a man played the bag pipes, and people were out rowing. Back and did some ironing, then small one cooked burgers, which said they were made of 80% Merino??

Sunday 16th June – Friday 21st June 2013

Sunday went out for a Sunday roast on Featherstone st. Big chunky sized cut of meat, but the Yorkshire pudding was like chewing on an old sock. Home and Away was coming to a climax this week with Brax having a stand off with Adam.... unfortunately small one missed it each night. Mostly due to the fact that Arran was leaving (he spent most of his last days doing quizzes on the Internet), after work Tuesday had to go up Cuba St to buy a box of Barrys Teabags for his going away present. Wednesday was Arran's last day and he went for a couple of drinks in The Thistle with small and tall one, spending most of the drink all swapping 'Steve from the office' stories. Thursday was a meal/night out for Arran and Lena's going away and Friday was food shop, so missed Home and Away.

Selina also left this week, though half the office refused to chip in for a going away gift or even sign her card, as for starters, she's a not well loved lunatic, and secondly she's still working for the same company, just moving to their other office. Was ironic that there was a big news story that two people 'at the top' from the company had resigned that week due to the big media debacle over the last 8 months – it wasn't Arran and Selina, but they happened to also leave this week. Small one busy at work this week with all these audit emails in his new role. Small one managed to sneak upstairs to Level 12 for a meeting with Senior Manager and a new contact with an external company – avoiding busy body Donna who had wanted to come up for the meeting as well, he managed to have the meeting without her, and she was furious.
Thursday a big storm was due to hit Wellington. Small one talked our colleague Pieter into catching his flight today instead of tomorrow. After work a select group of the office went out for the stone bake steaks in The Grand – for Arran and Lena's leaving night out. The walk across town to get there was painful, the storm hit, and there was this harsh wind and rain, most people turning up dripping wet and cold. We were walking up with Steve from Manchester, and new fella Will, however we lost Steve somewhere in the storm and arrived with one man down (he was painfully slow at walking and apparently stopped to change shoes). When everyone arrived, we all ordered steaks (15 in all). As we were just finishing our meals, Bonnie from the office turned up to wish Arran goodbye. Was a little awkward as she thought people were out for a casual drink, then she showed up to see everyone but her out for a fancy meal. Moved upstairs for the pub quiz and $10 jugs. One of Arran's friends from football turned up and busy body Donna was all over him like an old dog in heat, the poor bastard didn't know what he was getting himself into, and the lad had a girlfriend. For the pub quiz there ended up being 18 of us, which was a nightmare sat around a long table, so eventually broke off into 3 groups – the Irish (Arran, Lena, William and Aidan of Waterford, Small one + English tall one), the English (Steve, Will, Andy and some others), the internationals / miscellaneous (Bonnie and others). We never win these things, we just wanted to beat Steve. Small one spent most of his team sticking his fingers up and him, then heckling the quiz master fella. We ended up coming after Steve's team, though we tied on the 'bonus question' which was some stupid question to do with the woman in King King. We had a tie break question between Steve and Arran (Arran insisted when he would be up against Steven). The question was about Pele's hatricks (80 hatricks??) and we beat Steve and won a free jug of beer. Tall one asked Steve who in his team had googled the answer to the King Kong question “Andy” he said, “who googled it on your team”, “Arran” said tall one. We then came joint 2nd last with the 'International' team, and the team who come joint 2nd last also win a prize.... so another tie break question, this time with the other office team. Managed to beat them as well, (how many statues on Easter Island, and they guessed 7.... when it was 800), so ended up with another 2 free jugs. Small one then got carried away by agreeing to go away for a weekend away with Claire, Alex, Johnny, Steve, and the rest tommorow night. Tall one pointed out to them all that small one agrees to do a lot of things when he's a bit pissed, then the next day he take sit all back. Small one was adamant we would be going for the weekend away, so tall one wrestled him home and away from the rest of the crew who were leaving to go on to another bar. Arran chased them down the street to convince them to stay out, but tall one fended him off with a broken umbrella. Then they walked back in the stormy night.

Friday morning, small one woke up very groggy, and said “there's not a hope in hell i'm going away for the weekend”..... he then had to break the news to everyone he'd made the promise to the night before. The news was filled with stories of this storm that hit Wellington last night – 200km an hour winds, tree, sign posts, sea walls, windows all ripped out and broken up the road, airport and railways closed..... was apparently their worst storm in 40 years (though Steve at work claimed he saw worse storms in Wellington last year??). Walked to work up the path and roads covered with debris, thankfully Pieter had taken his flight yesterday. We then had the slowest day at work we'd ever experienced. Didn't help beign hung over, but time was literally standing still. We did have to put up with Steve being a bit slow and turning to new fella Will, and telling him all about how funny the pub quiz was last night, only for Will to interrupt him and say “Steve I was there, I sat next to you most of the night”. Finally the day ended and we did our food shop, bumping into everyone who was going away for this wekend, who were buying supplies. We even gto stuck in the same checkout queue as them, and the cashier behind us had the worse, damp smell about him. Back home for the remaining soaps for small one, Location Location Location, and a much needed weekend at home.

Monday 10th June – Saturday 15th June 2013

Back at work and an interesting week. Every other person seemed to be leaving, American Natalie (who trained Tall one) was apparently in hospital and was leaving in a couple of weeks anyway, humourless Canadian Isabelle who works with her was also leaving, she was training her own replacement - the big kiwi girl, Selina (who makes the 'tasty' cakes) despite the fact that Selina had been at job interviews all week – Arran's leaving next Wednesday and apparently Steve from Manchester is also leaving, though he says he's too scared to hand in his notice (we're not exactly sure why as we're sure the Manager has been praying for this moment).   Then we had another week of someone shaking a collections tin round the office, as another sodding birthday, and Natalie in hospital also needed a card – we refused to chip in for the birthday as we'd never even spoken to the fella – he's only been here a couple of weeks and they want us all to chip in to buy a card and a bottle of wine! To relieve the tedium of all this office nonsense small one has gone back to doing his best to piss off Steve from Manchester – buy adjusting Steve's chair every morning to the lowest setting, and tilting the backrest back, putting one arm rest up and one down. Steve arrives and flaps around like an upset goose for five minutes, and then Small one (stirring as usual) convinces Steve to do the same to Arran's chair as it must have been him who did it. This went on every day, and cumulated in Steve staying behind after everyone left and lowering everyone's chairs, as well as taking down all of small one's paperwork on his noticeboard and hiding it in a folder.....??


Outside of work this week had been largely non-eventful, as small one had become obsessed with his soaps, gradually adding more and more to his must watch list – we were now stuck every day watching Home & Away at 5.30, then the news at 6, followed by Neighbours at 6.30, then Shortland Street for an hour at 7pm-8pm...... phew, 2 nights a week there also an hour of Coronation St. Had also had tall one's mother emailing about the news she was trying to purchase an old caravan on eBay and turn it into a mobile team room? We noticed how all her emails ended with 'from Mum LOL'...... we figured she must think LOL means 'lots of love', but even still it makes everything seem a little sinister – like when she told tall one she'd put some money into his bank account for his birthday laugh out loud....we never were sure if she actually did put money in.

The other big news at the office was we were told that the four new High Profile case leads (Tall, Small, Donna and Steve) were invited to this new software support seminar this Thursday – where a presentation would be given by Senior Managers to our main customers, and they wanted us to go as it would be good to observe, hear what was said and to 'network'. Well nearer to the day itself, it started to turn into, “there may be a few jobs for you to help out with”, and then the emails with requests started to come through from the seminar organizer, so by close of day Wednesday we had a list of tasks that we had been lumbered with: organizing transport for all speakers, carrying all equipment, setting up and running projector and slideshow, greeting guests, filling in name badges, typing up talk notes and then the last request was that each of us sit in with a workshop group and aid a group of customers each....??? The organizer did think to tell us not to worry about the sandwiches as that was being done by caterers... What happened to us going as we were these new 'high profile' berks who were there to 'network'?? After this stressful news we went out for drinks after work Wednesday Night – rushing out the office quickly whilst Steve was away from his desk (this was the night he took down all of small one's paperwork). Headed to the Waterloo Pub for a few cheap jugs (minus Steve) where we met with William of Waterford who was wearing a new matching blue jacket and matching blue bag. We were the only people in the whole pub.

So the Thursday (13th June) came round for our exciting seminar day. Tall and Small arrived at the office at just after 8am and got a few of their usual tasks out the way to be ready to leave at 9am. Tim, the organizer of the seminar came in around 8.45am, a strange, awkward moving, tall sweaty man – who looked like he should be working a farm and not an office. He was pretty stressed, and intense looking, and apparently could not find a laptop. Thankfully Steve soon turned up and (as we had all volunteered Steve to help with all the IT) he got the brunt of this screw up from Tim. We watched as Steve ran after Tim who was rambling orders at him. Poor Steve, he'd even thought to wear a tie today to look all smart (turned out he was the ONLY person at the seminar who bothered) unfortunately it was a white shirt and black tie, so he looked like he belonged at a funeral or serving tables. The rest of us went to the Seminar (at a Sports Hall Stadium) in a large taxi, small one had outlined his plan to tall one that if he's asked to do anything he's not comfortable with he will go and hide in the toilets until its over. Donna jumped in and setup a table for her to be the official note taker, small one went and walked around avoiding eye contact with every organizer, whilst tall one stood at the door and handed arriving guests their name badges. Soon a flustered Steve and Tim turned up (having lost their Powerpoint presentation on a USB), Tim approached Tall one without a hello and just said “write me a name badge” and walked off.

Pretty soon the 45 guests arrived and sat down facing the stage, turned out that about 42 of them were middle aged women. Donna spent the next few hours furiously typing to keep up with guests questions – each speaker has a scheduled 15 minute slot, but the first person spoke for an hour because the guests were alive with questions, shouting them at the stage over each other – wanting to know if errors had been fixed. Tall, Small and Steve just had to sit at the back and watch through this, with nothing to do but sneekily grab cake and pies from the buffet table. The Senior Manager of our office went to speak, only to announce that the other speakers powerpoint slides were apparently missing, he then stood speaking standing infront of the projector screen until the guests asked him to move, then the microphone stopped working and Steve had to run around like a headless chicken to get a new one, and once replaced was too nervous to give it back whilst the speaker was still talking. We had a half hour lunch and when we started back (running an hour behind), Tim started talking to the guests as they were sitting down and asked for a show of hands for who had flights at 3pm and 3.30pm.... then started asking for Adams team to make eye contact.... Tall and Small were the only ones of the team who heard and looked up a bit confused, Tim then shouted out to us, “you guys can arrange for taxi to the airport for them” then he started talking on again..... we got one of the Level 12 managers to interrupt and confirm more details, as (having no briefing or even a heads up) didn't have a clue who we were phoning for taxis, and how many or for what time?! Small one took over this role and got the numbers and made the call downstairs, though one taxi shuttle never turned up and we hope that those ten people made their flights okay. Later in the day another guest came and found small one about a taxi for 4pm, and he pointed her to the courtesy free phone to the taxi company, to which she said “well I was told to come find the 'little fella' and he would do it for me”. It finally all wrapped up around 3.30pm, though Donna wanted to stay and network and Steve wanted to stay and look for all the pens we'd handed out. Thankfully we'd never been asked to get involved with the half arsed workshops, but sat together by Donna at the end and Steve exclaimed how this was the first rest he'd had all day. Tall one pointed out that all Steve had done was sit in a chair listening for 4 hours. As half the taxis hadn't showed up we arrived back at the office just after 4pm to find that none of us had been missed, having only had about 7 emails all day.

Friday 14th June, thankfully was the last day of the week. Though due to these new 'fun friday' ideas being dreamt up every 2 weeks, we now hated fridays. This week was 'potluck cooking' friday, where everyone had to 'create' a dish and then there was a party to eat everyones dish and give marks for the best. Small one and Tall one just wanted to be left alone, so went out and brought a bagel from the takeaway and some chips from the supermarket. When they got back they found the rest of the office 'having fun' discussing their bruschettas and cakes, and had even put on some God awful party music. Then we all had to go wish the new fella a happy birthday. It soon got worse for Small one, as the 3 and a half grand we'd sent back to pay off our flights (paid for on his Irish credit card) had not arrived, and apparently the wrong account number had been entered. Small one spent the afternoon making calls to Irish banks and NZ banks trying to track it down (still not 100% where it is). Then he got an email from the H&R Block Taxback company in Canada who are saying “by the way we've not submitted your tax return yet (that we'd paid $150 each for) as we've not received your signed documents”, we checked our emails and found we had both sent the forms over a month ago, so that's another delay in funds for us. There was good news however.... that the postcard small one had sent his Aunt and Cousin back in January from Hobbiton had finally arrived..... it had taken over 4 months, so we can only presume was sent by seamail???

Anyway, thank God for the weekend. Spent the morning watching Come Dine with Me, and then headed up town. Brought small one a new chain for his St Christopher medal, which some humourless bitch in a bead shop made for him. Walked back along the harbour and then watched Grand Design and another Come Dine with Me (though was some terrible celebrity one).

Monday 27th May – Sunday 9th June 2013

Wednesday 29th woke up to a very cold day, the hills surrounding the harbour were covered with snow, and had great views from the floor on the office. We heard the next day however, that old Principal, Pieter had bumped into all the office crew up town and had ended up doing Tequila shots with them at the bar, no wonder he was a bit groggy on the Thursday morning. Thursday night small one was busy in the kitchen cooking dinner, and this week we had brought a very cheap pot of garlic, and so every meal had been coated with it. Thursday was the overload day though, they were both a bit sick from the amount of garlic after. Friday at the office Manager, Adam had randomly done this 'hat' day, and some people really hadn't bothered, whilst others had come in wearing full fancy dress. The boss's PA, Melanie came down to judge and put Tall one in the top 3 with the comment that his woollen bobble hat was 'bold, yet understated like Michael himself”. The hat competition was followed by a random general knowledge quiz, small one (as before) sat this out and made some serious phone calls, whilst the rest of the office sat in stupid hats answering questions. Tall one's team won again, though they never did get any kind of prize.

Saturday 1st June was the last day to use our Premier discount card/voucher. We started with a free coffee in McDonald's and then continued on the rest of the hour and a half walk to Wellington Zoo. Walked through Newton suburb to get there, which was kinda nice, felt more like a town high street. Though it did have a scary bookshop, with damp books precariously stacked in heaps from floor to ceiling, making a maze around the ground floor of what felt like some lunatics house – if there was an earthquake you'd be drowned in books. Afterwards got to the zoo and luckily the voucher was still valid. The zoo was pretty busy, and was pretty bog standard. If anything a lot of the enclosures were a bit bare and depressing. Though we did enjoy seeing the Sun Bear which seemed to be dressed as a Rottweiler. The Kiwi house was also good, though was a walk through in pitch black, with only a couple of red bulbs inside the enclosure (as the birds only like the dark). We saw a couple of kiwis close up, rummaging around in leaves and scampering back and forth to their burrows. Though as the path was not even lit, we kept bumping into children, and a random mother who insisted in sitting on the floor in the middle of the path. Arrived back at flat to find we had still not got the hang of using the VCR and had not taped the 2 and a half hour omnibus of Come Dine with Me, and still yet to get any use of that Titanic VHS tape.

Monday 3rd June back to work. The new fella who had replaced Andy now started in the role full time – and he'd been trained well as the first hour of the day he just sat on facebook. Though this wouldn't last as we received an email saying everyone would shortly be blocked from these social network sites. Had some nice trips in the elevator this week, got caught coming down with Scottish boss, David from the top floor who started to tell us how he had stopped drinking coffee and this had given him headaches as apparently coffee shrinks the blood vessels in the brain. The lift reached the ground floor and we left without any response to make. Next day we got in the lift and it stopped at every floor to let people in one the way down, at one level is the Turkish Embassy and three little fellas got in with their Turkish pin badges on their suits. Thankfully they weren't with us when on Friday we left to find a group of protesters outside our office block with banners protesting the Turkish Government and riots overseas. Friday was the usual foodshop in New World, and at the till the cashier was talking non-stop with the fella packing our bags about getting wasted, and then about geeky details of Medieval games and TV shows. It made the whole checkout procedure go very slowly, but thankfully he was so enthralled in talking about goblins and knights that he didn't scan our Lamb Chops and we saved $5.99.

Over the weekend, 8-9th June we carried on watching One Foot in the Grave, having covered all 6 seasons in just over a week. We actually saw Come Dine with Me on Saturday morning, so Titanic still had no use. Saturday went to 'Mole Map' clinic to get one of tall one's moles on his side looked at, as it had turned scabby 2 weeks ago (though had actually cleared up yesterday). Sat in the waiting room and ironically the reception was playing the Full Monty soundtrack (Tom Jones singing 'You can Leave your Hat On') – which was ironic to be listening to stripper music moments before tall one had to go in and take his clothes off to have his mole checked. The Kiwi woman 'mole checker' was very good, and chatted about the different problems and things to look for. She made tall one stand with his shirt off in front of a blank background and took numerous photos like some God awful tacky photo shoot. Tall one then had to stand with his back to them whilst she and small one pointed to different moles in his back and discussed which others may be of concerns. She photographed 3 close up (included in price) and said the report would be emailed to us within 2 weeks, though she said she could see nothing to be concerned about. Sunday was a rainy day and we did the usual trip to the library for wifi and then back for the sunday afternoon TV, ready for work the next day.

Sunday 12th May – Sunday 26th May 2013

Monday 13th Tall one had to hang about outside the flat at 8.30am waiting for a battered, graffiti covered Salvation Army delivery van to drop off two soft blue chairs. Two rough fellas opened the van and past them down, neither of them said a single word to tall one, not hello, thanks or goodbye. Tall one heaved them into the lift and dragged them into the flat then ran to the office and snuck in ten minutes late. Back at lunch with small one and re-arranged the flat to fit the two soft chairs in, a bit tight for the flat, but much more comfortable.

Thursday evening went for a thrilling after work pint with Steve in the fancy, parliament Bar The Backbencher – only stayed for the one. Friday 17th we had to duck out at lunch time to collect our replacement microwave from the Real Estate office, as the other one just flicks on and off and looked like it might explode. Thankfully they replaced with a new one, without any grumbling. That friday, Waterford William and Aidan both left employment with us, having found a new job with more money and less nonsense. Adam was away that friday, and so the office was a bit chaotic, with William being tied to a chair by small one as a final goodbye. The office all headed off after work to go away for this hideous sounding house party weekend up the coast. Small one and Tall one wisely stayed away. Before we left small one stole a bag of sugar from the kitchen as we're too cheap to buy a $2 bag of sugar from New World. It was a much needed weekend as had been a very busy weekend for tall one and small one, having to deal with Employment Tribunal requests, complaints of poorly written emails from our office (someone saying “don't mean to offend you but you should read the instructions properly) and meeting big scary fellas from the Audit Office to answer a complaint letter.

Saturday went to the uncomfortable weird chairs in the National Library in Thorndon, where we spent $3400 on 8 flights each.... Flying Auckland to Singapore.... Singapore to Cambodia (Jetstar had a sale – though the meal is $53 extra each?? so may make a packed lunch), then fly out of Phuket, Thailand, change in Kuala Lumphur, then fly to Delhi, India with Malaysia Airlines. Thee weeks later fly with British Airways to London then again over to Dublin (luckily we checked the initial booking as they had us arriving at Heathrow Airport but flying out of Gatwick Airport), then fly back to UK for Boxing Day, then back on New Years Eve to Ireland. Exhausted already.

Sunday 19th met Steve, along with Andy and Tophat in the Wesh Bar to experience their roast dinner. Steve was late as usual and ha also mucked up the price and it didn't include a dessert. Was a good roast, with lamb, roasties, yorkshire and veg, with a sticky toffee pudding. Small and Tall one paid and left, though apparently Top hat left without paying and the pub phoned Steve up to complain. Was a good meal, though Tall one had to sit and admire Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey L.P.'s on the wall whilst the three other fellas spoke about football at length.

Back to work Monday 20th, a new fella started which Adam had told everyone was Irish, though he turned out to be from Hastings. For some reason Donna took it upon herself to go downstairs and collect the new fella herself, and bring him up to the office, sit him down in our pod (different team tot he one he would be working in) and sit and painfully explain things to him. Adam turned up later and was glad he'd found the new fella (another Mike), apparently Adam had been waiting down in the lobby for him, and the girls in the other team where waiting for him to start training, but no one knew Donna had cornered him into her pod for some unknown reason? Good news as well was Tall one got his tax back for New Zealand's last tax year, some $400 – though small one was not so lucky and couldn't do it online, having to use a company and only got $100.

Wednesday 22nd Small one took the afternoon off to go out to Bowen Hospital for his consultation with the Surgeon to get a quote for removing the Lipoma in his thigh. There was 3 doctors/surgeons available, and small one ended up with the oldest one of the bunch. This very elderly man led him into the office, stating “trousers off”. Small one obliged and then the old man started to feel his small one's toes, despite the fact the lump was in his thigh. Small one used a it of Irish charm though and they started to speak of Ireland and his travels. The old fella staretd to talk about the war (he was that old) and then quoted small one $2-3000 for the removal of the lump, as it would have to be done in hospital and not in his office, due to the size. Small one left un-sure what to do due to the expensive, he mentioned it to Adam in the office who started talking of fund-raisers to get the money for him. Small one didn't seem to keen, but would wait for the definitive quote to be sent through the post.

Thursday 23rd Donna, Small one, Tall one and for some reason Steve were told they would be getting a raise from next Monday, Tall one and small one would now be earning double what they were four months ago in kitchen jobs at The Mount. The raise was due to the added responsibility and the external high profile clients they would be dealing with. Went out for a drink to celebrate after work.  Arran had been told by the girlfriend he was only aloud the one pint, and so thought it logical to buy a jug which held 4 pints. He received a lot of texts from Lena who was waiting for him to come and cook dinner, and he started getting ready to leave, so small one brought him another pint to stop him leaving (though said it was not an extra pint, was just one to replace the one Arran had spilt over the table half an hour ago). The Royal did great pizza though, unfortunately they were named “The Prince Charles” and the “Princess Anne”. Soon it was just Tall, Small, Donna and Steve, who convinced us to go to The Green Man as Steve liked the poor barmaid there. Luckily she wasn't there, but at the bar Donna started on the businessman at the bar like a dog on heat, tugging playfully at their swipe cards hanging on pull strings off their belts. As a joke small one told Steve to ruin her chances, to put his arm around Donna as if she was his bird. Steve laughed at the idea, and then waited for the businessmen to all leave before then putting his arm around Donna's shoulder. Donna reacted by leaping a good 4 foot up the bar, leaving Steve confused, and the businessmen long gone to have made it a joke at all. Tall and small had an Irish Coffee each, then left.

Friday 24th Small one received his quote from the Surgeon about the removal of the Lipoma. He spoke to the Hospital about it, and the receptionist said it was usually double the price. Small one had been quote $1700 with the possibility of it being cheaper after they saw how much supplies they used. After getting the raise as well, had decided to go ahead with it and booked it in for a few weeks time (though later we found it this did not include the fee for the old man surgeon which was another $800). Friday was still a busier enough day, Tall one dealing with a messy case which the client had completely messed up their pay records for an employee and the case had all been past for legal advice. Small one was on Facebook chat with tall one's father who had said that 'all the cats away so I'm eating all my chocolate”?? Tall one;s mother and sister had messaged, and they were for some unknown reason in Switzerland on bicycles??

Saturday 25th May was Tall one's 30th Birthday. Had a nice breakfast and small one provided him gifts and flowers at 6am. Also got a card from small one's sister, brother and wife, and mum and dad (who put 30 Euros in the card for 30 years). Then for the first time in weeks, they missed the Come Dine with Me omnibus and took the train out to Porirua. We thought there may be some sights to see there, but turned out to be pretty grim little town where large Maori fellas were coughing stuff onto the floor moments after we stepped off the train. Went to their large shopping mall, and it being Tall one's 30th Birthday we spent $130 on a new phone for Small one, and then a further $100 on Internet credit. Spent another $200 on clothes in Kmart, then back to the train station. While waiting for the return train to Wellington, a mother brought her baby over to us and asked small one if he'd hold the baby for a moment as she had to go and wipe her daughter's bottom. Back in Wellington did some more shopping up Cuba Street, shopping for children's clothes in Farmers and Warehouse. We had also been looking to buy a Blank VHS Cassette tape to record the odd program (Come Dine with Me) if we we're going out, as all we had in the flat was a dusty old VCR. We couldn't find anywhere to buy a blank VHS tape so went to Salvation Army and looked in their Movie section. Searched the movie titles looking for the longest movie to give us the most recording time to tape over. The Abyss had some 164 minutes, How the West was Won was over 2 and a half hours as well, but then we saw Titanic at 184 minutes. The cashier was all excited when she saw us buying Titanic on VHS, asking if it was our favourite movie, then we told her we we're taping over it. In the evening met Arran and Lena in Lone Star for a meal. Was packed solid, and they served piles of food on each plate, that we couldn't finish. Small one was getting pains in his leg so we left about 10pm, and stopped off to meet Joel briefly. He brought us up to date with his Door to Door sales, and how he'd lost a sales bet and was having to walk the plank off the Wellington wharf into the harbour. Sunday had an easy day catching up with the Internet in the library, and small one stayed at home getting used to the Internet on his new phone. Then back for the usual Sunday Night TV.

Monday 6th May – Saturday 11th May 2013

Monday back to the office, and at one point Tall one came down the stairs after speaking to case managers on Level 12, and got back to his own floor at Level 10 to find everyone looking at bit disconcerted at each other, and a couple of people getting up from the floor. Apparently they'd been an earthquake and he hadn't even noticed. The desks and floor shook slightly, and soon our faithful Principal (who sits behind Small one) had pages and pages of Earthquake websites up verifying that they'd been a 3.8 earthquake south east of Wellington. He continued to read out different websites for small one to check regarding websites, including one for earthquakes in the UK, to which small one told him, “I'm not from there”.

Tuesday started with tall one getting into the lift at work with 2 coffees and Waterford Aidan, Clare and Andy. The lift made a wurring sound and didn't move. Pressed buttons and nothing moved, doors did not open. Clare started pressing all the buttons on the lift incluidng the emergency phone button. We'd only been 'stuck' in there for 30 seconds, and the doors reopened on the ground floor, and as we all left we could hear some woman's voice on the speaker who'd answered the emergency call – we just go into the other lift. Later that evening a group of the office crew went to see Jurassic Park at the cinema which had been re-realised for its 20th Anniversary in 3D. The last 2 weeks the office had been filled with geeky Jurassic Park quotes and Arran dubbing his own head onto characters in stills from the movie. Small one refused to go, but tall one was aloud to venture out with the crew. Met them outside the cinema and Arran admitted he'd been so excited about seeing the movie he'd already been to see it a couple of days ago with the girlfriend.

Wednesday we had Clare give us half an hours 'emergency procedure' training for fire and earthquakes. It was during this talk that we noticed that there's about 20 of us on this floor in our 20's-early 30s, and then there's the Principal, Pieter – in his 60's. Who stands on the edge of the group as we are all talking over each other and messing, with his Principal's sweater and trimmed moustache. But being an ex-principal as soon as he makes a point the whole floor is silent to listen to him.
Also on Wednesday small one had finally gone to the doctor about the pains in his legs and the small lump on his thigh. Was quite a friendly doctor, though small one noticed he was a sports injury doctor and wondered why he was here, though apparently he also does 'normal' patients as well. He said he could not confirm about the lump without an Ultra Sound, then when he was told by the hospital there was no space till next week he said it wasn't good enough and managed to get an appointment for the afternoon. This got small one quite worried about this lump, having the doctor asking quite dramatically for this same day scan. Adam let tall and small one have the afternoon off to go for the scan together. Left at 2.30pm and asked a taxi on Lambton Quay how much to the hospital, he said about $25. Turned out the taxi driver was from India and would not stop talking to us about where we were from and where to go in India, weren't in the mood for a 'chat'. However his estimate turned out to be spot on and was exactly $25 when we stopped. Inside the hosptial sat in the waiting room for some 45 minutes until small one was seen. During that time we got to watch 'Dicken's the Real Deal' on the TV (some heartless bitch was selling 2 Roald Dahl books that he'd personally signed addressed to her as a child...). Everyone in the waiting room seemed glued to their phones, a woman next to us was playing cards, even the doctors walked through holding phones in their hands texting or playing 'snake' or something, (we're not to up to date with all these phone apps). We had no idea how much this scan was going to cost either, as when we asked reception she had said the price was usually One-Ninety-One??? We didn't know if she meant $1.91, $1901, or $191??? The scan itself was quick enough, they small one had to lie on his side in his pants holding in his farts, while some woman put gel and a hand held thing on his thigh. She pointed out on the b/w screen (where you'd expect to see a fetus) and explained a lump was in the fat area between the skin and muscle, and was about 3cm by 5-6cm in size. She could tell us nothing more as the Radiologists had to do the report. Thankfully the price turned out to be $191, though would have preferred $1.91. We walked back stopping to use some more of our food vouchers in McDonalds.

Thursday another day in the office, and at lunch both headed back out to see the first doctor again who would now have the results from the Radiologist. Sat in the waiting room for 15 minutes, next to a fish tank with the most depressing looking fish you'd every seen, two at the top of the tank may as well of been dead. We entered the Doctors room and he looked at tall one and said, “has he got a Lipoma too?”. Tall one did not, he was there for moral support for the small one. Doctor explained that the Lipoma was essentially hereditary, and just a build up of fatty tissue. Though they could not say if it had any cancer in it without a biopsy (which even then was only a small sample so not 100%), he said they are not usually harmful, and suggested to only come back if it got bigger or painful. Small one asked about procedure to remove it, and he gave us details to have a check up with a surgeon and did say to have it removed was the only sure way to know. Small one booked it in with the surgeon to have an appointment in 2 weeks time, annoyed that we couldn't just book the surgery (approx $500-800 for surgery), opposed to being forced to have another consultation before hand (for another $200 fee), am wishing now we had kept the health insurance. Back in the office to hear the news that self appointed team leader, Bonnie had cancelled a planned weekend away for ten people in the office. They had booked a house to rent for the ten of them in 2 weeks time, but as Bonnie had now decided to come along with a few friends she'd found a bigger house (which turned out to be a Christian house where you helped with choirs for the weekend) and had cancelled the initial booking the others had made themselves. Nobody was happy about this, but thankfully tall and small were staying way clear of a messy drunk weekend away with the office crew. Small one had also had to skip out of the office in the morning to meet our estate agent for a flat inspection, she was back to her joyless self, not making any chit chat just snapping two quick photos with a miserable expression and leaving. After work celebrated the relativity good news of the Lipoma by having a few beers in the Old Thistle Pub round the corner, with Arran and Girlfriend, Steve and William of Waterford. Small one took against the waitress who promised us free chips if we drank more, which never materialised.

Friday was the end of an exasperating week. Increasing work loads and health scares had been a bit wearing. Then in the middle of the afternoon Clare shouted the word “Drop” and every in the office who didn't hide under their desk got told off by Adam, and apparently that was the earthquake drill.... tall one apparently died during this drill.

Saturday rained most of the day. Spent the morning watching Come Dine with Me as usual, ad cooking a fry up. In the afternoon ventured out to order two second hand smelly soft chairs from Salvation Army ($15 each). Then stopped for a beer in the Old Bailey, which was kind of pleasant by the fire (though missing a proper fire). That evening went back on to our Harbour walks again, and when we were around the Te Papa museum a boat of loud partying arseholes pulled out the dock and some fella fell off the back into the water in the dark. They were there for a good 20 minutes circling and calling out with flash lights. We could occasionally just about make him out in the water from where we were standing. The boat finally just sped off so we presume they picked him out the water, but who knows. On the way back stopped to watch one of the helicopters take off, thinking it may have been going out to look for the fella, but it went off over the hills instead, by coincidence where we'd stopped to watch we suddenly saw two Blue Penguins come swimming in from the harbour and climb up into the rocks just below us.

Sunday headed up town again to buy some new cheap and terrible office shoes for Tall one. Stopped to look around a huge fruit and veg market up Willis St. Amongst too many people and too many stalls was one fat fella selling sausage sizzlers and bacon and egg sandwiches – that's where we spent our money. Though when he cracked small ones egg on the grill to cook the big fella couldn't get the fragment of shell out of the yolk and ended up scraping it out with his big finger nail...nice. Then on to the Library for the usual Internet fix, this time there was no lunatic writing lists about people in the corner, though since this winter weather has started we have generally seen a lot more homeless and crazies around the City.

Monday 29th April – Sunday 5th May 2013

Saturday was good weather outside. Spent the morning in bed watching the 2 and a half hour show of Come Dine with Me. In the afternoon strolled around the Autumn trees in Botanical Gardens, small one complaining about a lump in his leg. On the way home we shopped for new socks, then stopped off in the Establishment for a $4 beer. Sat outside on their benches, under a tree which sparrows sat in dropping leaves on us. Was soon joined by out William of Waterford, and we used up our remaining savings ordering more drink. Small one soon became a little louder and started asking William about all these office girls he was trying to have on the go, asking him quite loudly “did you rape her?”, as the confused barmaid collected our glasses. Soon we left William (who left to collect his 'rope' from Emily's house). Stopped off in the very small, eccentric cafe by the Theatre which played old Jazz and Blues records. Small one had a Vodka, Tall one had a Hot Chocolate. We were joined by young Joel, who informed us he was going well with the door to door sales and essentially earning the same wage as the two of us put together. We made him by the next round, which was hot whiskies with lemon and cloves. Wondered up Cuba Street and stopped into a bar which had some good live music, sat down just as the singer finished singing a Bono song, and then he packed up for the night. We forced down a disgusting bottle of beer which tall one had been forced to pay for on his UK credit cards. Went further up Cuba St to the small, arty cafe Joel had taken us to before, Had three hot whiskies again, and by now small one was joyfully embarrassing Joel by asking him loudly how much cock he'd had in his mouth as any person came through the door past us. Left after the hot whiskies before small one had us thrown out. Headed home after tall one steered small one away from any further bars. Sunday had porridge and left for the Library and Cafe to use the City Internet. That's about it. Back for 4pm to watch Hotel Inspectors, Wrangler, Renters and Master Chef New Zealand.....

Monday 22nd April – Sunday 28th April 2013

Having found that living and working on the same block meant a severe lack of exercise, tall one and small one have started to take the stairs (10 floors) to their office and also take evening walks along the harbour (about an hour return). The walk seems to be New World Supermarket based, as we start at our flat (by New World), halfway pass Metro New World in the train station, and then end by the one near the beach and the Welsh Bar, where we turn around and walk back. Monday was exciting in the office, as it was now 2 weeks school holidays, not as much to do and a lot harder to make contact with the customers. This meant that 'Team Leader' Bonnie arranged to give us Maori lessons, taught by herself, including singing the vowels in Maori pronunciation - “ahh, air, eee, oh, ooohh”.

Tuesday there was no lessons, nd the stairs were killing us. The harbour walks were going well, and we had seen two Blue Penguins out of 2 of 3 nights, arguing noisly on the rocks right by the restaurants down the wharf. We also got to see the 'Whirly Water Wand' down the wharf turn on, which was this bizarre bendy pole which sprayed water all over the harbour.

Wednesday received the sad news that Small one's grandfather had died at the age of 97 back in Athlone. The funeral was on Friday and some 500 locals turned out to pay their respects. William from the office had misunderstood the circumstances and told one of the girls that small one's father had died, which caused some confusion for a while.

Thursday was Anzac Day and we had another paid day off work for the public holiday. Was awoke at 6am by the Dawn service, as the bag pipes could be heard round the corner at the Parliament building. Headed off mid morning (in the sunshine) for an hours walk to the Zealandia Kaorori Sanctuary. Was a large sanctuary built around a dam, with high fences to protect the native bird species inside. They are so serious about protecting the species that this nice old lady who took our tickets asked small one if before he went in, if he wouldn't mind just opening his backpack and giving it a shake so all the rats and mice would jump out. Small one didn't know what she was on about, and offered it to her to look through, but she re-confirmed, just give it a shake as any rats will jump out that's all.... oh right, and in we went. Was a nice pleasant day, though it rained all the time we were there, then the sun came out once we left. Saw some new species we had not seen before, the Kaka Parrot, and the large Takahe bird. We stopped to feed crisps to a New Zealand Robin and also went inside a small former gold mine and saw Cave Wetas and glow worms.

Friday at work (quiet again) we had a 'Kiwi Quiz', 3 rounds and 3 teams answering questions to do with New Zealand (e.g. where's the steepest street, who was the last Priminister), thankfully tall one's team won, and was happy just to beat Bonnie and Top Hats team. Though small one did not take part as he was trying to make calls, which wasn't easy due to the noise of the quiz.

Saturday sat in bed and watched Come Dine with Me for 2 and a half hours, then went to town and the library, used our Premier gift card (from the Estate Agents) to buy an enourmous and disappointing white hot chocolate, then walked back our harbour walk. Spent the evening in bed watching the evening version of Come Dine with Me (an hour long).

Sunday left at 10am in the sun to walk to Wilton Bush (after not finding it 2 weeks ago). Walked through the steep Town Belt hills again (more people about this time), and now armed with a map made it down the correct path the otherside, and a lot of stee suburban roads and steps to Wilton Bush. There we chose the Skyline walking track, which was a large loop through various forest types, and up very steep hills, overlooking the suburbs and Town Belt below. Got quite windy at times and made it back to the bush shattered, before then making our slow ascent back up in Town Belt Hills, down the otherside and finally decided to go for a much needed Pint after 5 hours of very steep constant walking.

Monday 15th April – Sunday 21st April 2013


Tall one had also emailed one final email to Chris F., owner of the Corkman, Melbourne who had promised to sponsor us back in September but had ignored us since January. Surprisngly he responded this time, and apologised for ignoring us for 3 months, and said he still wanted to sponsor us. This meant we had to change our plans AGAIN for 2014, having already gone from Melbourne sponsorship, given up that for teaching in Thailand, giving up that for Canada visa, but giving up that as sold out for living in the UK or Ireland, to giving it up again for Melbourne again? But we are still very tentative about the sponsorship after sod all happening since January and him not even having the courtesy to send us a two line email as to why it had been on hold. So we're playing it by ear, and will see where we are at in a month or so, and then just give up on him.

After work Monday came home and spent the evening watching TV, though Channel 3 is about 1.5 seconds out of sync, and so Home & Away, followed by Grand Designs is a strange experience to watch. Then like most nights we were asleep by nine.

Tuesday after work we headed out to the cinema to see the new Danny Boyle movie. We got in early and the screen was completely empty. Our ticket said seats K10 and K9 so we sat in them even though we were the only people there. Five minutes before the movie started a couple turned up, and we could see them looking for their seats. They walked past hundreds of empty chairs and rows and came up our row, and then squeezed past us and sat down in the seat right next to tall one, who sat bewildered looking out at all the other empty rows and chairs presuming anyone that thinks it necessary to sit right next to the only other people in the screen must either be very stupid or complete psychopaths. Tall one got up and pretended he needed the toilet and then came back and sat on the other side of small one, so now there was a respectable empty chair between them and the weirdos.

Wednesday was the final parliament vote for the Marriage Equality Act, so that Gay people could have the same marriage rights and process as everyone else. Queues of people were outside the Beehive Parliament building, small one and tall one living just round the corner went down in the rain to have a look. The actual parliament viewing decks were packed, so after we went through security we had to join the over flow downstairs, where a crowd of people sat on seats and the floor around a TV with live feed to the proceedings upstairs. A wide mix of people had turned out to witness the vote, including an old couple, a family with young children, a Maori fella with big facial tattoos, and a lot of gay looking couples. The security guard diligently stopped anyone taking photographs. Stayed for 2 hours, was only two people spoke against the vote, and it was decided in favour at 9.30pm – this resulted in the whole Parliament room, viewing decks and our room joining in singing a Maori song. Waited outside parliament for a while afterwards as everyone came out. The news cameramen looked a bit disappointed, they were obviously looking for a big, flamboyant, celebratory party atmosphere, but really it was just some sensible, quiet celebrations as people walked out quietly and went home for a cup of tea.

Thursday Night went out for the Stone Baked Steaks at The Grand with a group from the office. Sat upstairs for the Pub Quiz at a large table of ten of us. We all sat with our cheap $10 jugs and stone bake steaks – then one of Donna's friends turned up (who turned out to be a bit of a chatty weirdo) who said hello to everyone and then asked if he could get us anything from the bar (to the whole table of ten of us?). We came 14th in the pub quiz, though we did have Steve from Manchester this week, which was a handicap. Steve took over the writing of the answers for the sports round, his hand writing being not unlike that of a lunatic childs, had to then be re-written by tall one. Some of the questions Steve felt the need to work out in a sketch on the back (such as drawing a dodgy sketch of South America to work out where a country was??). Steve was quite happy when there was a picture round of 'Name that Steve' (Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Irwin, Stevie Nicks etc etc), though his smugness went away when small one threw a napkin at him and he sulked for an hour. Trouble then ensued when Waterford William started sneaking small one away from the table over to the bar and buying him shots. Tall one got wind of this and they didn't manage to sneak away un-noticed after that (despite the leaving the table pretending to take a phone call). Arran and the girlfriend (who small one pointed out was dressed like Where's Wally in a red stripy top) joined in with the Baby Guinness, and the Irish Bar man was only charging them $3 a shot instead of the usual $8. Then when Waterford Aidan and Donna joined us and Aidan went to buy a round, he was charged full price and ended up paying some $60 in one go. We left after the quiz and went inside the bar Electric Avenue, where the night took a messy turn. William started buying an awful lot of tequila shots and generally struggling to sit in a chair without looking like he'll keel over. When he made a move to buy another tray of Tequila shots Tall one re-filled some of the empty glasses with beer and told him he'd missed some, so William drank them complete with salt and lemon – instead of buying more. Small one managed to wrestle Clare away from the new fella for a minute and had her on the floor when trying to dance with her. This resulted in the Maori Bouncer coming over to say we all had to leave, the irony being that it was the same bouncer who in a different bar last friday small one had convinced to 'pretend' to throw Clare out for a joke, and this time was doing it for real. William had to be thrown into a taxi and was taken home by Clare. For some reason we all went for a dessert at Midnight in the cafe next door, and then a rotten kebab up Cuba Street.

Friday was a bad day. Small one spent the day complaining of a hangover, along with half the office. This day in particular was one that Manager Adam had asked for staff to be in early at 8am as they had a huge list of calls to get done before the school holidays. Only two people turned up on time, Aidan over an hour late and William didn't show up at all. Tall and small one weren't in that unit any longer, but still managed to turn up on time. We helped Andy lower Steve's desk using the wind down handle, Steve wasn't impressed. Arran arrived claiming he was still drunk, having to finish all those Tequila shots that William brought. Things got worse when Adam came over and asked Arran for a report, who responded by telling him he couldn't do it as “somebody's taken my mouse”....Tall one had taken it, though small one got the blame. After work did a food shop, which we hoped would be a cheap one (after spending $160 drinking last night and last week), but was still over a hundred dollars. A quiet night in watching Location Location, but were asleep by the time Restoration Man came on.

Saturday rained hard all day long. After watching Come Dine with Me in the morning made it out for a coffee in the cafe on the ground floor of our office. Then headed up town for more coffee and to generally get drenched in the rain. Walking up Lambton Quay there always seems to be a din of Sparrows making noise in the trees, there's also the same young lad busking every time we're in town, who only ever sings Bob Dylan songs. We had meant to meet Joel, though he was still working door to door sales in the rain, though sounded like he'd had a good week and had taken to it well. Was now enjoying the TV in the flat more as Tall one had found a filthy remote control down in the communal bins on the ground floor of the Apartment Block. It happened to work for our TV, so now we can adjust the volume and channels without even getting out of bed. Ended Saturday by watching another Come Dine with Me, and then the 4th and final episode of Billy Connolly's Journey to the Edge of the World (across Canada) – which we had watched the first 2 episodes almost 4 years ago in Sydney, then the third episode last year in Ireland or Canada, and now at last had seen the last one.

Sunday, still pissing with rain. Tall one made porridge on the hob. Went for a rainy walk into the City to shop for a internet device for small one, failed. Went to the library and sat with a coffee on the free wifi – behind us sat a strange blonde fella who with a bit of a strange manic laugh started pacing back and forth saying “Leave me alone!”. Small one also thought he was looking at people and licking his lips. Thankfully he left shortly after.

Saturday 13th – Sunday 14th April 2013

A miserable Saturday, wet weather, hung over and nothing to do. Managed a food shop though, and in the afternoon tall one made it out to a coffee shop to read a book, then an evening watching the last season of Irish show, Love / Hate. Sunday was much brighter weather. After a coffee and a home cooked sausage went for a walk up into the Town Belt hills. Quite steep, but didn't take long to feel like we were out of the City and into a large Pine and Fern forest, with steep hiking and biking tracks. Had originally planned out to Wilton Bush the other side of the hills, but was a maze of suburban roads, and we got bad directions from a foreign man in a convenience store – so gave up and headed back the way we came. Great views of the City, nice to see it from the opposite perspective to the Mount Victoria lookout. Got back after the 3 and a half hour walk for a much needed cup of tea.

Friday 12th April 2013

Drama at work today when Steve from Manchester turned up late and the word was that he had had an emergency. When he arrived a couple of hours late he was all flustered and refused to talk about it. Not till later did we find out he had witnessed a car accident at a crossing or something like that. After work we headed down to the Old Bailey Pub, whose happy hour brought the $8 pints down to $7. Small one drank Celtic Red and Tall one Original Ale – bar man got the glasses mixed up and we found they tasted exactly the same. A large group from the office sat squashed in the corner of the pub by a hot fire, scaring most of the old ladies having drinks off. There was a very sour faced, young Blonde waitress working and small one asked her to get Adams attention to come over and soeak to us, to which she looked confused and turned to William from Waterford and toold hiim to sit down and was Welcome to....?? William was receiving abuse after destroying the toilets at work with some God almighty stench, that seemed to even linger in the lifts. English Clare also received abuse after emails had been circulated about her chronic diarrhoea. Small one asked the Maori bouncer at the door to play a joke on Clare, and he came over and asked her to leave, Clare started getting all defensive, to which the Bouncer asked her to “just stand up”, she did straight away like a nervous school girl, then the bouncer couldn't help from laughing. Then when Clare came back from the bar she was pretty confused showing the inside of her wallet to everyone as inside it was the photographs of two young boys she didn't know. “What the fuck?” she kept asking, but one photo was of Small one's nephew and the other was Williams God son.

Half the group then moved on to the Daawat Indian Restaurant on Manners Street. The restaurant was deserted, and eerily we were the only table (ten people) in the whole place. The poor staff had to endure all these loud, drunked people discussing chronic diarrhoea. It was bring your own and one of the girls (Polly or Pearl) had brought along a bottle of Red Wine called “Wolf Blass Eagle Hawk”. Before the night was over William came back from the toilets with the three girls wearing matching mascara.... it didn't suit him. Most of them then left to go out to another bar or a club, tall one dragged small one home, they'd already spent almost $150.

Saturday 6th March – Thursday 11th April 2013

Spent the saturday buying more bits and pieces for the flat, (bath mats and quilt covers etc), the same routine we seem to go through every few months – buying the same new household junk for some new place we've moved into – only to throw it all away a few months later until the next place. Shopped for a small comfortable chair to buy for the flat (otherwise we can only sit on the bed or the cheap plastic things), all chairs seemed to be around $100, then we went into Salvation Army and they had a small, soft chair for $5..... with $10 delivery fee.... we may come back for it, despite the fleas it will probably give us. Tall one stuck our travel maps on the apartment walls (of Canada, Asia, Australia and New Zealand), trouble was made the room look like a geography class room. Took us half an hour to work out the elaboorate washer / dryer instruction manual – the landlords big hand writing on the front said if the door 'locks' it is $100 fee to get it unlocked. So we were terrified using this thing, which wasn't complicated at all if you threw the manual away. Though the manual had a nice section on suggesting settings for different loads, suggesting number 6 for “heavily stained underwear” and ironically on that page was a big dirty smudge of some kind. Still only bumped into one or two people who live in the same apartment. A strange design, with very smelly corridors, and staircases that always smell of cooked food. The estate agent gave us a photo disc of picturs she'd taken of the flat (back in January!), too compare with any damage we saw. They were terrible photos, over 150, and half out of focus and some of them included her miserable face reflected in a mirror.

Spent most of weekend around the Thorndon area, not a great deal going on over the road on Molesworth street, all cafes seem to close on the weekend and the bars are expensive, full of yuppies from the adjacent Parliament building. Found a different library (National Library), with free wifi, only thing is they have the most ridiculously designed seating – either these bizarre, multi coloured cube block sofas, with no backs (looks like a giant babies play room) or these very very heavy and very tall metal stools – they obviously don't want people on their internet too long. E-mailed the wifi company we found supplied paid wifi to our apartment block, and got some confusing response back that it cost $100 a month. We asked him again, $100 for what?.... he got a bit stroppy and said its on the posters and its $100 for 6gb a month..... we told him there were no posters in the apartment – and the way you hadf to pay was either over the phone (to a man who answers by just saying, “yeah hello?”), or he emails you his bank account details..... hmmm, we'll leave it thanks. Saturday night small one's throat was at him (blood coming up) and at 10pm we walked him to Accident and Emergency, an hours walk across the City through crowds of loud, sloppy drunk girls and stroppy looking fellas. Got to the Hospital at the receptionist told him it would cost $400 to see a doctor, and if he was still bleeding that would be grade 4 and cost $900, small one said we'd leave it. Receptionist suggested the Medical Centre a few blocks up, and they wanted to charge us $180 (she also did not know what “the Republic of Ireland” meant, asking “is that North or South”), so we spent an hour walking back through the drunks to get home again.... a nice evening stroll.

Meanwhile work at the office was standard enough. Half of the temps spend their time on Seek looking for new jobs and nobody seems to mind. Small one still to move down to tall one's unit spends most of his days writing obscene messages on other peoples facebook pages when they leave their desk, leaving half the office locking their computers whenever they go and make tea. So then small one started hiding peoples computer mice, or keyboards, or mobile phones, one day hiding Aidan from Waterford's cigarettes, to have Aidan all in a strop and threatening to report them stolen to Adam. Tall one still didn't now half the temps names, and small one had spent the last two weeks calling one girl 'Polly' when her name was in fact 'Pearl'. We then had a new temp start on the Monday, another English fella – he turned up in pointy shoes, turned up trousers, thin tie, thick glasses and pristinely combed back gelled hair, looked like someone out of Mad Men. The walk to work had now been reduced from 35 minutes to 5 minutes, saving us an hour a day. Small one prepares a lunch box for them both every morning, and one day decided he wouldn't take any crisps or bars as he wanted to be healthy, and then at lunch time was so hungry he went out and brought a bag of beer battered chips from New World. The work was essentially the same, small one's unit given a list of pointless phone calls to make, told they were of the highest importance, and then an hour later told to scrap the rest of the list. The calls themselves usually consisted of someone the other end of the phone of “i already know that” or “I've already done that”. Meanwhile tall one was essentially a glorified go-between, spending the day pretty much just copying and pasting data from emails to spreadsheets to the management software back to emails and back to spreadsheets and over again...... It pays well though, but there's zero job satisfaction.

Saturday 30th March – Friday 5th April 2013

Easter weekend and we spent it doing sweet nothing. Saturday was a day mostly watching the last season of The Wire. Easter Sunday started with tall one hiding 3 easter eggs in the very small bedroom for small one to hunt. It took him an awful long time considering how small the room was and tall one was giving him a lot of hints, small one not too impressed. Finished the Wire, at last, and had our freedom – had a brief walk around the City, and it was a very windy sunday. Walk up the wharf and waves crashing up the pier and boats, and strong enough wind to knock you over, this must be the windy Wellington we'd heard about. Bank holiday Monday we spent the day walking around the City looking for Apartment blocks to enquire about flats.

Tuesday, both back at the office for another 4 day week. Another slightly chaotic week for small one, being given very urgent and important work that they were told they had t get done, only for the girls (put in charge whilst Adam off for the week) to tell them an hour later not to worry about any of that work any more. Tall one had a very quiet week, editing notes on their software system and training up to replace temp Vinh who is leaving at end of the week. Tuesday small and tall one viewed a flat literally a block away from their office, above Subway. The estate agent couldn't have been less interested, stood with arms folded and gave us very short abrupt answers with no real info. Was a good location (though out of the main City hub) studio size with bed, kitchen, table, tables, ensuite, and she said we only had to pay gas on top (about $5 extra a week). We said we'd take it and started the ball rolling with references, forms, and drawing out the 4 weeks bond and firsts week rent. That night tall one met Joel and went to the cinema to see the new 'Oz' movie, which was pretty smug and annoying. After the cinema had heard back from the teaching abroad agency small one had been in contact with. Had been looking into teaching in Thailand next year, but now the Agent came back with some confusing answers and high prices, saying that they didn't send people to work in Phuket (even though it was one of 3 places listed on their website), small one asked what level of Irish school cert he needed to go to which she said she didn't know, but in South Africa you needed 10 points??? (and this was an Irish based company?). Then she quoted the 500 euro cost each for the online 120 hour teaching course, on top of her fees..... so maybe we'll leave this one. Has been a day of Agents trying to get a fee out of us when they don't seem to know a thing.

Wednesday turned up at the estate agents complete with cash and contract signed, we then thought to double check clause in contract that said tenant paid for electricity, water and gas. To which the estate agent played dumb and checked with a colleague who confirmed that of course the tenant paid electric, water and gas as well.... we said we'd leave it then as it was not what we'd been told, and had to pry that contract out her hand before we left. Needed a beer after work, and met Joel in Molly Malones. Had their Irish Stew and a small free Montieths beer.

Thursday at work and the estate agent got back to us and claimed she spoke to the landlord and said why we'd pulled out, and apparently he'd take $20 off a week ($295 down to $275 a week), we agreed to this and the ball was in motion again. Turned up with the bond at lunch and re-signed a hand write contract (as their system was down??), only to see she had miscalculated the rent and charged us another $5 less a week, making it $270 a week plus bills. Finally confirmed the move for tomorrow afternoon, and gave notice at The Cambridge Hotel when we could move out on Saturday morning. After work we arrange to meet Dublin Arran from the office and his girlfriend for the 2 for $30 steaks at The Grand. Stopped and met the two Waterford Irish boys in Establishment, who were already on their third Pint having left work half an hour before us. Moved to the Grand along with English Donna, and ordered our stone baked Steaks, hoping we wouldn't be recongised as the ones who under paid their bill by half last month. It then took them an awful long time to NOT cook our steak, and finally half an hour later out came the red hot stone with the raw meat on top. Was very good, went down well. Moved swiftly upstairs, just in time to catch the pub quiz. The first General Knowledge round had no 'general' questions at all, struggled through getting about out of ten question right. In the end came 11th out of 15 teams. Tall one managed to steer small one away from the bar early enough at 11pm, much to the other staff who wanted small one with his 'filthy' mouth to stay longer. Back at the flat and did a rough pack of stuff to take too work tomorrow morning to break up the move to the new flat.

Friday small one felt hangover from last night, said he would never drink again. Long walk with heavy bags to the office, and arrived at 8am. Got breakfast next door in the Wholly Bagel, a bagel and coffee for $6. Small one only wanted a bagel for $5.20, but tall one and the Limerick girl at the till convinced him to pay the extra 80 cents for a tea. She even gave him an extra large tea for his moneys worth. Then on the way into the office, small one went to grab his swipe card for the door and dropped his large hot tea all over his hands, shirt, door, wall and floor.... went everywhere, had to be a large didn't it. With burnt hands, small one mopped it up with help from tall one. Was a straightforward day at work. One of the Waterford boys turned up late at 10am, and got chewed out of it by temporary office supervisor, the young Asian girl Bonny, to which he told her “let's not get excited about this” and went back to his desk to spend the day apply for work online. Temp Vinh left today (who Tall one was replacing next week), but we couldn't go for the drinks as we had to finish our move to the flat. Walked back to Cambridge and stopped off in Warehouse to buy bedding – a pack of two pillows and a duvet for $4.90 in Warehouse proved to be of the highest quality. Then to save $9 we stole one of the two flat sheets from the Hostel. Checked out and said farewell to the nice Maori lad behind the counter. We roped Joel into helping us move and he had to watch us pack for half an hour, then struggle carrying the last of our junk across the City on the 30 minute walk to the new flat. He then got to watch us make our bed, and then came for the food shop in New World with us, a thrilling Friday night for him no doubt. Had a few beers back in the flat and surveyed the new home. The table and chairs which came with the place were in fact patio table and chairs (table even had a hole for an umbrella), there was also a very small, pull out draw of a dishwasher under the oven which we'll never us in our life. Joel discussed his first job interview, which was for a Door to Door sales company, starting tomorrow. He left after watching our thrilling housing shows with us, and then never text back he'd arrived home so small one presumed he was dead, which apparently wasn't the case.

Sunday 24th – Good Friday 29th March 2013

Small one started at his new office on the Monday, thankfully sitting the otherside of the room from Tall one. He was put right next to top hat wearing, Mark from the other office. The other 8 temps included 2 irish lads from Waterford, a Canadian from Edmonton, a kiwi girl and another 4 non-de script girls. Adam the Manager had the new temps sit in a circle and introduce themselves and say something short about themselves, he then brought over two young girls who were temps but had been working there a month or two, and were told they would be training them. The two girls then sat down and said for everyone tos it in a circle and introduce themselves and say something each – the new temps pointed out they had literally just done this, but the girls said to go ahead and do it again for their benefit. Was given the training on the software system, and given some outbound calling, straightforward enough. Though small one had already asked if he could work 8 hours a day (like tall one and the previous office) where as all other 9 temps had been told 7.5 hours only. This meant at 4.30pm everyone went home except small one who had to make an excuse as to why he wasn't leaving with them, as he didn't want them all complaining that they weren't getting the same hours. Small one spent the four day week (closed for Good Friday) coughing and blowing snot all over his desk with a bad cold, this gradually spread across to most of the other temps over those few days. Tall one avoided it until the weekend when it seemed to take a hold. Was a quiet week for tall one, not many Media reports this week. Tall one spent most of his time trying to dress up the bad haircut form last weekend, desperately side brushing that ruler straight fringe cut the drunk barber had given him.

Food shopping with Joel on Wednesday. Spent some tim looking curiously at the plastic wrapped pig's stomachs you could buy, along with the seperate Pigs Skin, Pigs Trotters, Pigs Hearts, Pigs Livers – you could almost buy it all and make a Frankenstein of a pig in your kitchen. New World was over flowing with staff as usual, busily re-stocking shelves. So much so that when tall one went to take a few excessive items back to the shelves, there was literally nowhere to put them back as in those few minutes some busy body staff member had re-stocked the shelf solid – ended up leaving Tim Tams and some Bran flakes in the shampoo section. We had planned on going to the cinema that evening using a $10 ticket voucher from the maps in the hotel, not realizing until we got there that it had expired June 2012, the year before. Didn't bother paying the extra $6.50 so walked home. Met Joel on the way back who was on his way to meet us with some glamorous girl he'd met in the hostel that day, though we accused him of having hired her from an agency.

When it got to the last working day (Thursday), small one was told that he and 'top hat' would be moving to the otherside of the office (near tall one) to replace the retired Principal in making outbound calls to people which had featured in related media artices. When the day was done the staff invited everyone out for drinks, and we traipsed down to the Down town Backpackers, to the Waterloo bar for the $8 jugs. Got to know some of the staff, again small one talking to everyone that day than tall one had bothered with in the last 3 weeks. The 2 Waterford Irish, small one and Arran from Dublin all naturally congregated in a corner as the Irish usually do. Occasionally interrupted by Steve from Manchester, trying to bring Cricket to the table of discussion, but small one would have none of it after telling the Irish how Steve wears Union Jack socks and has a Union Jack handkerchief.... but then after some though, realized that there was nothing better to do with a Union Jack than wipe snot on it or wrap around your sweaty feet. We moved off to the Establishment for $5 pints. Small one put Arran down by explaining to everyone one that there were two types of Irishmen, one being true Irishmen, the other being 'Dublin Irish'. Arran left to bring his girlfriend back to the bar, but for some reason the bouncer wouldn't let his girlfriend in so we all moved to Kitty O'Sheas. Small one gradually got noisier as the night went on, and told the perfect nice two girls who did his training that they were cunts for abandoning him and Mark to the other end of the office to replace this Principal, surprisingly they thought the comment was witty. Left around Midnight and small and tall made their way up to Dominos, arriving a few minutes after official closing time, small one somehow convinced the cashier to still serve him, mentioning “do you know who we are, we eat here a lot – this place wouldn't' survive without us”, somehow we got fed and was even given sime free dips and a free bag of chicken nuggets.

Next day was spent nursing a hangover and watching the remaining four episodes of Season 4 of the Wire – though the last episode was cut short after 60 minutes when it should have been an extra 20 minutes long. We did little else that day, so that was our Good Friday.

Saturday 23rd March 2013

Found some half decent wifi in YHA hostel to download that first episode of The Wire season 3, to start small one's marathon off again. Said we'd hike with Joel up to the Mount Victoria lookout, but instead took him to a charity shop to buy tall one a smelly office shirt, then to a small barbers where tall one got a trim from a booze smelling hairdresser. Afterwards finally started the Hike up the Mount, small one complaining about his throat and tonsils (exactly a year after they had flared up for a few months in Canada). Dodged a lot of bikes coming fast up and down the hill tracks, but made it to the top quicker and easier than we thought. Took the same photos that tall one and small one took a month or so ago on their road trip, then walked back down.

Wednesday 20th – Friday 22nd March 2013

Small one started his 4th job since arriving in the City, his 2nd in a week (of course he's not getting paid for those first 2 aborted days at Kiwibank). Working for GBL recruitment, he ended up in the same office building as Tall one started in a few weeks ago. The two British girls he started with were even still on the same floor, and small one was sat in Tall one's old seat. Was also starting at same time as one other temp, he was English as most temps seem to be and wore a  top hat.Things hadn't changed either, as no work arrived for them until after lunch time, when they were handed a list of 4,000 people to phone but when they went to start phoning, they found all the telephone numbers provided were fax numbers, so ended up having to google the phone numbers. The English wanker was over keen about everything wanting to get everyone to colour code their spreadsheets and all that kind of bollocks. The girls weren't too impressed, now on their fourth week of doing nothing. Small one spoke to the two girls more on his first day than tall one did in 2 weeks, Tall one reminded him that it wasn't health to socialize. This went on for the 3 days of this week, and small one enjoyed his time on the Internet. Though small one did struggle with one aspect of the phone calls, he couldn't pronounce the word 'occupancy' on the script to read down the phone. He struggled in vain in ear shot of the other temps, and then tried leaving that word out of the script, but found then nobody understood which email and issue he was referring to. That evening tall one wrote the word down phonetically for him to read. Then as Small one was beginning to settle in, they received an email that the two girls would still be staying but on monday him and the wanker would be moving up to tall one's office on Murphy st, as part of this new backlog team..... woo hoo? No more free Internet all day.

Meanwhile tall one over in the other office building, over heard the Irish temp, Arran reading out loud small one's name, “Conor Hegarty.... Conor Hegarty.... he's got to be Irish”. They'd been given a list of the 10 temps we we're getting on Monday and he was spotting the Irish ones. Tall on text small one about it, but received no responses all day.... found out later that somehow he managed to add small one to his 'blocked' list.

Outside of work was an interesting few days. On the Wednesday sat downstairs and had the free BBQ with Joel, and was joined by one for the Irish girls we spoke to on Paddy's Day in the Green Man (we didn't know she was in our hostel at the time, and also worked for the same company as both of us). She was joined by her English friend, who looked like a very overweight version of Carrie Fisher from Star Wars. The Maori fella from Reception was dishing up the chops and sausages again, and gave tall and small one some extra chops each – the sausages were still tasting like playdo though, might not do this again. Joel filled us in on his day in Wellington, how he'd gone to walk to the beach, but halfway realized he'd forgotten his camera so came back and didnt bother again. He'd also gone to an Internet cafe to print off his CV, sat their until his 1 hour of time ran out then realized he hadn't printed it and so went back to the hotel. We then left Joel to it and went to New World to do our foodshop. On the first aisle (fruit and veg) small one left tall one with the trolley whilst he went looking for a red onion. Tall one pushed the trolley round the corner to look at the meat, and a few minutes later small one arrived by his side with no onion in his hand. Tall one asked, “why didn't you get the onion?”, to which small one pointed to the trolley by his side where he'd put an onion in. Then he realized his mistake, he'd gone back to where he'd left tall one standing in the fruit and veg and took the only trolley that was left there and pushed it round the corner not realizing it was someone elses. He then had to take the trolley back to the aisle, where some poor confused woman was standing there scratching her head. Small one apologized for getting confused and stealing her food, to which she said she thought she was literally going crazy. Was a good food shop, seemed to get a lot for our $100 for a change, though the cashier did put the passion fruit through as plums, which were two thirds cheaper. Back at the hostel small one discovered the new kitchen toaster, and could not stop telling tall one how impressed he was with this...toaster. Apparently you pressed a button and it automatically lowered and highered your toast in and out..... “yes it sounds very exciting” said tall one. Friday night we settled down and watched our housing programs, 'Relocation, Relocation” and “Restoration Man”, whilst Joel was keen to hit the town, but we weren't gonna miss our housing programs on our friday night, so left him to it.

Tuesday 19th March 2013

Small one started work, feeling rougher than he was yesterday. Lots of missed calls from the other temp agency, GBL who had a job offer for him come back up. Starting tomorrow at same office as tall one, paid $4 more an hour than Kiwibank and guaranteed work till Oct – compared to 2 months only here. He felt bad quitting the bank after only 2 days training, with him being so popular and all. But he couldn't turn down work till Oct that paid better. So finished his shift then handed in his notice knowing he probably wouldn't be paid for the last 2 days training.

Back to the hostel and too lazy to cook, so used small one's poorly Irish credit card to buy Dominos pizza and sides (2 days in a row). Joel (from Ottawa) had arrived back in the North Island after leaving his job in Christchurch. Checked into the Cambridge Hotel and met us in Reception looking in need of a haircut. Told him that tomorrow small one was starting his fourth job in this City in the space of a few weeks, to which he wanted to know if any of his old employers were looking for staff then?

Monday 18th March 2013

Small one dragged out of bed by Tall one, dressed and pushed out the door into the pissing rain for his first day at work at Kiwibank. Small one spent his first day in silence, as his voice was so hoarse from shouting to everyone above the music last night. Was a good building to be in though, panoramic views of harbour and a Cappuccino machine on every floor. Was 20 temps in total (a lot of English as usual), started off all sat round a table in silence and asked to answer the question, “what is your proudest moment”.... small one started by saying, “my name is Conor, i'm from Ireland and my proudest moment was getting out of bed today after celebrating Paddy's Day last night”. The temps laughed and the next fella introduced himself as “Rory from Ireland” (who went out Saturday instead of Sunday for Paddys), then the thrid one was “I'll complete the trio, I'm Nicholas from Ireland” (he did celebrate last night and spent the day turning purple). Spent the day learning some dull banking techniques. Meanwhile Tall one started work and after half an hour the fire alarm went off, so the whole building had to leave via the stairs (10 floors), stand outside in the rain for ten minutes, then all traipse back up the stairs to their floor, not what you'd like to be doing the morning after Paddy's day..... still finding glitter on his face as well, from that poxy Paddys Day hat.

Sunday 17th March 2013 – St Patrick's Day

Left the hotel at 10am with the plan of starting our Paddy's Day early to end it early ready for work tomorrow. Had coffee and breakfast next door to start the day. A long walk through the rain across the City to get to the last 2 Irish Pubs we'd not been to (after the other 3 last night). Started in D4 as they had advertised an Irish 'Trad Session' starting at 11.30am. Was not a very Irish bar, very modern and slick, with fancy flame fires out on the smokers balcony. The Barman was Irish and told us to say the word 'Liam's Loyalty' when ordering to get a discount (this never worked however). He was also 'shocking at pouring the Guinness, even when it was so quiet and had time to do it well, he would stick the glass flat on the drip tray and turnt he tap on and walk away, shocking, absolutely shocking. Small one pointed this shocking pouring technique out all day, as we continued to buy the bad Guinness (the head disappearing into a thin line of bubbles within 5 minutes). Tall one tried the $5 Jamiesons now and again, but mostly they stuck to the bad Guinness.

What was more shocking was the Irish Trad session.... was a fella in a leather kilt playing a Synthesized keyboard. He played a U2 song, obviously pre-entered into the demo section, then halfway through the song got up off stage to go check the speakers, but to our astonishment the song kept on playing, he was playing nothing himself, despite sitting there waving his fingers on the keys. They played a few Irish songs, but they mixed into them some random hits like 'Mrs Robinson' and 'American Pie'?? They did schedule some Irish dancers for half an hour, which were six young girls and one very feminine lad, who were quite good at a bit of Riverdance. There was also some German Backpackers who tried a bit of dancing, though they were dancing in the style of the 'Macarena' but to the Fields of Athenry.... didn't work, bloody Germans. The useless Bar Man gave us a green glittery Paddys Day hat each, which resulted in small one's Guinness being sprinkled with glitter and having to use a coaster to scrape the top off. Was still finding this bloody glitter on our faces hours after we had got rid of the hats.

At one point a middle aged NZ couple joined us, she claimed she was Irish ancestory, and he was Scottish. Though we could never hear a word he said, whislt she laughed at everything small one mentioned. They were nice enough to buy us one of thos shocking Guinness each however. After them we chatted to some Irish people who we recognised from Kitty O'Sheas the night before. This big fella who turned out to know Abba from Athlone, and his little shrew faced friend who shuffled around the bar floor. Behind us there was a little midget (or real life leprechaun) complete with bow tie (must be the worst day f the yea for him), soon the shrew faced fella was trying to get a photo with him and trying to prove who was taller, the midget told him to 'fuck off'. Though when the 16 year old Irish Dancer girls wanted a photo, he couldn't get enough of it. Small one also convinced the shrew fella that he owed us two pints from last night, him being such a state then and now believed him. The place got pretty busy throughout the day though, and was a strange sight seeing big Mauri fellas turn up with their little green Paddys day hats on. We did think that there is no other Country in the world which has a day like this that the whole world dress up and celebrate, you couldn't imagine people dressing up in Stars and Stripes or Union Jacks to celebrate an equivalent day for that country.

Around 2 o'clock ish we left and headed to The Green Man. This was even less Iirish than the last place, it's décor was full of lush red cushioned pillas and art deco lampshades, it was the kind of tacky garbage you'd expect on 60 Minute Makeover. Ordered some Curry Chips and Cheese and was surprised when the table number they gave us had a Barbie doll tied to the metal holder. Every table had a different Barbie with their table number, our one had purple tufts of hair, but bald on the top, both legs missing and one arm which could manage a salute. Whilst waiting for the food to arrive we smeared her face and hands with aoili that was left on the table. We moved tables when the two irish fellas from the hostel turned up. Small one had chatted to them a few times when cooking, but tall one had said nothing to them before. He kept up this tradition and the mounting group of hostel people presumed he was either mute or German?? Small one then spent the next few hours laying into the big Irish lads 'shocking haircut, and how he went from a beast of a man to looking like the poof of the hostel. Was also joined by some German lad who was wearing leather shorts, we tried our best to avoid talking to him. Small one also managed to make friends in the toilet, when some Irish fella in a cubical sung loudly the words, “If I had the wings of a sparrow....”. He then left the next verse of the Anti Rangers FC song open, and small one answered him with the next line.... and the two Celtic fans met and hugged by the urinals....

Small one had promised they would leave by 6 o'clock, and so by 7 o'clock tall one put his foot down and forced him to walk home in the rain with him. They did a small food shop for tomorrow's lunch at work, and then made it back to the hostel for 8pm when small one collapsed straight to sleep. The most exhausted out of us, was small one;s Irish credit card – which he racked up over $300 today.

Saturday 16th March 2013

Apparently Wellington has now entered the rest of the country in this drought zone, though the weekend was mostly pissing with rain, in true Paddy's day fashion. Stuck up our Irish flag in our Hotel window, it's a good corner window of the building as well so everyone walking up the street can see it. Due to some mix-up we couldn't start Season 3 fo the Wire as we were missing episode one.... wasted an hour in the library trying to download it, but the expected time was 11 days, so left that for now. Walked home view the advertised 'South East Asia' market on the wharf, which was mostly food stalls, but quite good to see. Back to the Hotel to do the laundry. Small one then made tall one go out for the night, despite the fact it wasn't Paddy's day till tomorrow. Started in the three closet Irish Pubs. Kitty O'Sheas was quite small and lifeless, so moved on after one pint to Murphy's on Cuba Street. Was bigger and better, but the dumbest barmaid we'd ever been served by. Small one asked if they had Guinness, to which she said, “sure Murphys” and started pouring a Murphys (they're not the same drink love). Then small one asked her what time the music started tomorrow (for Paddys Day), her response was, “ten o'clock tonight”, “no what time tomorrow?” small one asked again, and the girl pointed to another bar maid and said, “yes, that's Annette”.... Small one gave up and drank his Murphys, and ordered some wedges which were quite nice. Back down Cuba street and stopped to watch a small band of drums and guitars busking, which had somehow got the most random assortment of strangers dancing in the street. There were the usual kids dancing, but then there were business ladies and old grannies complete with hand bags round their waist, who were dancing like something out of The Jungle Book. Headed down to Molly Malones (with their giant Inflatable Leprachaun on the first floor), was quite busy and boring, and spent an hour reading Irish names off a teatowel before we left. Last stoop was the small Welsh Bar, where a very Welsh sounding man sung with a very American accent. Back to bed, feeling well rehearsed for tomorrow.

Monday 11th March – Friday 15th March 2013

This week started watching 'The Wire' for the first time. Small one obsessively insisting we fit in as many episodes as humanly possible as soon as poor tall one was in the door from work, up until he was dozing off after Midnight. Got through the first two seasons in less than a week, it was a surreal week though. Occasionally we broke it up with our programs on actual broadcast TV, Kitchen Nightmare's on Mondays, Ice Road Truckers and Come Dine with Me on Saturdays, Relocation, Relocation followed by Restoration Man on our exciting Friday Nights in.....

Tall one started his new job, which was a further ten minutes walk (past the Bus Depot and Beehive Building) to another office building for same company. Was very different, there was no phone calls (in or out bound) involved in his role, was mostly a week of processing email enquiries, or changing status' and making corrections to complaint case files on their software. Tall one's eyes were even more bleary than before, the computer screen seemed to be inches from his face on the short desks. Was a dozen or so other temps up there though (mostly British again), this meant Tall one was left with the shabby chair with no arms, no notepaper, no pins for his note board and no pens. He was lucky with his view however, with an enormous window which overlooked (from tenth floor) the harbour and the outstretching highway that leads around the bay and up the country. Could even watch traffic wardens below him as they handed out tickets. Halfway through the week he dropped a cube of Dairy Caramel on the footpath, then spent the next few days walking past the same spot watching this brown and yellowly smudge get more and more squashed...... This was the highlight of his week, though that's Data Entry work for you. Also brought some postcards to send home, and the cashier asked which stamps he'd like. Tall one said “International Postcard Stamps” and the cashier said, “No, no, Wellington or Lambs...?”, then pointed to two different strips of stamps, one was a set involving images of the City, the other had baby sheep on (tall one went for the lambs). The week went relatively quickly though, following the routine of up at 7.20am, make cheese rolls, have cereal, get dressed walk the half an hour to work, then sit two inches from a screen for 8.5 hours, then half an hour walk back past a chocolate stain on the footpath, shower, eat a dinner then watch 5-6 hours of The Wire...... exhausting is one word for it.

Meanwhile small one had no work this week. Interview at Henderson Agency promised him work starting the following week for KiwiBank, but they needed two references first – Classic Flyers' Martin doesn't seem to have a working email anymore (maybe he left?), and Drake at the Mount took days to get back. But he's been promised to start Monday for $18, though he was then confused when GBL phoned and offered him $22 for the same position as tall one at the office, then they cancelled him the next day and said it might be ready next week. There was also ANZ who interviewed him for a job starting in a months time for $22, so he wasn't sure what to do. There's been no work from the cleaning agency, Enterprise this week except for 2 days on a building site but he'd have to spend $50 on safety boots first, no thanks.

Sunday 10th March 2013

A long walk round the harbour to find tall one's new office for tomorrow morning, a good 35 minutes walk from the hostel. Back through the City past the Beehive Building and small one was getting phone calls and text messages from a mysterious Chinese woman claiming to have had a call from his Mother who is her friend, even after he text to say she's got the wrong person, she insisted she hadn't. Up Cuba Street and into Murphy's Irish Bar, ordered the huge sounding Irish Breakfast with Bacon, Sausages, Eggs, Toast, Mushrooms, Baked Beans, Hash Brown and Black Pudding. Was a little disappointing, thought he black pudding was good. Small one was due to work 7pm-3.30am tonight cleaning, but some new girl at the agency phoned to tell him to only work 11pm till 3.30am instead. Small one refused and the girl claimed that they never had any shifts start at 7pm.... small one pointed out that he had a confirmation email with that start time and had even done this same shift before, he said he wouldn't bother messing up his sleep pattern and traipsing up town at 11pm for the sake of a 4 hour shift. Left Cuba Street, had a walk round the harbour, past the beach to where small one had walked alongside some orcas last week. Back to the beach to watch two girls embarrassing themselves trying to stand upright on surf boards. At the hostel for small one's afternoon sleep, then to make a change tall one cooked the dinner.

Saturday 9th March 2013

Both off today, had a good lie on. As we sat on the hallway sofa using the wifi the strange, tubby, somewhat camp Indian man from reception came past singing a very loud song and stopped to bow at us and say, “good morning”..... he's a bit of a weird one, he came over and shook tall one's hand the other day and asked him where he was from. Then after Ox Tail soup for lunch headed out to Te Papa Museum. Would have left earlier but Small one insisted on watching a documentary on Justin Bieber before we left. Walked to the Museum via the same wharf we saw the large Stingray the other day (hoping to get a photo). We saw no Stingray, but we did see a Penguin swimming and diving for fish. Our first time to see a Penguin swimming in the wild (the other 2 times as on land). He was hard to keep up with as he darted under the wharf and would pop up halfway up the wharf. Not sure what type of Penguin it was, as looked bigger, with a larger beak and eye, along with more mottled white markings, compared to the shiny Little Blue Penguins we've seen before. Been a surprising week for wildlife in Wellington Harbour, you don't expect to see dolphins, Orcas, huge stingrays and penguins all so close to a big City. Finally got into Te Papa Museum, headed round the natural section, stuffed birds and a giant Squid in a glass case (which Tall one remembers seeing the week it arrived back in Dec 2008). Then some confusing technological departments, and a noisy xylophone. Back to Hostel then to have Pork Chops and watch Ice Road Truckers.

Friday 8th March 2013

Tall one at his last day in that particular office, 8 hours and only one phone call received. Was made a cup of tea by one of the girls but she used a green mug, he had to change that himself after into a white mug (the exterior colour doesn't matter, but the interior colour has to be white). Feeling a little stir crazy at the job sat doing nothing all day, eyes blurry and blood shot from mostly spending 8 hours reading the ebook. After work went into a pharmacy to buy some eye drops to stop that bloodshot look, their card machine was down so had to buy them further up the street. Told the pharmacist that those eye drops are ten cents cheaper here than the last place to which she asked, “how much were they there then?.... small one said, “ten cents more”. Meanwhile small one did 10-3 at the same cleaning company, had him wait half an hour before they started at 10.30am, then took a half an hour lunch break soon after that. Met tall one after work and they walked back in the sunshine along the nice harbour / wharf walk. Stopped near Te Papa museum to watch a nervous girl on top of a small house trying to build up the courage to jump in. After fifteen minutes of milking the attention a substantial crowd was there, and was an anti climax by the time she actually jumped in. Ironically the little house had a sign saying “DO NOT CLIMB”, and the Mauri kids were actually using the sign itself as a foot hold to climb the house (without the sign they wouldn't have got up it at all). Then what did make a big impression was the fat Mauri guy who lept from the ground level down into the water and made a God almighty splash that soaked several bystanders, including some gentle OAPs and Tall one and Small One. We then headed further up the wharf trying to dry out in the sun after that. Looking down into the blue water saw an enormous grey Sting gray swimming alongside us, was pretty impressive, bigger than two pillows?? (can't think what to compare it to?). Back at hostel to cook wraps, but the kitchen was full of very noisy Mauri guys drinking and watching very loud Baseball. Ate upstairs in the room after finally getting in after the cards weren't working very well.

Thursday 7th March 2013

Tall one at the office as usual.... very very slow day, he only took 1 call himself. One of the girls urned up an hour late, though can't say anyone noticed or if it made any difference. The few other permanent staff on that floor seem to be giving us more and more dirty looks as we sit there doing nothing. Though one quite smarmy, seedy fella came over with his nostrils in the air naming a perfume and asking if the girls were wearing it, then insisted in smelling their wrists. Meanwhile small one had his 3 hour induction with GBL agency, not doing too bad on the typing and data entry and spelling and word/excel/outlook tests.... was a long morning though. Still holding out for work in an office which is better paid and nicer than cleaning up student vomit. After work back to Hotel and small one cooked sausages.

Wednesday 6th March 2013

Only four calls each today at work. One of the girls had taken to just plugging in her headphones and watching TV shows online all day. The Mauri Manager had asked Tall one to report the number of calls they were getting, which was pretty pitiful. She caught him by surprise and turned up in the afternoon as he held his mobile phone in one hand and his kindle in the other, but they don't seem to mind as they realize there is literally sod all to do (she said she may move a second person to another part of the company as well).

Meanwhile small one spent his day buying new socks, doing a food shop, and generally enjoying our first good pay check week. He worked for 4 hour shift back at the University Cleaners, still waiting to hear back from the customer service jobs or for full time day work with the cleaners. Met Tall one after work and then headed to Cambridge Hotel Bar for their free BBQ (the sausages are like playdo) with their $6.50 jugs of beer. Small one eventually realized that the 'CH' initials on all the staff's uniforms did not mean that person shared the same initials as him (Conor Hegarty) and that it actually stood for the building, 'Cambridge Hotel'.

Tuesday 5th March 2013

Tall one started his exciting day at the office with an angry person who had not been paid along with half the other staff. Was a pretty quiet day other than that, one more call at lunch and his third and last call around 330pm, which another poor person was in tears as she listed 8-9 ongoing issues. The Manager did ask (as it was so quiet) which 1 of us 4 would mind moving to work in their other office, and none of the other temps wanted to so poor tall one said yes, then found out it was less hours, more work and the same pay – though at least it sounded like there was training and he would be doing something actual helpful call centre work. So he was signed up for that to start Monday.

Meanwhile small one had lined up a phone interview with ANZ (who need temps following their merge with National Bank), and want to pay him $22 an hour! Also GBL asked for him to come in this thursday to sign up. He celebrated by walking to the beach in the nice weather, and after sitting for 40 minutes in the sun started walking back. On his way home lots of people were jogging past him in the opposite direction, some of them in suits. This aroused his interest so he turned around back to the beach where there was a pod of Orca / Killer Whales fishing. Small one and half the City then spent the next 40 minutes walking up the coastal road following the Orcas as they fished up the harbour. People were out in Kayaks with them, one fella with a snorkel was swimming right next to the family. The adult male was some 30 foot long, and was swimming in circles, as the rest of the family and young swam in a straight line catching the fish he stirred up. At times they swam only metres from the shore and further round the harbour there were 3 other small pods of Orca families out in the bay. Was an amazing afternoon for small one, whilst tall one was stuck in the corner of an office looking at spreadsheets and pencils. A news crew turned up a bit too late to witness the jumping and the fishing, but got a little footage. Small one chatted to the News 3 camera man who said there was also a small pod of Orcas here yesterday, then there was the 200 dolphins in the harbour on the weekend which made World News, must be some good fishing in there.

Monday 4th March 2013

Small one catching up with sleep after arriving home at 3.45am. The agency wanted him to work the night shift again tonight, but its crap money and is screwing with his sleep and tall ones, so he said sorry day work only.... no reply. He sent in his hours for last week and no reply with regards to how time sheets work either, all very strange.

Tall one started his first full week of boredom at the office. A real slow day, had about 1 call an hour for the first 5 hours, then nothing. Tony Bennett was off for a few days, but his Manager 'Tiafoa'?? was popping up a few times as well as an Asian lad called Benny who was taking our email enquiries. No one there seemed to know a thing about approving tall one's timesheet and when he left at 5pm it still hadn't been done, so he hopes he'll be paid. Today was slightly different in that there was a hideously failed attempt by the Manager to give us some outbound calling work to keep us busy. At 11.34am she emailed us through a spreadsheet of 200 people to contact and said to just work our way through it. We messaged her back and asked what are we actually phoning up to tell each person as nothing had been explained. There was also no contact names or phone numbers for any of the names on the list, so was no way to contact them. Didn't get a reply until 12.15pm, which confirmed what we had to say and with regards to contact details she said she had asked the question for it. After lunch at 2pm an email from her saying, “here are the contact details” and for us to now start phoning. Only looking at the email was the exact same spreadsheet sent at 11.34am... no contact details. Told her this, and then waited until 3.15pm for a reply which said, “sorry here it is”, only there was nothing attached to the email this time..... emailed back and said still nothing, then had to now wait until 4pm for a response, which this time finally had the spreadsheet with all the correct names with phone numbers! Of course by 4pm when we started to phone them we found that the office hours had now closed, so a waste of time. By tomorrow it would be too late to tell them the message anyway, as we were processing these issues tonight.

Sunday 3rd March 2013

Moved out of our single room and temporarily held up on the sofa in the hallway waiting for our new room to become available. Was on that sofa from 8am till 12pm watching cleaners go by, and a lot of young rough looking kiwis checking out late. Finally room finished, and its quite a nice corner room, with a large kitchenette storage unit, and a TV virtually bolted to the ceiling giving us neck ache to watch. One window has a huge view of the Queen Victoria statue, worse than the last room as we're lower down and at angle where we can see her face more. So lying in bed with the blinds open it looks like she's virtually standing on our balcony, with her miserable cow expression, a poker in one hand and her Holy hand grenade in the other. Spent the afternoon dozing and saving money. Small one then headed out to work for 7pm, another late night shift with the cleaning firm. Same buildings as before and some of the same crew. Though one new person was an English Backpacker who said he was living in his car. Trouble was he said, the agency are only giving him night work and so he has to try and sleep in his car during the day which doesn't work. Though he claimed they've just found him day work after threatening to quit.

Saturday 2nd March 2013

Awoke to find our NZ bank account was overdrawn. Some confusing lists of transactions said that the Dominos pizza meal we had the other day drew out $15 leaving us with $5.62 (in credit), then the next item was an unauthorized Overdraft Fee of -$15, leaving us at -$9.38 overdrawn, and then the monthly account fee of -$5.00 brought us to -$14.38 overdrawn. It made no sense as we were only overdrawn due to the unauthorized overdraft fee???

Did a food shop in New World on Tall one's poor credit card. Back to the hostel and cooked a soup lunch with stale bread rolls at 11am, next to four lads drinking vodka and red bull, presumabley in preparation for this Home Grown festival this weekend that made us move rooms. Out into the City afterwards, which was full of young Kiwi lads carrying suspicious bottles of 'pop' and blowing snot out onto the pavement. Into ANZ bank and spoke to a nice little lady who let us jump the queue. She showed us our bank statements which told us why we were overdrawn. Earlier in feb when we drew out all our funds, leaving $2.38 (so that the Campervan people couldn't charge us), we then moved to Wellington with our funds in cash and ordered two new bank cards. The sleazy fella who did this for us (whilst promoting local strip clubs) never mentioned that there was a $15 fee each for a replacement card, had he mentioned this we would have known we didn't have the funds for it in the account and either paid cash or held out on the new cards. So they made us $27 over drawn which we never noticed (as we put our cash back in once the new cards arrived) until today when we noticed their end of month $15 over drawn fee made us overdrawn again.... We explained this to the lady who was kind enough to remove the over drawn fee as well as the two $15 fees for card replacements, making us $30 in credit. We did ask if we'd be charged the overdrawn fee at the end of March as in theory we started the month over drawn until we sorted this out today, but she didn't know.

Walked up to the top of the Wellington Botanical Gardens, past a small girl guide trying to sell cookies who small one ignored and she looked heart broken. Had a cup of tea in the half dead looking autumn Rose Gardens, then up another big hill to the Cable Car and a lot of strange sculptures. By the Cable Car lookout was a very large cylinder shaped tree, and on the top of it a few young lads had climbed and were drinking bottles of wine and throwing them down after. Small one made the gift shop cashier phone the police, who put him on to speak to them. Small one was just telling the cops that “one of them has a blue t-shirt” just as the two boys (in the blue t-shirts) walked by carrying their remaining bottles. They didn't seem to hear him though and we left soon after. Back to the Hotel, which was full of boozy youngsters heading out for the festival, compared to us who were heading home early afternoon after spending the day drinking tea in a rose garden. Spent rest of day on the wifi (working for a change) and small one brought Dominos pizza and 2 sides.... was a good feed again.

Friday 1st March 2013

Up early after not much sleep, and Tall one headed off to work to start at 8.30am. Was another surreal day, this time given some somewhat redundant work to keep them busy, which was outbound calls to people with the most unresolved issues. Was given a script to read, and most of it was now irrelevant (such as “please get any more corrections forms to us by noon today”.... when it was 1pm). So spent forty minutes re-writing the script with the scouser temp, trying our best to be as vague as possible with what we were phoning up for.

Meanwhile small one woke up at 8am and as we had no cereal, he ate a microwavable curry for breakfast and some chocolate fingers. Back to sleep for a while (ignoring a phone call from his new temp agency who were phoning before 8am despite the fact they knew he finished at 3.30am). Had to move into a single room today due to ours being booked out for months due to this 'Homegrown' festival in Wellington. Bags were all packed, and luckily the nice girl at Reception was on and had block booked our room last night (when it was empty) so we could move straight in (this was when a lot of the regulars were having to store bags and come back hours later when room was ready). The new single room was more like a cell, a narrow awkward single bed (for 2 people), a bulky TV and a window view over the street that looked straight down onto the huge Queen Victoria Statue. The nice reception girl then said she had a better room for them to move back to this sunday instead of Monday. Small one was allowed to have a look and thought it was luxury, with its own kitchen unit, two corner windows (away from those noisy fans from the inward facing room). Small one slept most of the rest of the day, though was interrupted by random phone calls from temp agencies. One agency got him to come up town and meet them, had him talking for an hour about 'Wellington' and travels, and when small one asked if they had much work, they said, “no not really”, small one went home to bed again.

Tall one returned at 5.30pm, a little stir crazy from staring at a computer screen with no proper work to do, he went more stir crazy in their temporary single, cell-like room. They decided to go out for dinner courtesy of Tall one;s credit card. After much walking about went back to the Steak restaurant on Cambridge Terrace. Two rump steaks for $30, a 'small' Nacho starter (which was fucking enormous) for $10, two beers, then two coffees and a $12 Apple Crumble. The Steak was the best thing they can remember having eaten, you cooked it yourself on a Stone Bake grill (this small red hot square of stone), you sliced it and grilled it yourself, and on the side had salad and some amazing home made chips. Was a strange bunch of customers in the restaurant, some real snobby old couples (sending their food back), and then some real toothless tinkers wearing their football shorts. When we came to pay (roughly having added it up at $80), the Irish fella only charged us $60. We left in a hurry and went back to our tiny room bloated to watch Relocation, Relocation......

Thursday 28th February 2013

Another endless boring day for Tall one by his phone and computer screen. Whilst small one was offered a cleaning job with this new Recruitment Agency. He contacted Felix cafe and said he couldn't come back due to the fact he'd been offered more money, more hours (and she was a psychopath). The Agency said they were trying to put him forward as a supervisor for this OSC cleaning company but for now he could work tonight as a cleaner with them 7pm-330am.

Tall one walked him to work, up the top of the Terrace Hill to Victoria University. Once dropped off small one introduced himself and after 7.30pm was bundled in a van and taken to the Railway Station to clean offices with a one eyed black man. Their cleaning process was extremely frantic, you marched onto the office, emptied the bins into a black bag and only changed the liner if dirty, a quick wipe of any dusty looking surface (only if dusty looking), then if floor needed hoovering you left door open and light on. Was in and out in a few minutes for each floor, was very very hectic, and the word 'thorough' didn't enter into it. Some surreal places to clean though, some very large Lecture rooms with this enormous, lush staff rooms to the side filled with expensive books. Then he was in the Student building cleaning the Health Clinic, where there was draws and cupboards (unlocked) with pills, penicillin, gonorrhoea medication all on display and just him in the room. Worse was cleaning the student bar and having to mop the vomit off the floor, and pushing the cubes up towards the other cleaner to scoop up, small one started to wretch, but managed to chew it back. On break the largley ethopian staff started to slate the supervisor staff at the company and how useless they all were. They asked smalll one his cleaning experience and he said he was a supervisor for a cleaning firm in Toronto, to which they asked why he wasn't applying for a supervisor role, small one said “who said I haven't”..... silence fell on all of them after they'd spent the last half an hour moaning about all their supervisors, then he told them he was just kidding (he turned down the supervisor role as most of their moaning involved saying how they earnt more than the supervisors as they were paid per hour and supervisors on contract). Small one impressed one of the Ethopian girls by mentioning an Ethopian Celtic football player. She was very excited that he knew Celtic and he showed her his Celtic Tattoo. She told him that “my ex-boyfriend was obsessed with Celtic, he was Scottish and a bastard and he went home and left me here alone....” . At the end of the night (well 3.30am) he was given a lift home as apparently Wellington has a lot of homeless gangs at night who like to beat people up. Back at 3.45am in time to wake Tall one up and explain his nights work to him.

Wednesday 27th February 2013

Tall one started another thrilling day at work. The morning boredom was lightened a little when two fellas window cleaning came absailing down the 12th floor windows. Then just as he was getting into his stride with his boredom they were given their health and saftey briefing by the lady who was too busy yesterday. This involved showing us the two fire exits, one of which was blocked off with scaffolding as the building was having earthquake strengthening repairs done. She said to keep warm clothes, spare food and bottled water under the desk, as incase of an Earthquake (Wellington being on a major fault line) these preparations had saved a lot of peoples lives in the 2011 Earthquake. Back to work at his desk / kindle, and throughout the whole day Tall one answered only four telephone calls. None of which he could do anything to help with except pass on the notes to his Manager. We all averaged about 4 calls each today (better than one quarter of a call yesterday) which is one call every 2 hours....The girls don't seem as confident on the phones, one of them cutting off some poor lady who then called back only to be cut off by the other girl (she then called back and Tall one was lucky enough to answer, and took down her details so someone better could phone her back).

Meanwhile small one had his second day off. This Agency who promised him a garbage collecting job was a train or a bus or ferry ride away up in the 'Hutt' area, though the work itself was in the CBD. The bus cost him $9.50 return to get there, and they promised him a cleaning job for $14 cleaning an office and a warehouse?? On his way back he got somehow lost and found himself nowhere near a bus stop to get back. His only salvation was a train station, but when he went to pay he only had eftpos, and they said Cash only, but they let him on for free anyway. So he arrived back in the City to await Tall one, and hoped he would bring pizza for him. We then watched on the news, how a Great White Shark had killed a swimmer in Auckland. Phoned Natwest Bank as the replacement card for tall one had still not arrived in 3 weeks! Was told there was a stop on his post as some was returned to the branch (this being when tall one's mother tried forwarding post to Ireland for him without adding extra postage), so had to write a letter to the branch to remove the stop before can get a new card.

Tuesday 26th February 2013

Like a good little mother, small one walked tall one to work for his first day. Small one then headed home to spend his first day off on his own. His morning was spent watching Jeremy Kyle Show, his early afternoon spent playing 'Angry Birds'. At 3pm he had a job interview in town, which turned out to be sales. He kept asking the interviewee what the job was doing, and he said he couldn't tell him that, he asked him what it was selling and he was told he couldn't be told that, and he asked what hours he'd be doing and was told he couldn't be told that either. Small one didn't take the job. He did apply online for a job collecting garbage around town and was very excited about his prospects as a garbage collector when Tall one arrived home.

Tall one arrived at his new office job. All morning in the news had been a to story with footage of a Hot Air Balloon crashing out of the sky killing everyone on board, and inside the foray of the Office Building was this enormous, wall size Painting with huge colourful hot air balloons filled with smiling people. There were four temps in total starting from GBL, another fella and two girls, all four of them were from the UK Liverpool, Birmingham, Essex and Tall One from Sussex). They met Tony Bennett who had his suit jacket on with his shirt unbuttoned as casual as the easy listening singer, Tall one realized he wouldn't be needing his burnt tie. Taken to the top floor which seemed somewhat abandoned and each given a corner with a PC and a phone. Tony spent half an hour showing us how to use the phones and where the toilets were then said a lady would be by to give us our Health and Saftey briefing. An hour and a half later he came back and asked if she'd come by, the answer was no, and we'd all been staring at the wall for that long. The two girl temps hit it off straight away, and didn't stop chatting all day long (facebook friends within minutes), whilst the two fellas (one being tall one) sat mostly in silence, with an occasional brief comment about how boring the day was. Tony came back to tell us that the heath and safety lady was in meetings all day so would wait till tomorrow, and that for now just go on the Internet, use facebook or whatever until they sorted out their work.

By about 12pm he came back to show us two excel spreadsheets that listed complaints cases in regard to software errors. There was little info on the sheet, and what info was there was pretty cryptic, such as 'Soys' 'Sues' and 'Moes'??? - none of which were explained. That was our training complete and he said he would soon re-direct all incoming calls from the software company to us. The phones were then set for us to begin taking calls. Then we waited and waited and waited and no calls came. We were all waiting to see who'd get the first call to see how it would go, all expecting to be screamed at by un-paid employee (the outlook email even had a folder for emails named 'Abusive emails'). He explained how when the phone rang it would go to the person whose phone had been idle for the longest, and so tall one got the impression that everyone was keeping an eye on when the other temps went to the toilet / kitchen and put their phone on busy (as when that was done your phone went to the bottom of the list), trying to work out if it was likely they'd be next if anyone phoned. We each went for lunch, it was a nice sunny day. When tall one came back at 2.30pm was told one of the girls had received a call and all she could tell her was that it was on the list that had not been done and was still pending....After that call we all sat waiting and waiting for the next..... Time went by very very slowly, Tony had told us that calls would be very busy and to even have breaks if we were taking too many calls one after the other..... It got to 4pm and we'd still only had that 1 call the whole day, the girls had been using facebook all day, Tall one resorted to getting his kindle ebook out.... there was literally nothing to do, was all a little surreal. They had asked Tony what they could do whilst waiting for calls and were told, go on the Internet, go on facebook. Finally time dragged round to 5pm, home time, no more calls at all, four of us had been paid very well for being very bored. We all left without seeing Tony, wondering if we'd all be kept on or what would happen the next day.

Tall one got back to the hostel to have a jug of beer with small one, then they filled in a BBH survey to get one free sausage and some onions. Small one was still hungry and went out and brought a Dominos pizza.

Saturday 23rd – Monday 25th February 2013

Small one worked his weekend day shifts, enjoying his huge luxurious sausage and bacon baps. The Owner Sam was being strange again, telling small one that the current Chef is often refers to her and (apparently) the other staff as the Klu Klux Klan Master.... this is supposedly due to the fact he is the only white person in the kitchen (other than small one). She suggested that small one would earn himself a couple of beers if he went in and started asking the Chef things whilst refering to him as “Master”..... Small one didn't fancy the idea so instead went up to the Chef and said, “do you fancyy a free beer?”.... Chef did, “well, text Sam and tell her you don't know what this Irish lad is at, he's acting very strange and calling me 'The Master'?”. The Chef texted away and Sam was delighted. Complete lunatic. Small one was then given his hours for the week, she asked if he could work a double next saturday, he said yes and so she gave him less hours in the week?? (now starting at 5pm till 9 instead of 3pm??). Small one started looking for work as he's only getting 30 hours. Went back up Cuba Street to Irish Pub 'Murphys'. Handed his CV to the barmen who said, “thanks Michael” as small one was leaving. Small one stopped and asked him why he called him Michael, the barman said, “it's on your CV”. Small one (for the second time) had handed the wrong document to someone instead of his CV (he had a copy of Tall One's in his bag to give to the Cafe Manager as she had said she had 'connections' to get him work).

As Tall one had lost out on the temp job on Monday at the last minute, he was back to the library and the streets looking for work with poor enthusiasm. They were down to their last $2.38 in the bank account and small one was only just earning enough to pay the rent for both of them and buy the basic dinners. Tall one is getting more and more tempted to un-plug the TV in the room. Mostly due to the fact that Small one channel hops so rapidly it's doing his nut in. The repetitive adverts are also sinking into their daily lives, finding himself starting to quote the overplayed CNN promo about China's up and coming film studios, “theyre's always been a number two.... there's never been this kind of number 2....”. Kill me.

Good news is that Monday afternoon (after spending the day emailing B&B jobs in Queenstown and Waiheke Island) Tall one got a call from GBL Personnel who had a job for him starting tomorrow (Tuesday). Was in an office taking calls in regard to software errors, and was very good money. He was emailed the details for tomorrow, which included the name of his contact, 'Tony Bennett' (singer turned officr Manager??). He ironed his shirt and his creased tie ready, managed to burn the material off part of the cheap tie (from Salvation Army), but patched the whole by drawing in a new black line in the pattern using a permanent marker. Meanwhile small one was working his pointless 5-8pm shift at the cafe eating his pork belly chile con carne.....

Friday 22nd February 2013

An overcast day. Library applying for jobs, trying to apply further a field to resort hotels in remote places (Milford Sound / Mount Cook / Glaciers) in the hope of a live in job with food/board and lots of savings..... We then walked up Cuba Street and the Irish Pub 'Murphys' now had a sign out for bar staff. Small one went in and started queuing at the bar to hand in his CV, only to find he as stood next to the co-owner of the Felix Cafe he's currently supposed to be working happily full time for. He pretended that he was looking for tall one claiming that he'd left him drinking whilst he was in a bookshop??!!!

Back to the hotel to watch Neighbours and Home and Away. Small one then cooked us soup and rolls. In the kitchen was a rough young Maori couple, the girl had a frying pan on the hob, filled with a thin coating of cooking oil with a pile of frozen french fries desperately trying to cook someway. Her fella asked small one where he was from, small one didn't answer and just asked where he was from back. The fella told him, “oh we're from Wellington, we just book in here now and again to get away from the family and do our own thing”..... oh right. After dinner had a nice wonder up the wharf front, wondering what we were going to do for work. Queued for ten minutes in a small cafe to waste our money on two coffees, only for them to tell us they had 'cleaned and shutdown' the coffee machine, even though they were open for another hour. Instead brought a hot chocolaye from a 7-Eleven type shop for $1, was quite nice.... Back to the hotel and watched, 'Relocation Relocation'.... damn this tv! Good night.

Thursday 21st February 2013

Day off for small one and tall one, this meant no lavish meal for small one, though to make up for it he cooked us steak with mushrooms, onions and rice. Tall one received a phone call from GBL, who told him that the job starting monday had fallen through.... this was bad news as we may now be essentially 'fucked' for money. Back at the hostel we put our last remaining $2.50 into their chocolate bar machine to get a Twix, only to find it tasted rotten and had gone out of date days ago. Tall one took it down to reception, where the fella looked up from his chair the other side of the room and asked “what is it?”, tall one told him he'd got this bar out the machine and it was out of date. The fella just stared back at him and shrugged, did not respond. Tall one stood waiting, until the guy finally said, “what do you want me to do about it?”, Tall one pissed off now said, “well it's your machine”, the guy said “no its not..... see if there's a number on it to call”, Tall one 'thanked' him for all his kind help and saw no point in wasting $3 on phone credit to get $2.50 back. A rotten twix was the final nail in the coffin after the bad news about work falling through!

Wednesday 20th February 2013

Tall one had a busy day, two interviews lined up with recruitment agencies. The first was GBL Personal at 10.30am. A quite fancy office building where he was handed the usual forms to fill in (agreement for security check, bank account, tax form, previous employment etc). Then typing test, spelling test (sucesful or successful or successful or succesfull??) and some painful WORD and EXCEL tests. He did pretty well though, typing speed gone up from 45 words per minute to 56. Then a chat with one of their staff who told him she had a job coming up this monday, filing and data entry for a local law firm and she wanted to put his name forward for one of the three temps needed ($19 an hour), tall one said that was great. Before he left he had to sit through a ten minute office safety video, showing you how to exercise your eyes by looking up.... then down.... then right....then left... .then in circles (the actors were amazing in that). He left met small one and told him the good news, then off to the next temp agency at 3pm Madisen Recruitment. Filled in the exact same set of forms he'd filled in for Adecco, Drake and GBL. Went through the same questions as before (give me an example of a time you....) and was told they were getting busy for work and she'd be in touch soon.

Meanwhile small one was kind of enjoying work at the cafe. The lovely woman in charge (Sam) who had frequent outbursts to all the staff but him, was getting quite entertaining as well as disconcerting. There are two people who work on site called 'Richard', and one of them is a Maori , well Sam (to save confusion) has taken to referring to them as 'Richard' and 'Black Richard', probably not to PC that one. Good news is that small one is still being fed as ell as Henry the Eight, this time was given 2 lamp chops, 4 spicey chicken wings and caramel cheesecake, whilst tall one went home and had a $3 microwave cottage pie.... and a cereal bar.

Tuesday 19th February 2013

Small and Tall out to the library early for a wifi fix. The library seems to gain more and more lunatics everyday, people who sit alone fidgeting and then start shouting at their computer. Back to the hostel to cook six sausages and some microwavable rice – whilst some foreign backpackers spoke about the Manchester United game on the TV like it was live (despite the fact it was a repeat from the 90's... Eric Cantana scored the winning goal!). Tall one went to his Adecco interview for this Census role (starts in April). Was pretty straight forward basic interview, and didn't sound like she had much else work till then. On way to meet small one in the library (before he started his cafe job at 3pm), tall one found out that Kelly Recruitment had phoned small one's number asking for tall one.... turns out his CV has small one's mobile number not his, so all these CVs he's been busily emailing and dropping round town don't even have his number on. But in fairness, they would still be phoning small one asking for him, and his phone hasn't exactly been buzzing. At the cafe Small one given Spicey sausage with horseradish and white chocolate and raspberry cake, whilst tall one sat back in the room having a $3 microwave curry and a cereal bar.

Monday 18th February 2013

Up to the Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain) and small one brought 2 polo shirts for work at $3 each (for ages 12-14). Back at the Hotel Small one went to cook our mushroom soup for lunch in the Hotel kitchen. Opposite him a hairy, smelly fella was boiling water in a saucepan (next to a packet of noodles). When the water finished boiling the guy threw the pan and water into the sink and stormed off to the sofas.... great another lunatic. Small one working in the cafe 3pm till finish today. Tall one handed in his cv to an Indian restaurant advertising for staff, and also got a call from Adecco to say his test results were all excellent and to come in for an interview tomorrow. Small one soon left for work at Felix, leaving tall one in the library where a very smelly, sweaty fella sat down opposite and annoyed him by biting his nails and making loud heavy sighing noises continuously.

Tall one returned to the hotel stopping off in the Warehouse to buy himself (some slightly more expensive) work clothes for his interview with Adecco and some other agency on Wednesday called GBL. Tall one had planned a few things to do back at the Hotel but that 'Sky Movies' channel in the bedroom is like a death trap, you end up watching movies that you'd never think about putting on otherwise, why else would he sit for over an hour watching Helen Mirren as The Queen?? So ended up achieving very little, just waiting for small one to arrive home now.

Small one returned home around 8.30pm. Working at this cafe was the best he'd ever eaten, tall one was quite jealous. Small one now promised full time work, 35-40 hours a week.

Sunday 17th February 2013

Had put out our dirty sheets and towels today aswell as the 'Please Clean our Room' sign in the hope that the cleaners would hoover and provide fresh bedding. Small one headed off for work, leaving Tall one sat all morning not sure if cleaners were going to do the room. Tall one went to the library at 1pm and did the usual mind numbing Internet job searches. He was lucky enough on his way home to see a tramp vomiting a lot of brown liquid for a good 5 seconds, before sitting back upright on his bench, wiping his mouth and pretending nothing had happened. Back to the Hostel around 3.30pm to find the room not touched, though they took the dirty towels and sheets left out, they didn't give us any new ones. Reception didn't know what to do and pointed him to where the cleaner manager was. He asked her (Dodi was her name) and apparently they only clean long term rooms on tuesdays and fridays, so that's why they took the dirty stuff but did sod all else. In fairness she did give tall one some new towels and sheets to make up himself. Small one's day was straight forward at work. He was working with the lovely woman who he met the day he brought his CV in (who said she'd help him and his partner get work). Turns out she's a bit of a Jeckyll and Hyde character, as she spent most of the day screaming at some poor woman in the kitchen. Small one asked this woman how long she'd worked there, to be told that she was co-owner with the screaming woman. Small one got a good bacon sandwhich feed again, and then finished at 5pm.

Saturday 16th February 2013

Small one headed off to his first day at work. The 'Felix' cafe at the bottom of Cuba Street. Meanwhile Tall one spent the morning in bed watching 'My Cousin Vinny' on TV, before heading out after lunch to pound the streets with CV in hand and drudge his way back to the library for more online job searching. He did manage to speak to the small, independent cinema 'Paramount' who said they needed staff for 27 Feb till 17th March to help with their Festival of French Movies.... she said she'd call him, though even still that leaves large gaps either side of no work.

Small one arrived at the cafe and was sent into the kitchen. The head chef seemed fine and pointed him over to the younger chef and told the chef to show small one what to do. The younger chef did nothing, except stand and grin with a strange, sarcastic smile and glance back and forth between small one and the head chef. So the head chef showed small one what to do. Then later the head chef wanted small one to prep some hash browns (they make themselves) by shredding potatoes, he asked the young chef to show him how, and again the young chef just pulled a strange grimace and smile and did nothing, so the head chef had to show small one. By now small one thought there was something wrong with the young chef, or he was just pulling the piss. He got hard to work grating potaotes, and at one point part of his thumb nail (that he'd cracked yesterday at work) fell off into the pot of gratings.... he couldn't find it so presumably it will end up in someone's hashbrown. Washing the dishes he soon found that they stored all of the plates and utensils on very very high shelves, and so was very tricky for someone 5foot 3 inches to stand on tip toe and carefully slide a pile of heavy plates up high, though he soon found that by leaving them to stack up next to the dishwasher, that some of the girls from the front started putting them away for him. Small one was cheered up later however when the chef asked what he wanted to eat, and offered him hash browns (??), sausages, bacon, eggs and more. Small one had an enormous 6-7 rasher bacon sandwich. Small one finished tired around 5.30pm. He handed his CV into the cafe round the corner from the hotel (as Felix is only weekend work). Tall one queued up to hand his in to the same cafe (for front of house work) – but gave up after queuing for ten minutes and then realized the person in front of him was handing his CV in before hand. It's a strange cafe anyway, very cramped, and always seems to be the same ginger, camp waiter working every single day, from 8am till 9pm. Probably wouldn't be suited to tall one anyway as the dress code for all their front of house staff seems to come dressed in a haphazard pile of second hand clothes and jewellery.

Friday 15th February 2013

In the library (of course), and small one received a call from Drake agency. They had a one off shift helping with wash-up in some local, very small cafe. Small one was then given very lengthy directions over the phone (using his credit) to get there. He turned up and worked a very boring shift on wash-up whilst some horny young girl who'd lived in Dublin kept making bizarre sexual comments to him, about try bending over and i'll see if it fits. It was when he mentioned his finacee that she announced, “oh I knew it from the beginning, I knew because they'd be no other reason you weren't interested in me...”. Small one left after 3 and a half hours work (he also got fed a nice lunch for free) and went back to the library. We had received an email from the campervan rental company at the Mount, nothing about the dent, but a snotty email from the girl 'Steff' about how as per the contract we were supposed to bring it back with a full tank of gas, but we should be charged $30 for the gas and another $80 admin fee! She then said as we were renting again in a few months that she'd let us off this time. Small one replied that he wished she'd spoken to Paul first, as the van was not full when we picked it up and he told us to bring it back att the same level.

Soup and roll for dinner. Dropped in job application to New World supermarket. Fell asleep watching the last couple of David Attenborough's Africa program.

Thursday 14th February 2013

Back to the Library and another few hours there sending off things online. Small one's theory that Sex Shops are always looking for staff and no one would think to apply was put into practice. Tall one googled the local ones and only found 4. Drew them on a map and then Small one went venturing into them all. On his way hetopped off in Toyworld as they were advertising for staff, handed in the CV and then off to the Adult shops. They were all a bit 'high class' compared to the seedy ones he'd tried applying for in Toronto. One called 'Checkmate' could easily be construed as an art gallery. Just a fancy building ith the words 'Checkmate', then a long shiny corridor of black and white tiles, and at the end a glass counter with the sign “$23 entry”, then a mysterious door that had to open for you....?? He chatted with a few of the staff in some of them though, including a girl who loved the Irish accent and gave him an information sheet on the shop. On the way back to the Library stopped off in a Bowling Alley who were looking for bar staff. All sounded quite promising and small one gave him his CV from his bag, to which the man read and handed back to him saying, “that's not your CV”. Small one looked at the sheet and saw he'd given him the Sex Shop information sheet, detailing their Sex Toys and other accessories.... oops.

Tall one had a phone call from Adecco. They wanted him for a Data Entry job for statistics New Zealand, 4 months, $17 an hour, from 7.45am till 3pm.... He did the 4 tests they emailed him, including one on New Zealand Geography (which city is Riccarton a suburb of???), with the help of some frantic googling, he completed it well. Trouble was the job doesn't start till 10th April (almost 2 months away) so not sure what'll happen till then, if he's still unemployed by then, then he's in trouble. After the tiring Library session, walked round the wharf and watched Mauris jumping off the high ladder jump into the wharf harbour (despite the signs saying no swimming due to garbage). Two old ladies on zimmer frames cautiously edged to the side of the wharf to peer over and watch the boys jump in.

Day ended with small one getting some part time work at least. A small cafe at the very south end of Cuba st, very friendly lady who offered to give him $15 an hour instead of the $13.50, for Saturday and Sunday Kitchen Hand/Dishwasher. She offered to help find him full time work and said if something else comes up let me know otherwise see you this saturday, so that's a start. Then back to the hostel for another cheap pie.

Wednesday 13th February 2013

Had the cheap $3 eggs on toast downstairs, which Tall one thought was vile, but small one quite enjoys. Small one then spent the day in a depression as Celtic had lost their match, and his face had lost its beard. He had the wrong sett sing on the razor and lost his side burns first, and so everything else had to go – he now claims that it looks like he's wearing a wig. After another stint in the familiar library wifi we took a walk round the sunny harbour beaches, and half way up the Mt Victoria lookout before giving up and returning to the Hotel. At 6pm on Wednesday you get a free BBQ with any drinks purchase, and at 6-6.15pm you get jugs of beer for $6.50. So for that price we got a jug of Tui each (much needed) and some pasta, coleslaw, one burnt lamp chop and one sausage, was pretty good. Had to sit surrounded by huge crowds of very young looking noisy students of all shapes and sizes, who were also their making the best of the offer. We also text Chris in Melbourne, again to chase up our sponsorship to go back, having not heard a thing for about 3 weeks now.... no response, so that's looking real promising.

Tuesday 12th February 2013

Still on the job hunt, and still spending all morning on the free library wifi. Not heard a thing about the dent from the Campervan rental people back at the Mount, we figure they either thought it not worth the hassle, have not noticed it or are currently drawing up their legal paperwork. Pounded the streets a bit more looking for work. Cuba Street has lots of strange cafes and boutiques to offer, also noticed that Wellington seems to offer the filthiest looking pigeons we've ever seen. Have heard an awful lots of English people about as well in this City.

Small one dropped his CV into Subway who were advertising for staff, when he left tall one pointed to a yellow sign on the outside of the building saying it “this is an Earthquake Prone structure, and not safe until the owner either demolishes or repairs”.... we have subsequently noticed this sign on a few more buildings, including the Information Centre. Back at the hostel to enjoy our tin of beans a a $1 pie. The can opener is useless, and the hostel staff remain condescending and un-helpful in their manner.

Monday 11th February 2013

Up and had breakfast in our room, then hit the town. Stopped in ANZ bank to cancel both our Debit cards (still being ultra careful that the Campervan people may try and charge us for the dent once we start putting money in the account again). The pudgy fella who served us randomley started telling us where to buy cheap pints, pointing across the street and telling us to “go down the alley next to Calendar Girls where they have cheap beer, or further up the street just before the next strip bar, try in there”??? Small one then went to Drake recruitment agency (who he worked for at the Mount) whilst Tall one started emailing Hostels in Wellington looking for work sat in the library.

Small one got on well in Drake, they seemed to think there was loads of work (enthusiastic men kepts walking in to reception and asking “can he lift, can he lift??”), though saying that they gave him nothing. He brought Tall one back in to register as well, who had to fill in about numerous forms about details, contract, tax code, references, work history, bank details as well as the weird and wonderful Maths and English test that small one had to fill in for Drake back at The Mount. Consisting of questions like, “what is 348 x 56?”.... used a calculator for that one, or “Mum went to the supermarket and took the two children in with her but left the dog in the car....Question: who did Mum leave in the car?”. Tall one (with the help of small one and a calculator) past with flying colours. Back to the hostel to cook their tin of soup and bread roll lunch, then spoke to reception to sort out our booking right through too June, though now having to move into a single room for 1-3 march (saves us moving out).

Sunday 10th February 2013

Awoke to the sound of the air vents outside our window. Small one turned the TV on and started his 'channel flicking' routine, before sticking with football. Had the dodgy $3 hostel breakfast downstairs in the kind of grim sports bar/bistro. Went to sit on one of the tables against the wall, but then decided against when there was a discarded, single bone left on the table. Went to New World twice during the day, seemingly spending our lives in the very busy and very expensive shop. Did a very basic 5 day food shop (main meals consisting of tin of soup and a roll) and it still came to $97 (compared to Pack N Save at The Mount being around $90 for 7 days of fresh meats and veg). Walked to the Library and McDonnalds and managed to get on to this quite good free City Wifi – a sponsored half an hour of unlimited use, and then when its over you can select another sponsor (no questionnaires, just a logo to click and read). Back to the hostel (where their paid or free wifi don't seem to work at all, anywhere) we used their very small kitchen to cook our lunch, which was half a cabbage boiled and put on a plate..... not the most exciting of meals in any sense (but cost $1.96). A trip to Warehouse round the corner where small one brought some new clothes in the Children's section, whilst tall one had to hang about in kids wear looking dodgy whilst waiting for him. Back to the Hostel to make it through the end of the 1960's Prisoner tv series, small one still confused about it. Overall Wellington is going well, though expensive. The City is a strange mix of very quiet streets and very noisy busy streets, very rough looking people with very posh looking people. Aesthetically it's pretty cool though, lots of different building styles and ages, and a heap of weird sculpture things.
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