Wellington - Part 2

(Note about pictures: One of the guys I met at the hostel I'm currently staying at happened to be at the Cuba street festival the same night I was. I was able to get some photos off of him yesterday, he must have been no more than a few yards from where I was the same night. He even got a picture of that stripping girl I mentioned in the last post. Also pictured is Rabbit, Tom's cat that more or less lived on the rocking chair in my room. Check out the pictures below.)

Steve only ended up staying in the flat for about a week before deciding to go back to Queenstown in the South Island. He was running out of money quickly and saw the cheaper Queenstown as his best bet. On the day he left, he had about $30 cash to his name and a mission to hitch hike to the middle of the South Island before it ran out.

For the remainder of my time in Wellington, I had the 2 bedroom flat to myself. But, that's not to say I was really by myself. It was quite a regular occasion for Tom and Kate (Tom's Wife) to invite me upstairs for dinner with the family, a late night movie, the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy, or just a drink as we talked on the patio under the stars. Kate was studying to become a teacher, and as part of her training, she had to stay and teach in a city quite far north for the first month that I was there. With Kate and the kids gone, and the house now under the supervision of Tom and I, it more or less became a bachelor pad. A six pack of whatever was on sale, some takeaways from Hell Pizza, and the latest blockbuster available in New Zealand (stuff that came out in the US about 6 months ago) made up a good number of our nights.

However, we weren't always lazy slobs. Tom recently got to be pretty keen on paua hunting, and he took me out a few times with him. Paua, known to most Americans as Abalone, are a shell fish that live on rocks in shallow water. They're quite expensive all over the world and are usually pretty hard to come by in the wild. However, in certain areas of New Zealand they're still plentiful due in part to the limitations put on collecting them. Tom came across a great tide pool about a 10 minutes drive from the house that's home to tons of the little guys. Our gear consisted of wetsuits, some old sneakers to help climb along the rocks, a mask and snorkel (tanks are illegal when hunting paua), and a knife to help dislodge them from the rocks. While I did have a blast diving around in the tide pools on a sort of treasure hunt, the first time we went out, I completely failed to catch any. I was only able to find a couple paua that were legal size. On my first attempt, rather than prying between the paua and the rock with my knife I accidentally stabbed it, clouding up the water with its black blood. My second go wasn't a whole lot smoother when I simply ripped the shell off the paua.

So what do you do with paua once you've caught it? Well, first you rip it out of its shell by prying your fingers under the thick edge of shell. When you have the slimy shell-less creature squirming around in your hand, you then grab at the white stump that was connected to the shell and rip that off, pulling out its major organs with it. And voila! Your left with paua meat in your hand that will go for something like $70/kilo ($35/lb). So how does paua taste? Well, when the guy preparing it is the head chef at his own restaurant... it tastes excellent! I had a bit of it sashimi style, (live, thinly sliced, and raw) and then we sent some of it through a meat grinder, flavored it with onion, capsicum, garlic, and chili oil before grilling it up in patties to make paua burgers, yum!

Even the simplest every day chores could be transformed into an adventure when in the company of Tom. Some of the funniest moments were grocery shopping. Why couldn't grocery stores be a social place, Tom argued. Why didn't people start up conversation with each other about what they were buying, and why isn't there more flirting going on in the isles? Tom was on a personal mission to change these things and I was along for the ride.

He might make stupid comments on someones items in passing, "My, you have a lot of power in that aid!", said to a guy with a cart full of Power Aid. Or when walking down the personal hygiene

Then there was the stalking of the infamous Freya. We passed her in the Woolworth's grocery store one day and couldn't help but take notice. She was probably the single best looking girl in Wellington. Tom said he knew her from somewhere but couldn't put his finger on where it was. We decided the best course of action was to discreetly follow her through the isles to help refresh Tom's memory. She was with her mom looking at hair removal products when it was decided that we needed to try and pick up conversation. As we neared them, Tom nudged me, "Just say something." Looking to the products along the wall I said the first thing that came to mind, "Ohh, look at that, they have Nad's for men now. That's fantastic!" They didn't take any notice of what I said, and it didn't seem like anyone else in the isle cared in the least bit either. But Tom was beside himself laughing as he hurried away from the scene down the isle. As we were driving out of the parking lot, analyzing the reasons for our failed game, Tom remembered that he knew her from the coffee shop just down the street from the house. Then he formulated a plan for me to meet with her, act as if Tom's house were my own and explain that Tom was just my sloppy flatmate. Of course the plan never went into motion, but from that moment it became a sort of tradition for Tom to ask me about my meeting with Freya whenever I'd see him. I'd walk into work in the morning, "So, Scott, did you see Freya at the coffee shop this morning?" I never so much as stepped a foot in that coffee shop, but often, before I could even respond, he would be leading into his next proposed strategy of getting us together. Every day it was something new, maybe it was using Cocoa, Tom's Dog, as a lure, or faking that I spoke very little English and asking her if she could show me around the city. By the end of my stay in Wellington, his plans became more desperate: "OK, Scott, what if I duct tape Freya to your door, will you at least talk to her then?"

That should give you a bit of an idea of the person Tom was, always aiming for a laugh and if he could work in some sexual innuendo, even better.

Part 3 to come soon...