Rush Hours

Do you know when you go from a quiet and peaceful existence (also known as being bored) to all of a sudden barely stopping to breath for 48 hours? Well, when you have...

- A professional Christmas dinner in an insanely beautiful house straight out of a decoration catalog with a garden that inspired God’s landscaping project of Eden (peacock included), with a Barbie (what Kiwis call a barbecue) and even a co-worker playing Adele in the piano;

 

 
- A charity ‘Christmas Wonderland’ we spontaneously decided to stop on the way back from the Centre’s Christmas dinner. New Zealand is by nature a laid back, fashion-and-style-is-for-dummies kind of country so it comes as no surprise when you look around and 65% of the people you pass by are in their pajamas. Why bother to put on clothes just to go see Santa Claus by the side of the road right?

  
- A German breakfast. Anybody who has engaged in leisure activities with a typical German knows that events are bound to happen as clockwork. Hence, my German travel buddy for the day informed me that he would come by my place for a big breakfast before the road trip which, naturally, he promptly did.

- Crying over a postcard. While having breakfast, the postman rings the bell with a package from Portugal and a postcard from Germany, both for me. And for that I hereby state my deep appreciation to the New Zealand Post for serving as my personal Santa Claus on a Saturday morning of late December! However, the excitement of a five year old over surprise gifts soon turned into a river of tears as I read the postcard and realize how much I miss my friends and how far away and spread throughout the world they are.

-  A broken down car. The plan for the day was to reach Akaroa through the picture perfect valleys, mounts, lakes and harbors that lead there. Nevertheless, there is a long distance between the places you want to go and the places your car is willing to take you. Thus, as soon as we left Christchurch, Minty, the “beautiful but bitchy” Audi 80 my fellow German co-worker recently bought, made it clear she was not in the mood for such a trip and somewhere between no and where, she decided to be a diva and refused to go any further. Thus, there we were, stuck in a hill, surrounded by a scenery of green pastures that seemed to be Frodo Baggins’ walk from school, with many sheep expressing themselves and a car passing by every 20 minutes.

- Peeing to the sound of nature. And because cold, rain, a broken car in the middle of the Shire and a cranky German are not enough factors for a delightful Saturday afternoon, my body decided to make its own contribution to our Murphy’s Law momentum. So there I went, into the wild, trying to find a place where peeing would not be either a peep show for passing humans nor a radical sport downhill to join the sheep. Easy task it was not but boy, life really is all about the small things and few things in life can make you as happy as the glorious feeling of an empty bladder.

- Meeting James. After waiting three hours of assistance to arrive, we had the pleasure of meeting James, the relaxed, young mechanic who never set foot outside New Zealand and whose life dream is to visit his grandparents in the Netherlands and go to a Dutch coffeeshop. By the time he got there, Minty was in a better mood and decided the show must go on. The guy looked at us like we had ruining his plans of a quiet Saturday afternoon enjoying some natural herbs at the garage.

- Ruining a relationship. And speaking of ruining someone's day... After arriving in Christchurch there was still energy left to cause a minor earthquake on Manu’s South African flatmate recently established relationship foundations. What started as a simple explanation of being tired because he had spent the day helping his girlfriend moving to a new flat, soon turned into an inquiry on the definition of the word girlfriend, what a relationship implies and what women actually want from men versus what they agree to in the beginning. By the end of the interrogation he had a panicking look on his face, a paler skin tone and a “thank you for the chat guys!” which I’m pretty sure was actually a “please don’t ever make small talk with me again”.

- Christmas at the Park. After ruining James' afternoon and casting existentialist doubts into a relationship, it was time to disturb little children communications with Santa Claus. I guess Mother Nature was enjoying our Grinch spirit because by late afternoon the clouds and rain were gone and the sun was shining which led us to Hagley Park to check the gigantic lightning bolt Christmas Tree. While there, the most logical thing to do was, of course, to take pictures in the phone booth by the tree stating "Santa's Line" while children waited outside for their turn to ask for gifts via public telephone. One child in particular was quite sad that Santa wouldn't take his call and when we asked him " you didn't speak to him little man? maybe our call was the last!" he just said "no..." and slowly walked away.

- A Chinese dinner. Because being the Grinch takes a lot of energy, from the park we went to a co-worker's house where a westernized Chinese meal was expecting us plus Chinese and New Zealand beer. It was also a joyful moment to learn that native people from Hong Kong have no souls. After dinner, the full gang from the night before was reunited once again, this time at a bar watching cricket on tv.

-  A Portuguese Lunch. Comes Sunday morning and I'm off to the Portuguese family's house for a goodbye lunch given that I am not here for Christmas. While there, I still managed to make my body coordinate itself enough to help with the last Christmas decorations and bake *by myself* (!) a Kiwi cake.

...that’s how you feel.