I'll Be No Trouble, Honest

Since the days of rinsing my homestay hosts came to an end, I decided it was a good idea to accept the invite to crash at my girlfriend's place while I look for more volunteer work. Except here, I'd be a stand up roomie. She'd not even know I was here. I'd be the flea on the dog, so to speak, except that that's not a good analogy because Tines (pronounced like Denise but with a 'T') is a beautiful archangel and I was not trying to suck her blood, so forget that. I'd be a ninja to her night. That's better.

But this morning, I woke up oblivious to the monumental horror that was about to happen to me; much like the Titanic before it got redesigned by that sancrimonious iceberg in the Atlantic.

About all I can manage for the first half an hour of being awake is a little bit of time checking emails and annoying facebook quips about iphones and children, which tend to make me more or less happy that I don't have kids, or an Apple product.

So, after much stretching and yawning and feeling disappointed that I didn't laugh in my sleep this morning about a dream made up entirely of Ricky Gervais' face (as I had done the day before), I clobbered my way to the kitchen to find coffee.

For some reason, instead of going for the coffee-making accouturements, I decided that toast would be best. This, in hindsight, was a mistake.

As I pulled at the bread packet, I didn't realise that the corner of the packet was sitting underneath the sugar jar.

Time began to slow as the jar tumbled through the air.

Now, I have quite an impressive reflex for catching falling objects with my feet. I don't mean between my toes. I just mean to break their fall, you know, so they don't go smashy. Well, it turns out that my reflexes are still quite good because I decided in that split second that catching the jar full of heavy sugar with my bare foot would be a bad idea. (I didn't think about how impressive that was until at least an hour later when the sadness had worn off a bit. I'm just saying.)

The jar smashed into a million tiny [about eight large] pieces.

Shit.

I stared at the white sugar mountain that lay on the bare wood floor, horrified that I'd become immediately dispensable as a human being and began to consider my options. I could run away to Cuba. I could wait till she gets home and lie on the floor next to the scene and pretend I don't remember anything, or maybe something to do with Restless Leg Syndrome?

The problem was, that this sugar jar was pretty and white with an easy-fit lid, unlike other sugar jars that require Schwarzenegger finger-strength to prize the suction lids off. I hate those, and frequently want to murder the pets of the designer who made them.

At this point in the story, you probably think I am a bit 'special' for caring about clayware, and you'd be right. However, it represented something way more sentimental. Tines bought the jar when she first moved to Auckland during those first few doubtful days – with her first paycheck, five years ago. I couldn't replace it either because the shop didn't exist anymore.

This was no mere sugar jar. It was the essense of independence, standing on one's own two feet, and of simplicity. It was the holy grail.

Unhappy with the idea of moving to Cuba, I tried to figure out the best thing to do that would result in the least amount of condemnation.

I was home alone. Tines was at the place normal adults go to in the daytime called work. So, rather than go on a journey to bring her the sweet, shattered remnants of her sense of home and mental foundations, I decided a text would be a good idea.

Texting can be apologetic.

There was at least another nine hours before she'd be home. It was a good 'buffer time.' Any anger she felt for me would have dulled a little by then and been replaced by a sense of understanding and maturity; heck, she might even bring me gift so I wouldn't feel so bad.

If you made it to this point in the dialogue and were expecting a zombie apocalypse, I'm sorry.

I wish in some way that I had a good ending to this story. Something that involved meat cleavers and Prozac, or at least a mild beating with a pump shoe.

But, Tines was just a bit macabre about it all, and saved the lid as a kind of dying memento.

But then, if the symbol of your independence was destroyed by a British hobo squatting in your house, you'd probably feel a bit macabre too. Besides, I knew where I went wrong – I ignored the caffeine urge.

It's decisive: Coffee wins.

1 Mum + 50 Cent = Lots of Shame

What do you do when your Mum starts singing along to hip-hop?

Specifically, 50 Cent's 'Do-do, doo-doo' song (I searched the interwebs to try and find the song, then realised it was pointless because they all sound the same by the virtue of sampling one piece of someone else's music and looping it over and over again as a man talks over the top).

I'm glad this is not my mother. My volunteer host – Rose, is harmonising with the already melodiously-challenged song in a way that says 'Here's how to make the world feel awkward.' Daniel, her son, is in the kitchen, creating a plate of mismatched food that is both questionably edible and incredulously non-identifiable. I feel his pain between the walls that separate us.

When Rose came in, I was expecting this, “What the hill are you playung Diniel?” (kiwi phonetics, I know, it's weird). But instead, she raped the atmosphere with Mum-song.

The solution: Snow Patrol.

Anyone can sing to that and be respected. Straight away, out came the conversation through the mellifluous stretch of sound-rolled-on-honey. The world was right again.

I feel that Snow Patrol may yet play a part in shaping the Earth to its humanitarian zenith; you can't possibly be mad at hobos or begin tribal genocide while 'Chasing Cars' is playing in the background. It's just plain sense.

The Online Video Ass Trap

It's all about the transition between doing the work and not doing the work. I personally love that moment. 

You've been working on something epically grown-up, maybe a cross-stitch or prizing out a sesame seed from your back tooth using only your tongue, when the thought comes – 'Well, that's that done; I think I deserve a break.' It's the best feeling, taking a load off.

Unfortunately, for me anyway, minutes turn into tens of minutes and then hours. Before I know it, such time has passed that my toe nails have grown noticeably and the dog that once needed feeding now needs burying.

[Personal disclaimer: I don't actually have a dog]

Such was my day this Wednesday. So, I'm supposed to be volunteering here in Auckland. I'm taking this stop-gap on my travels of the world. The thing is, I'm fully intent of staying in New Zealand via the marvellous fact that I am an electrician, which sort of makes me like a kind of wizard. I find myself filling time doing not very much and taking quite a lot in return via this free homestay accommodation, food and drinks, internet and espresso-maker coffee.

When I use the machine, I imagine myself as the barista in a café, but then quickly brush the sense of obligatory coffee-making to one side, feeling thoroughly drained at the thought, instead I sip my frothy beverage and become customer, a role I'm much more comfortable with.

After mowing the lawn (for a period of time that I tell myself fills the allotted minimum of two hours work, but which is actually more like the time it takes to watch a low budget teen-ninja movie), I saunter indoors and make myself comfortable on the biggest sofa I can find in the capacious living room. I have things to do, but this just feels better.

In no time at all, the afternoon transitions to evening. I tottle out every now and then to refuel on pie, or the odd spoonful of Mövenpick chocolate chip ice cream. I then return to the dent in the sofa where my ass has been for the last four hours with a cheese plate and a selection of wafer-thin crackers; I place a glass of fruit juice on the cabinet and continue to lay for another four hours watching UFC and Top Gear clips on youtube. I feel like life is good.

What I'm actually doing is numbing the responsibility of finding a job or doing something that will facilitate that achievement. But watching clips of cars I'll never own and seeing people get punched in the face is amusing me today.

I reach for the mango juice and put the glass to my lips. Before I tip it back, I look down and notice that a few specks of something-or-other are now floating in my drink. As I pull the glass away from my mouth I notice the whole thing, inside and out, is covered in ants.

I reel in disgust and start taking random guesses at how many seconds would have passed before I barfed it all up had I actually drank the ants. They seemed to be enjoying the 'bits' so I let them have it and just lay back down in a kind of motionless stupor watching online movies – using up a good portion of my host's thirty gig download allowance like a digital vampire.

There comes a time when I tell myself 3:30am is just plain unreasonable and I really should put this day, and my head, to bed. 'Tomorrow I'll be an adult,' I say to myself and take the walk back to the shed in the dark of night; I stay at the bottom of the garden like a hobbit. It's a wooden shack with a bed, a ping-pong table and thin plywood walls that block incoming sounds as effectively as the wafer crackers I was eating earlier. I begin to imagine how much better it would be if the walls were made of crackers; I wouldn't have to go up to the house for meals for one thing. I could grow cheese outside and have a cheese and cracker party every day. (I'm assuming cheese is grown from some sort of tree.)

The builder also thought it would be a good idea to put a corrugated plastic sheet section on the roof just above the bed, so that during any time of day or night when it rains – and it rains a lot in Auckland – I can be woken by the sweet pitter-patter of raindrops above my head. And if that doesn't do it, the tree surgeon next door chops off overhanging branches with a chainsaw which land with a thud about eight feet from my slumbering face. No one wants me to sleep here.

The sound of the chainsaw cuts into my dreams and causes me to slip into a murderous, half-conscious state of dribbling; secretly I hope he will lop off his own arm, although seeing a bloody stump on the plastic skylight would send me over the edge for sure.

But all things considered, life is good in Auckland. I'm still waiting for the employment fairy to leave me a job under my pillow in exchange for the CV I place there every night. No one told me it wouldn't work, so I keep trying.

In the meantime, I play solo points ping-pong(!) and go out with my girlfriend, whom I'm hoping won't leave me when she realises my ninja-sly skills in procrastination. Anyway, better get on, I've a life to lead – and it's all tied at twenty a piece.