Queenstown

I've been blog-negligent lately. So I thought since I do the blog primarily to satisfy my personal need to have a record for a later time, when my memory is even more clouded than it currently is, I had better update that record before I forget I was even in New Zealand. In like three weeks.

After three months in Queenstown, it's not hard to imagine why the town has such a pull to it--quaint, young, scenic, and alive, it hit its stride in July just as the snow settled on the tops of the surrounding resorts. Winterfest has come and gone, that 10 day festival with Mardi Gras, live music, and crowds eager to drink the nights away in preparation for the following days' descent on snowboards and skis. The weather is predictably cold, but not that cold, which is saying something because I'm a native Atlantan, which is a euphemism for "I like it hot." It was much colder in Prague, which I can't really understand because I looked at a globe in the library the other day (a globe with pre-1991 USSR on it, North Yemen, South Yemen, etc--their books are on rolls of papyrus and their history books stop after the Industrial Revolution. I made that last part up. And the papyrus part, too.), and Queenstown is at 45 degrees South, which is really freakin' south. If you trace the latitude all the way around the planet, only the very southern part of Chile and Argentina stretch further south than that. The air is remarkably dry, however, which might explain the dearth of snow in town and the relative abundance of sunny skies during the winter. Relative because, of course, after building an ark in Russell during the summer, I'm kind of disappointed that my new wood working and animal husbandry skills won't be needed down here. I'd say that even Atlanta is as cold as Queenstown, generally speaking, which either speaks well of Global Warming--which I'm all for-- or speaks poorly of Global Cooling, which most scientists were warning us about 30 years ago. Basically, it's a win-win situation down here.

Before I paint too rosy a picture of our quaint little ski town, I should mention that I've been sick quite often down here--from sore throats and juicy coughs, to a recently conquered fever and dry cough that made me long for the days of those juicy coughs. I don't know if it's the dry air, the dampness inside the house, or the incessant marijuana smoke that hovers in the family room as my roommate punishes a bong all day long. It may also be the incestual poker tournaments that I've been known to frequent a few days a week--essentially, 50 walking incubators coughing on their hands and then molesting a playing deck, which in turn gets manhandled by yours truly. I'm going with a combination "weed-damp-card" excuse for my new octogenarian immune system. I've gone from a vitamin-popping, gym-addicted, young-looking 34 year old to The English Patient in three weeks. No wonder they have Universal Healthcare down here--between the cigarettes, weed, and Bangladeshi-like dampness, half the population would be addicted to various cold-flu medications with homemade meth labs in their basements if they had to pay $250 each time their doctor told them to "rest."

Yes, a lot of marijuana in New Zealand...but very few Mexicans and Colombians. Which means that the proverbial "New Zealand ingenuity" of which most Kiwis are proud, extends about two inches and requires feats of engineering including packing, rolling, and lighting.

Speaking of my inveterate gambling addiction, there is a thriving poker culture in town, one in which I get to see the same 40 people every night, five nights a week, playing no-limit hold'em for 4 hours trying to win a $50 bar tab and pride. I've managed to win two such tournaments and finish second or third at a few others, which basically means that I'm considering a playing career in Vegas in the near future and am only one sponsor away from listing on my resume under 'Hobbies,' "hitting on cocktail waitresses and 9-3 off-suit." Poker is my girlfriend, which is both bad and good. Bad, because I'm now quite intimate with a biological weapon--a deck of cards, and good because the poker tournaments are free and I don't know of any girlfriend that's free.

By the way, if I ever got a tattoo, it wouldn't be Aces up the sleeve, it'd be far more appropriate--9-3 offsuit. One of my roommates just got a tattoo yesterday and it looks rather trite, if you ask me. And bloody. And painful.

At what point do tattoos become passe, you ask? I'm glad you did. I say they've reached that point already. But with the plethora of Maori tribal designs on Maori and Whitey skin alike, I'm sure NZ will continue to pump out inked-up Kiwis as more people strive to assert their individuality by conforming with everyone else.

Did I ever mention that I retired as Russell's ping-pong champion. No, I don't think I did. Okay, so I retired as Russell's ping-pong champion. I was both the unstoppable force and the immovable object. Chinese diplomats showed up to try to get me to acquiesce to citizenship, but I deferred, citing the whole Communist thing. They wanted me to train with their top ping-pong...excuse me, table-tennis Olympians, but I told them my future included walking pneumonia, early-onset emphysema, and a touch of bacterial meningitis down in Queenstown. Seriously though, I was so good up there in Russell that I will now type about it in the third person. CT played several hundred games all told, and lost but twice. CT believes he has a natural athletic gift in his ping-ponging and is proud to be revered in the hall of Russellian history as 2008 Champion. Sadly, CT realizes that once he turned down the Chinese, his ping-pong future became rather limited...where does CT go next? He has yet to find a table in Queenstown and, even if he did, what else does he have to prove? Do you climb K-2 after climbing Everest? I don't think so. The thrill is gone for CT, so he has decided to instead to invest his time and emotional energy into a game with far more probability, luck, and indeterminism. We wish CT nothing but the best.

I was teaching three Korean girls how to speak English. That gig has run its course, however, so I will most likely soon be looking to book a return flight back to the States, so as to catch the end of summer and the beginning of football season. With no plan, I hasten to step into the abyss once more. Plus, it's been nearly 11 months since I left and, being fairly satisfied that I've seen a lot of what New Zealand has to offer, and hence have come closer to understanding why the country is so naturally beloved, I feel like George W. Bush as he stood on that aircraft carrier in May 2003 with a banner overhead proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished." Which means I probably should spend the next 5 years wandering around the wilderness before asking for directions to the airport. In any event, the easy part, in retrospect getting on the plane, is coming to a close. The next chapter becomes, once more, difficult to write..."What's Next?"