Arrival in the South Island/Nelson

Well, thought I'd give an update. DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING POST INCLUDES NO PICTURES. DO NOT READ IF YOU EXPECT THERE TO BE. I ACTUALLY DON'T BLAME YOU.

(plus, mom said it would be okay... plus, I'm on a computer which belongs to someone in Nelson, whose house we're staying at, so I can't access new pictures anyway.)

Just wanted to tell you what's happened for the past week. First, I need to tell you about the Smiths. The Smiths live in Seatoun, a suburb of Wellington. We went to some activity after church which was for the young single adults. Just kind of introduced ourselves, since no one knew anyone. The person's house we stayed at worked for Weta as a digital lighting technician. Really nice guy. Something Ostler... After the activity, Amalia and I didn't want to worry about finding a place to stay, so we just turned the corner and found a park with some bathrooms, and we slept across the street in the car. It worked out great.

So in the morning, I was awoken by some lady tapping on the glass. I thought something like "Oh, great, an uptight neighbor who looks for reasons to perform her 'civic duties'..." Turns out she was the opposite. She asked if we were from Christchurch; victims of the earthquake. We said we were Americans and she got kind of disappointed. She later said how she secretly hoped she'd have had the chance to harbor earthquake victims... even so, she invited us in for breakfast and even offered her home for the night.

As it turns out, Anna Smith was her name, and her husband owned a respectable post production company called Sauce. She gave me the hookups, and I was talking with one of the creative directors of the company within a couple of hours. He didn't really have anything to offer me jobwise or internship wise, but he gave me some really valuable contacts. So afterwards, Amalia and I go back to the house and her son has made us homemade nachos. He is 13 years old and one of the funniest people I've met here. I think his name was Alex... There was a minor incident with one of the ferries in Wellington that's responsible for transporting a fair amount of people to school. One of Alex's friends was on the ferry video taping when the boat started to flood. Apparently he started swearing out of panic. Anna, Alex's mom, was saying "Oh, he'll be forever known as the profane kid on that ferry," since the video was posted online. Alex said "Well, mom, I guess I can understand. You're on a boat, people are screaming, and water is climbing up to your knee. I don't think I'd be saying 'Oh, bloomin'! Bloomin'!!" I was constantly impressed by how mature his humor was.

So the next day I met with a film student, Tasha, who asked me to write music for a short she is filming. That happened as a result of me leaving my information at the reception desk at the Film School. Within a day she called me. That was kind of a cool feeling. Sure, she might be a desperate film student panicking to find music... but I'm a desperate musician panicking to find projects. It works out.

Then on Friday I met Stephen Gallagher again. This time, Nigel Scott joined us. In case you don't know who that is, he is an oscar winner for his sound editing on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We talked for a while, maybe an hour or so, about different avenues I could try. They both seemed really impressed at the fact I had travelled across the country to pursue this, and that may be why they threw tons and tons of great advice/contact information at me.

So, after collecting all of this information and finishing up some contacting, we decided to go the south island and try to find a job. I know that Amalia is doing the whole job-hunting thing with me for my benefit, since she's leaving soon and I think she just wants to see the south island before she leaves, even if that means settling for a while. And the place we're trying to settle in is Nelson, a cool little place on the north western part of the south island. We've already met a lot of nice people (in consistency with the nature of the whole darn country) and we're going to stay at a mirai tomorrow.

A Mirai is sort of like a sacred Maori meetinghouse, which has been opened up for Christchurch victims and homeless travellers. One of the people in the Nelson ward runs it and invited us in for a night or two. So tomorrow morning we're going to the Mirai to be greeted properly, which apparently is a bit of a ritual, where they pause to acknoweledge their ancestors who have gone before, and then welcome us who are just arriving. Cool.

Well that should about bring you up to now. I'll post again soon, with pictures, hopefully, and with news about a job. (hopefully.)

The road goes ever on!