2001-08-17 - 11:27 p.m.

#86: No Need for a Roadtrip to Rotorua

Note to self: I was going to write out a whole entry detailing what I did the week before last, but to break habit I shall not instead. Besides, I don't feel like it right now. What I will do though, is offer a basic summation. Here goes: Met up with EB on Tuesday purely by accident and wandered around town and uni with him while waiting for Fergus. Missed Fergus cause of a miscommunicated ICQ message. AAC Tuesday meeting was quiet. Open Late manager was evil. Zeb, who licked our photocards taken on the night of the Final Fantasy movie outing, was also evil but in a different way. Zeb became more evil by thinking up of several AAC males in yaoi fanfiction situations. Evil. Father arrived from Malaysia on Thursday, thereby effectively cancelling all former planned AAC meets at my house for another two weeks. Went out to a Japanese restaurant on the same evening. Heard New Zealand people speaking Japanese with a distinctly kiwi accent. Thought that was weird. Bathroom had a convex mirror that hypnotised me with its constantly changing view as I moved around. That was weird too. I want to smash the faces of those beautiful boys. Quoting Tori Amos. Didn't expect that, did you? Anyway, that's all I really wanted to say in my summing up entry, I think.

I wrote the above a week or so ago when I was feeling depressed. Well, a couple days thought after that, I didn't feel so depressed anymore; so I'm going to concentrate on that feelng of "not depressiveness" instead of going back to when I was depressed by thinking about it. So I won't. So no more will I think upon the appointment I had at the WINZ office and the resultant lost of ego. Nor will I recall the way I was told my CV, my current work experience and my formal education was lacking. Nor will I reminisce about the copious amounts of alcoholic beverages I had to imbibe in order to temporarily inflate my feelings of self worth. And finally, I will not entertain myself with the thought that I had wasted three and a half years of university education, attending a course that I didn't really like for the longest time; and coming away with very little at all to show for it. Not even good for CV padding fodder. So no. I will think of it no more! For I did recently reintegrated SUPA GENKI mode into my mode of operations! Yes! FEAR my exagerated super genkiness that I've used to cover up my self loathing, low self-esteem and general distaste for those damned dirty apes! Get your filthy hands off me! I speak with the voice of genki, and woe be to anyone who bars my way! Therefore! I'll just start with talking about (last) weekend and completely forget that last week ever existed; along with its important lessons on life and the value of perserverance and hardship. And how everything goes wrong the first time you try anything important. So yes! Talking about my weekend onwards! Starting now!

My weekend was curiously ambivalent.

It started off well enough. I awoke bright and early on a Saturday morning (as I was apt to do) to engage in my daily ritual of greeting the morning sun; as it raised itself from the dim horizon to shine and warm us with its warm glow again. And as I stood there, bathed in the magnificence of wondrous nature with a mug of hot cocoa in my hands, I turned to my wife (for I'm maried you see) and said to her, "Meryl, isn't that just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"; and she turned to me and said, "Yes, it is most beautiful my love, but it's beauty cannot match those that lay in the depths of your eyes.". "Oh Meryl!" "Oh my love!" "Oh, dear sweet Meryl!" "Oh, I love you so, my dear Trent!" ".... Trent? Who's Trent?". And that's about the point I really woke up and was told by my parents to get my lazy bones out of bed and get ready to go on our trip to Rotorua. I lay in bed for a while, hoping that that part was a dream too. No such luck there. My fantasies about life are continuously unsatisfying. Rather annoying that.

In any case, Saturday heralded the coming of the big roadtrip down south to Rotorua along with one set of relatives in a second car (uncle, aunt, cousin and his girlfriend). The only real reason why I decided to go along with the trip was the promise of good buffet food at the hotel we were planning to stay in (note: this is a cheap trick to lure me into going on trips I don't want to go on. promise me good food, and I'll be there. Well, probably. As long as it doesn't cost me anything). That was a particular disappointment on a roadmap filled with disappointments, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The hotel was the destination, and I haven't even described the trip itself. The road trip, in complete contrast with the food at the hotel.... was Sartes vision of Hell all rolled into a car. I swear, if this journey had any lesson to it whatsoever, it's that there's a specific reason why I've filed road trips into the "hate with a passion" section of my mind. Along with Rotorua, as well. During the trip, I was subjected to a myriad of pain and suffering, further compounded by the fact that I couldn't move anywhere to minimise it as I was in the front passenger seat. I could have thrown open the door and launched myself out and unto the highway to quickly end it all, but I decided that that may have bit just a mite extreme. Besides, if I were to die, a million unwed women would weep at my passing! I have a responsibility to all my future love interests to keep myself alive! So I took it like a man, and blubbered like a little girl.

In retrospect, what I had to go through wasn't THAT bad. It's just that when you're in a car, trapped along with other people in close proximity for several hours.... You tend to get a bit edgy. Or at least I did. Every little thing started to annoy me, no matter how incidental. For example: Since we had so many people going on this road trip we had to split into two cars, with the car I was travelling in being the one following the other. This was unfortunate, for whenever we didn't have a car/truck/semi-trailer/unlucky pedestrian strapped to the hood obscuring the vision between our front and their back, one of the passengers in the backseat.... Kept looking back and WAVING at us. Do you understand? She did it again and again and again and again and again and AGAIN! Smiling brightly and chirpily as if she discovered something new and funny EACH AND EVERY TIME! Now.... (calm down here) now I know this would be considered normal expected behaviour of a hyperactive 12 year old with attention deficit disorder. But she wasn't. She was 50 years old plus and my aunt. My friggin' aunt was acting like she was whacked out on happy pills all the way through the trip. God.... I feel the pain building up behind my eyeballs just thinking about it.

And then there's my uncle. The words "busybody" and "longwinded" seems to have been formulated with him in mind. There are many instances of being annoyed with his over meticulous nature in the past (and I'm not the only one who's made this observation.... But I think I'll leave my familys secret squabbles out of this); as well as his rather prominent ego problem, where he believes that whatever subject someone speaks of, he'd know more about it. He doesn't, of course. Actually, he knows very little, oftentimes. But what little he DOES know of, he tries to expand into a two hour lecture of flamboyant description. Kinda like me, but I'd like to think I have more style and panache. Anyway, since we were in seperate cars, I thought that we (in the following car) would be free from any more of his long lectures. I was wrong. So deadly wrong. Thanks to the wonders of mobile phone technology, we could now be lectured ANYWHERE and ANYTIME in the world. All at the press of a button. To all mobile phone manufacturers and service providers I saw to them now: You are all bastards. The trip to Rotorua was thankfully free of my cousins mobile phone ringing (I believe my uncle was still trying to come to grips with the dang fangled technology that time) but on the way BACK.... Well, when I say he rang every two minutes to give up to date instructions and accounts of the current situation in the leading car, I MEAN he rang EVERY two FRIGGIN minutes to give UP TO DATE instructions and accounts of the current situation in the leading car. Note the all caps for some words and the inclusion of the semi-swearword "friggin". It was indeed, that bad.

By this point, you can probably guess who was in the car with me and driving us along. Yes, it was my cousin and his girlfriend! I WOULD be in the other car with my mom and dad, but due to uh.... some reasons (more family politics. It's a regular Coronation Street here) I consented to be in the following car with them. Grace them with my presence and all, you know. My cousin is not a bad person.... He lent me his Playstation once and I played all the way through Final Fantasy 8 and a goodly part of Xenogears before finally noticing the rumbles of dissent about not being able to use his own system and returned it to him. So overall, nice guy. I just wish I didn't have to spend all that time in the car with him and his girlfriend. It's just that.... I'm a quiet person *hears someone scoff* It's TRUE! I'm more naturally a quiet person! It's just that I've given in to peer pressure in most situations and act like I have a weasel down my pants! O.o

But anyway, quiet I am. Especially on roadtrips. I prefer to stretch out my patience and amount of subject matter I can be reliably called upon to talk about; it's just something I've been brought up to do. That, and maybe the ritualistic beatings I had as a child fro asking, "Are we there yet?" have taken its permanent toll on my psyche. One of the two. The problem with that is.... My cousin is a natural talker. He talks a lot. I mean, his previous job was as a guide for tourists at Sky City (Aucklands biggest casino) so that kinda reflects on the kind of guy he is, yanno? His girlfriend likes talking too. They both like talking. They fit together. I wasn't in the right car. I had to get out. The words.... the words won't stop coming! They were filling up the car! The doors are closing in! NEED TO GET OUT! GET FREE FROM THE TALKING! TALK TALK TALK! So. If I ever go on a roadtrip with anyone who's reading this journal and you try to talk to me and I don't answer back: don't worry. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just too busy hardbouring feelings of crystalised hate within me to try and come up with a polite response to your statement/question.

Ahem. But in any case, that was the car trip, both to and fro Rotorua. A total of 7 hours worth of trip. The only highlight was when we stopped at someplace called the Mercer Country Stop on highway 1, on the way to Hamilton/Rotorua (well, on the way BACK from Hamilton/Rotorua, actually.... Since we were going back to Auckland at that point). Now THAT place had good food. Absolutely friggin HUIGE lumps of meat with a decent serve of potatoes on the side. The large portions brought tears to my eyes.... And all for under 10 dollars! If we ever make a roadtrip again (and I'm not saying I wanna... It's just that if I *have* to go, well.... this would be a great idea) I'm going to make a reccomendation to stop there.... Even though it's about only an hour and a half from the city and too soon to make an actual rest stop. O.o

Now, onto the discussion of my time in Rotorua. Rotorua. My impressions from my last visit remained unchanged by this one. It was small, squat and smelly. A hive of scum and villainy if I ever saw one. The entire town is built upon the concept of "tourist trap" and draws unwary travellers in with wondruous (New Zealand) sights and sounds. Like (gasp!) a shop whose entire theme is devoted to SHEEP! EGADS! I see sheep merchandise! My god, it's full of sheep! A sheep is as a sheep does etc. etc. etc. and so forth with gratuitous movie quotations replacing important words with "sheep". And then.... A sheep show! And just across the way you can see.... New Zealand animals in their "natural" habitat. Surrounded by several hundreds of miles of electric fencing. And every second shop in the city takes full advantage of the fact that they have the largest influx of tourists in the country and offer "special deals" that, upon close inspection, are probably less a deal and more of a way of legally looting money out of foreign peoples pockets. It's both an underhanded and deceitful way of making money it is. Almost makes me proud of New Zealand. Now if only they would focus this "deceitful way of making money" thing on making bigger and better malls.... Plus they could get rid of the smell too. Thanks to the nearby natural geological formations and reactions, the entire area of Rotorua has the prevalent odour of sulfur. Or rotten eggs to use a colloquail comparison. Bleh. The fact that the hotel we were staying in was set right next to one (which too, was a tourist trap) didn't help matters any.

The hotel. Now, the hotel was meant to be something else, thanks to the number of upgrades put to it since being acquired by a five star hotel chain.... But it fell drastically short thanks to the fact that I've seen much better accomodations. I am, indeed, a spoiled brat. ^^;;; It wasn't a BAD hotel.... As far as New Zealand hotels go. It just had this feeling of "good enough" about it that made it less "classy" and more "homegrown". Maybe "homegrown classy", heh? Oh, and there was that smell. bleh bleh bleh. Didn't spend most of my stay there awake actually, since I woke up WAY too early for the time I actually went to bed.... So I stayed in bed for most of the day and only came out for the hotel buffet dinner. Ate the buffet dinner. Was disappointed by the lack of hot food types presented by the buffet dinner. But was pretty happy with the desert and cold cuts bar. Just not happy enough to have driven all the way there to eat it. Rats. Went back to my room and revealed another couple of highlights of my trip.... Finding out that Quantum Leap was back on TV (YESSSSSSSSS! Thank you New Zealand for TV4! YES YES YEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!) as well as having all the time in the world to take out a pad and pen and hone my asinine and sarcastic commentary about this trip to a fine edge. I also watched The Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie as well, but that didn't do anything that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? hadn't already done a decade ago and better to boot. Still.... Seeing Robert De Niro do his "are you talking to me?" schtick as the fearless leader, Fearless Leader was funny. I just wish I hadn't paid 17 dollars for the privilege. -_-;;;;

I... think I'll leave it here. I have completely exhausted my "short, excitable guy with quick quips" gland of my brain (think Rob Schneider stuck in my hemocampus) and I'll need to rest a few hours to replenish it completely. Oh wait, one final point to add: We took that long roadtrip only to stay a total of 24 hours. EXACTLY 24 hours. I wasn't even awake for half of that! O.o Oh well, maybe that was a good thing. All right, signing off now. Maybe I'll do more entries in the near future. O.o