Ani MollerOne o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock rock

In September 2001, I lugged an overly large and overly purple suitcase and one extremely heavy box to Wellington airport. I said goodbye to my parents, my nana, my sister, my 3-week-old neice, and my best friend. My best friend, Phillipa, gave me a notebook she’d covered in magazine cutouts of her idol, Michael Jackson, and told me not to read it until I got on the plane. As the plane pulled out, I saw them all standing by the window waving, even though I wasn’t sure if they could even see me. I saw my sister and best friend start crying, and hug each other. I looked at the notebook in my hands and proceeded to bawl my eyes for the majority of the flight to Auckland. I’m such a pussy.

By the time I return to New Zealand next year, I would have been living overseas for 4-and-a-half years. I lived in Austin, Texas for a year; Houston, Texas for almost two years; Manchester, England for just over a year; and soon Antwerp, Belgium for three months. By mid-February, I will be back in Wellington, back where I started.

The last almost-five years have been sometimes crazy, but most of the time fun. I really don’t think that life is going to be crazy and fun back in Wellington. I expect it to be dull and boring. I’m not really that looking forward to being back. I was sad to leave but now I’m vaguely dreading going back.

Since I left New Zealand, I have thoroughly enjoyed never bumping into weird ex-boyfriends and annoying twats I went to school with. I’ve loved being the token foreigner with the “weird” accent that forces Americans to do really bad Steve Erwin impressions. I’ve had fun being somewhat “exotic” when I was dating when I lived in Houston, although I’m probably a bit white and my accent isn’t ESOL enough to actually be exotic, but guys love it anyway. I’ve loved living in places where nobody really knows me and certainly no one has any expectations of who I am or what I’m like. I could be whoever the hell I wanted to be, and it always helps having a weird accent when you want to go to the drive-thru in your pajamas or if you say something completely bizarre by accident. No one questions stupid foreigners for being stupid – they’re just so foreign! But mostly, I just don’t want to bump into people I don’t like again. I’m really bad at pretending I like people I don’t.

I know New Zealand is this beautiful country that people who don’t live there rave on about a lot. I also rave about it at times, but only when I’m having a whinge about wherever I’m living now because I’m really excellent at determining the worst attributes about any place or any thing. But although New Zealand has the most beautiful landscapes, clean air, and open spaces there are quite a few things that suck that make me not sure about moving back.

First of all, it is far away from anything interesting. Australia is the closest country, but only on one side – it takes almost 6-and-a-half hours to be to Perth from Auckland. Australia isn’t interesting anyway! It’s 12 hours to Los Angeles. It’s 11 hours to Japan. It really is in the bloody middle of nowhere. This is both good and bad, I guess. Fingers crossed I won’t have to wear a surgical mask any time soon, but I probably will – god damn bird flu.

Secondly, there is no internet. Well, there is, but it is slow and expensive and owned by Telescum who like to fuck things up, just because they can. I guess this lack of decent broadband will force me to actually go outside and do stuff, but I will also probably have to go back to reading the paper for movies times, getting directions from a paper map, and getting my TV schedule from Woman’s Day which will be hidden amongst stupid articles about the lamest of New Zealand celebrities.

Then there are other things like New Zealand’s bizarre and recent obsession with crystal meth (“P” for the morons in New Zealand – it’s fucking crystal meth you twats, stop trying to make it sound like something that’s going to make you want to make love to a toilet brush), mental and violent teenage gangs who will probably beat me for my shitty 2nd gen iPod that I can’t afford to replace, the price of electronics and travel, and the lack of good stores like IKEA, H&M, and Apple Stores (yeah, yeah, I’m a fangirl). Also, where am I going to get breakfast tacos and lackmans? I’m going to have to make them myself, good lord!

I’m sure in due time I will get used to buying my furniture from stores that sell “comfortable sofas” and not buying fun electronic stuff purely because I can’t afford to be spending $100 on a PS2 game. But I will never get used to bumping into annoying people from school. Maybe I’ll just dye my hair, fake an accent, and pretend I don’t see them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 12:02 am and is filed under General, Travel. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Log in to make commenting easier!