Save Me! :)

A lawyer and an government tax official are both drowning. You can only save one of them. Do you eat your lunch or read the newspaper?

My Photos

For those of you wanting some/all of my several hundred (possibly thousand) photos from the roadtrip and Montreal in general, I'll be trying to get those sorted asap...

Welcome to My World

Hello, it's just me again. Thanks to everyone who posted comments wishing me a safe trip home and just saying hi. It was nice to hear from you all :) Well, it's safe to say that I have now realised the perils of not blogging for a little while - things build up and all of a sudden you have to massively blog just to catch up. So perhaps a little selection of highlights for those of you interested, then on to what I am now doing with my life now that I have returned back home to NZ and the corporate lifestyle (which is very seductive, I must admit!).

Last time I wrote I believe I was leaving San Francisco. Prior to that, I don't think I really filled in many details so here goes. Richard, Desiree, Anuj, Mazzy and me were heading down to Boston and NYC for a road trip over Easter weekend. Along the way, McDonald's turned into some sort of symbolic Waterloo each time we met it. It all started with leaving for the trip. We were supposed to meet at McD's at one of the Montreal metros at 4pm. Once everyone had all arrived there by 4.30, we realised that me and Anuj had left our Greyhound tickets home at our Montreal homes. Good one! So I ended up sprinting through the metro and jumping on the first metros that came along. It wasn't cool that my apartment is at the top of a hill with the metro at the bottom - so consequently I had to run up a steepish hill - not fun! Got back and funnily enough beat Anuj even though he was a lot closer. Finally we were off 2 hours later.

Happily driving along, night falls and before we know it we are in the middle of Nowhere, Hicktown USA, critically low on gas. After hailing down several cars, we eventually found where to go, thankfully without having to push the car. Once we had tanked up, it was onwards! This is when the ugly McD's reared its head again. Desiree was obviously very talented at getting good accommodation deals, because she got the 5 of us a room at a Comfort Inn for USD78 - which included breakfast too! What a bargain. Anyway, me and Anuj were hungry so we went over the road to the local McD's. Well, they had just shut their walk in area and were only serving the drive thru. They also refused to serve us, despite us only wanting a Big Mac or two. This resulted in a shouting match of sorts. A car rolled up while we were blocking the window, and the girl threatened to run us over. So I threatened to sue her for assaulting and battering us with a motor vehicle and intent to cause greivous bodily harm. She got out of her car to be served at the window, but had to withdraw after I said that the staff refused to serve us like that but to serve her was inconsistent. She was forced to reverse to another window to be served. In the meantime, Anuj was kind of shouting at the people inside, so the manager threatened to call the cops. At this point, I decided that I wanted the manager's name (I used to be a manager at McD's so knew she was supposed to provide it). However she refused to, so then Anuj and I both returned to the "raised voice discussion". Anyway, they all were ignoring us now and then she called the police, and then before we knew it there were 3 police cars around us and officers asking "Is there a problem, sir?". Well, obviously they weren't serving us so there was a problem, and it wasn't really satisfactorily resolved. Regardless of that, I am disappointed to say that there was definitely a racist undertone to the whole situation, which both myself and Anuj picked up. Suffice to say, it left us with a very sour taste in our mouths, and it's quite possible that this matter has not yet been concluded. So after maybe 5 hours after arriving in the US, we were already in trouble with local law enforcement. I have to say that if you are ever going to White River Junction McDonald's in Vermont, let me know. They really were a bunch of rednecks :-/

The next day we set out for Boston and Harvard, and had an amazing time. Both were totally amazing places and it's certainly not the last time I will be going there. That night we were heading to NYC, and to cut a long story short, Mazzy lost her passport, return ticket home, and a month's rent money. At a McDonald's (you see why we suffered a McDonald's curse now, don't you?) After a hectic night of phone calls calling almost every sort of police you can imagine (Highway Patrol, State Police Connecticutt, State Police NY, State Police Massachussetts, Interstate Police, etc), we headed to Baljinder's place in Queens. Thanks for having us Baljinder, it was great! The bad news didn't stop there - the next day we were heading down to Southport. Mazzy wanted to take the duty free booze with us for later that night, so since I was the one with a bag, it was obviously up to me. At some point the bottle of Absolut Vanilla Vodka smashed in my bag, blowing Vodka everywhere (including all over my clothes), and then trying to rescue the situation I cut my hand on a shard of glass :-/ Not very fun. Minutes earlier Mazzy had gone to a McDonald's to have breakfast, too.

New York was amazing though, and I can't even begin to write what we got up to there, or how wonderful and amazing it was. That's for another day. One day was lost when Anuj, Mazzy and I agreed to meet up at two different times in Time Square (in case we missed each other the first time), and it was just bizarre because we were all there at the same time at the same place and never saw each other. That was crazy. Anyway, on the Easter Monday night, Anuj and I eventually found each other at the Greyhound terminal where we boarded the bus back to Montreal. Once I arrived several hours later, I had to frantically pack for a flight several hours later (I was trying to pack earlier but Mazzy had earlier insisted I go to Mim's farewell party which dragged on way longer than I had wanted), so I ended up missing my flight and its connection, despite hoofing it to the airport at a great rate of knots (and also leaving behing a $700 wool and cashmere overcoat, which really pissed me off). Anyway, I had to rebook etc, and was left in Montreal airport going to Toronto and then on to San Francisco. Eventually I made it, as you might have been able to tell from my posts at SF airport :)

So that is why things were so frantic. In the space of only a few hours, my travel went something like this: Boston, New York City, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Auckland, Wellington. I arrived on Friday 1 April, and work began on Monday 4 April. I'll write about work in a separate post above...