Isolation Day 13

Lets start with a couple of JT's life hack's for getting through Isolation - 

• It’s a great time to explore "roundabout traffic islands" while there is virtually nil traffic.
• Its also the perfect time of the year for mushrooms, I found some on my lawn, and subsequently found several on my walk, enough for breakfast this morning with a couple of eggs. Since then I have often supplemented my lunch time wraps with some mushrooms - to give you an idea of the amount I'm finding. To be honest I have held this post back, because as much as I want to encourage others to forage, (without being an old mate/my own personal hero about it) I know that I had the benefit of a childhood on a farm, and picking mushrooms each year, so I can tell the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool. The last thing I want to do is encourage people to go out and pick something and then they have a psychoactive experience, or worse, poison themselves. Keep an eye out for a post shortly, in which I came up with a whole lot of things that look like mushrooms but aren't, while I was free-writting in a class with Neil Thornton and the NZ Comedy School.
• Once I get around to it, I will create a bit of a mini golf course around my lawn

What I've got done recently
Again, I'm writing this retrospectively (from the future lol) so I can't remember exactly where I was up to at this point in time. What I can tell you though, is it felt as time went on that I was using the time less and less productively. But to be fair, I think it was more the fact that the time seemed more precious and finite the closer we got to the date the level 4 was reviewed.

Anyway, some of the things I did were - 

• Wash car - I did this about the second day of lock down, as it was a day when it rained. I figured it was a logical time to do it, as it required less water and effort on my part as the rain naturally pre-rinsed and rinsed the car. As it was still only late March, it was relatively warm still, and I helped myself by wearing my togs and rash vest.
• Clean inside windscreen of car  
• Vacuum the car - I did this at a latter date, once the car was nice and dry. I had given it a good vacuum over the New Years' break, but since then I had had my sister's dog in the back seat.
• Vacuum shed - a logical thing to do while I had the vacuum cleaner plugged in. I got rid of cobwebs, and a lot of sawdust from when I've had my father around to help with the odd project in the past.
• Clean bathroom - I think I did this on day 1. I figured I would get it out of the road, and then any subsequent cleaning of the bathroom is my flatmate's responsibility (I have a toilet there, as well as in my laundry room, so generally I used the laundry toilet, and he uses the bathroom, so I only really go in there to shower, shave, and brush my teeth. I have been stricter on myself during lockdown to only use the one ("my") toilet.
• Vacuum house - I did this in sections over several days, as I wanted to do it properly, and in a logical manner. For example in the spare room at the same time I took the opportunity to re-arrange the bed etc, and vacuumed all of it. In my room I went as far as flipping the bed against the wall and vacuuming underneath it, and pushing out the drawers to get in behind and beneath them.
• Cull Recipe books - I went through my recipe books, I got rid of two, and have put two others in the box "for Papamoa" in other words to go to live at my parent's beach house, as they were too good to get rid of, but were essentially double-ups of books I already had. I did use this time to have a look at some recipes, namely for soup.
• Washed the house's windows - again, I decided to do this when it rained. So I waited until the second time it rained, which, as a meme circulating Facebook pointed out, was rare for once for a New Zealand April.

The Inequity of it.
I'm not complaining, much the opposite. I'm in a good position. But I feel sorry for medical professionals and other essential workers who have to put themselves at risk, and its another day at the office for them, whilst others are getting a "holiday". In my sister and brother-in-law's case, they have had to work from home, and at the same time look after my nieces. While I would love to spend some time with my nieces right now, I know that I would also soon like a break from them. So, on top of my personal ambitions, I have also been motivated to be productive as I appreciate that I have been lucky, and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Isolation Day 10

Unfortunately it’s a bit of a struggle providing a unique perspective on my unique experience of something everyone else seems to be going through at the moment - my experience in isolation. As interesting as I find the tasks of my day, I’m sure it’s probably not as interesting as I think it is.

Managed to get up at a decent time 7 o’clock. Decided it was a victory if I went to my chair and after doing things even if I did keep falling asleep in the chair for you my breakfast and once I woke up enough I watched couple episodes of big bang theory before tackling some properties. I have actioned the clothes I’m in my room and worked out which ones were too small and which ones are gym clothes.

Then I concentrated on moving my wine rack from the bottom of the pantry to the other big kitchen cupboard to give my flatmate some more pantry space. A benefit of this was that I actually ended up with more wine bottle storage spaces and the wine is now hidden behind other things in the cupboard.

After this victory I had some lunch I’m of of wraps with three mushrooms growing in my lawn recently and a bit of an omelette.

As I was doing this I finished series 6 of The Big Bang Theory.

Shifted my focus back to my bedroom. I fully completed dealing with the clothes and now I’m dealing with the small boxes of random stuff. At the same time I have been falling down the YouTube app at home and as I looked up whether there was a Verona (by Elemeno P) parody song because of the obvious rhyming with Corona. Some one had of course beaten me to the punch. Check it out here  -

 Tonight is daylight savings so clocks go back one hour and which is good because it should mean that I wake up and hour earlier. 

Had a good chat to my parents and later on to my brother-in-law over the phone and FaceTime respectively.

I was keen to try and do the online open mike night again tonight and however decided that as it is daylight savings tonight I would hold off another night and because as of tomorrow it’ll be dark a lot earlier and therefore a lot easier to participate just because I’m finding it hard to get around to being organise for it beforehand because obviously wants me like I am doing whatever random job I’m doing and not really watching the time.

On to book 8 for the year. Last year I only got through 10 for the whole year, but that was because I read a 500+ page Bill Bryson book (1927). It was good, but one that size takes longer obviously, but also perpetuates the problem because you lose motivation. I started the year with Shaun Wallace’s autobiography,  have read 3 Barry Crump novels, and 3 Stephen Clarke Merde (which I found on TradeMe, but they’ve come from the UK,) and am currently reading Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. I’m trying to read one authors works at a time, preferably in order in which they were written. I switched to Nick Hornby as I have some gaps in my Crump collection, but also discovered I don’t have a copy of what I think is his most famous (and most often found at book exchanges etc) About a Boy.

First world problem of the day

Pooping- usually need to go first thing in the morning, unless I went the evening before (generally). At the moment that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I may think I need to go, but then only achieve reading several pages of my book. Where the problem lies is I hold off going for my walk because I know that will often get the ball rolling, and since I’m trying to do 4kms a day, I don’t want to be desperate to go when I’m 2kms from home. Of course then I don’t go, and it gets to 6/7pm and I decide to bite the bullet. And yes, I’m writing this draft after such a walk, from you know where.

Other isolation observations - dude driving his car to pick up chicks, but it’s not a good time to be picking up chicks.

While there is quite a few people out walking, it’s awkward purposefully keeping quite a distance. The odd person says hi, a lot do not. I remember as a kid walking around Mt Maunganui and the majority of people would say hi, and those that didn’t we thought were snobs.

Isolation Day 9

A reasonably productive day.

Initially I woke up just before 7am, and had I not felt like I just couldn't do it, I would have gotten up then. But I couldn't, so I ended up getting up about 9am, which was a good start - I want to get back into a good routine.

Anyhow, had my pre-prepared breakfast, and then went for a walk. Earlier in the week I had requested a prescription, which had been sent to my local pharmacy. So I investigated a walk which took me past there.

On the way home I gave my mate Ron a call, and after that I had some lunch of wraps. I have multiple packets of wraps in my freezer, as up until this time last year it was my go to lunch. That changed this year as I needed to take a premade lunch, so I reverted back to sandwiches.

After lunch I vacuumed out my shed, and my car, finally ridding the backseat of the hair of my sister's dog.

For dinner I finished off the Pumpkin soap and beer bread I made yesterday. The beer bread was actually nicer today cold. I tried to get involved with the open mic night online again, but faced technical difficulties, so watched an episode of Lego Masters instead.

Isolation Week 1

So here I am, well, we all are, in isolation, unless you are from Australia and really dragging the chain on this one...

Personally I'm enjoying being able to do the things that I haven't had the time to do in recent times. It's like being at the beach over Christmas, albeit I feel less guilt for not going swimming more, climbing the Mount (Mt. Maunganui) etc. and there is internet and most of my possessions here.

Unfortunately some of my more fun and recreational "to-dos" are at the beach, such as all my Lego, and my stamp and other collections. This has benefits though, in the sense that I'm doing the less fun and possibly more important, necessary and beneficial tasks.

I came back to Hamilton the day/night before lock down, so I had about 24 hours to get what I might have needed. As it was, my freezer and and pantry are pretty well stocked anyway, as I'm a supermarket addict, and enjoy eating, and therefore enjoy growing things in my garden as well as cooking. Having only being home one or two nights a week for the past month, I had a full contingent of pre-made dinners already made in the fridge's freezer. To be honest I appreciated the opportunity to get to use them up, as well as starting to use some of the countless supplies in the chest freezer such as mixed veges and all the (grated and sliced) courgettes that have been growing in my garden.

On the day before lock down I went out, mainly to hunt out some manure and/or compost, so I could restock my garden as well as possibly going about fixing up the differing levels of my lawn. Unfortunately, other people probably had had the same idea, and the couple of places nearby where I know there is usually manure available on the side of the road (pre-bagged, either for sale or free) had already been stripped of their goods. So I ended up going to the Warehouse and picked up six bags of compost, as well as a copy of the book "Funny As" (which was published alongside the documentary of the same name, which talked about the history of New Zealand comedy) for $15, which I think was a bargain. To be fair, I felt the Warehouse was treating the day like Boxing day - a good opportunity to sell sell sell, albeit with social distancing. Before going home, I thought a good idea would be to get some more Masala oats (like porridge, just curried) as they don't require milk.

So tasks I have ticked off since isolating:

• Washed car
• cleaned the bathroom, including the bath and both toilets, and the shower curtain
• gone through my recipe books and (tried to) cull some of them (I only managed to decide to get rid of two, and send two others to the beach)
• Made the bed and tidied up the spare room.
• Partially tidied my room (still a work in progress)
• Culled some of the clothes in my drawers
• Put away all my clothes
• Tidied my pantry
• Gone for a 4km walk most days (so far only missed two non-consecutive days)
• Used up some of my frozen dinners,
• Generated some more (I had portions of Scalloped Potatoes already made, so I added some shredded chicken (already pre-frozen) and courgette bake which I made
• Today I used a frozen pumpkin soup which I pimped out by adding some bacon pieces and chopped up small chillis, and made some beer bread. Unfortunately the bread ended up being a bit more of a pizza.

Along with the above tasks, I have also attended two online comedy workshops, participated in an online open mic, participated in a MCed quiz (like a pub quiz, just online instead),

As you can probably tell, I've also been attempting to resurrect my blog. Keep an eye out, I'm updating it, but jumping a little from entries from Bali in 2018 to entries in Europe in 2014, to present day entries such as this (in 2020) 

Lembongan

I jumped in the vehicle and we were off. 

The driver seemed cool- chatty and young. It probably only took us an hour to get to the harbour /HQ of the boat/resort. It seems the resort and the boat(s) and pontoons where you alight to hop into a smaller boat are all owned by the same company. What was cool was on the big boat to the pontoon, I met again an Australian couple that I had done the bike ride with the previous day. It was nice to have some company and conversation.

I made it to the resort, which was really nice. On checking in, they wanted my credit card details for security - standard practice at hotels. It was then that I discovered my Credit Card had been blocked, despite the fact that I had advised them that I would be travelling to Indonesia, and my travel dates. Turns out it had been blocked prior to my trip when someone random had tried to use my details. The hotel was good about it, but of course it meant I couldn't use it for the rest of the trip. Luckily I am a man who has contingency plans, needless to say, someone got a bollocking on the phone once I got back to New Zealand.

As I said the resort was nice, and there were several activities you could do. There was about an hour or two before I could access my room, so I tried to do some of these, as well as having the complimentary first day lunch.

One of the activities was a banana boat/biscuit ride. I had always wanted to try it, but it didn't live up to the expectation - I was on the back of it, and physics isn't my friend, so it was 'sinking' underneath me, whilst the front stuck up in the air. This meant I was more concerned about hanging on for dear life, and fighting the resulting urge to be sick.

Another activity was a drive around the island. To be fair, this was also a waste of time, as they took you just down the road to a big yellow bridge, waited there for about 20 minutes, and then returned back to the hotel. I did try and explore the island myself a day or so later, but to be fair, it wasn't really an explorable place, as the layout wasn't conducive, things looked the same, and not tidily laid out, and the island was bigger than it appeared when I originally looked at it on a map.

I can however say, conversely, the food on the first day was a great buffet, as well as the other meals I had while there.

My room was amazing, it was a bure. Underneath there was even an outdoor lounging area, but being a single traveler, that pretty much went to waste. One of my regrets was it wasn't really a place for meeting people. I spent a lot of time on Tinder trying to remedy that fact, however I did spend a lot of time reading and napping.

It was a lovely place to be, although the snorkeling out from the resort was fairly average as it had a bit of an undertow, as well as a bit of traffic.

I ended up going out several times with the people doing scuba trips, which was good, got to see some more interesting areas, albeit, it was naturally disappointing only getting the 2D experience when they got the 3D. The highlight was just before hopping back on the boat the last time I believe I saw a small tortoise. 

On the day I was to head back to the mainland I asked if they could take me back to the pontoon a couple of hours early, so I could enjoy some of the attractions there - such as the water slide and the snorkeling. From memory the snorkeling was actually pretty good.

Anyhow, eventually I hopped back on the big boat, and was returned to the mainland.

Once there, it took a while to find the person who was actually my transfer to my next hotel, and once I did, it was a bit of a drive (due to the traffic, and the fact it was rush hour) and I had to make sure he was dropping me off at the correct place, as like I had found with Ubud, there were places with similar names.

Ubud

Ubud.

I made it through customs easy enough, albeit for the waiting. Once I got through I was welcomed by my own guy with a sign with my name on it - which is another first for me. I almost wanted to take a photo of him with it. I had hoped to get a SIM card at the airport, but I was looking for a Vodafone shop, but I only saw a couple of other brands that I didn’t know how legit they were, and I had the guy waiting for me. So we went to his vehicle. He put my bags in the vehicle and handed me an ice cold water and a welcome pack. Now I was a little paranoid at this point as the seal didn’t crack as dramatically as it would usually at home, so I was questioning whether the water hadn’t just been filled from a tap, so I only took a small mouthful at that point. Which was a good idea, as it took a while to drive to the hotel as traffic was quite built up, and toilets probably few and far between. I was waiting for the density of traffic to dissipate before attempting any real conversation with the driver, (remembering how educational the conversation I had had with the guy who transferred me in Fiji was) however it never did.

Once I got to the hotel I had a read of the pack and figured if the company recommends you don’t drink the tap water, they aren’t going to give you (disguised) tap water to drink.

Once I got to the hotel I wanted/needed to sort a few things out, but at the same time was fighting a long day. By the time I got myself sorted, it was about 10pm local time, so I nipped out and got some quick dinner - some soft shell tacos before going to bed.

Woke up the next morning with my alarm at 6am. Breakfast opened at seven so was nice and organised for that. I organised a 1.5 hour massage at 12, and once that was over, went about finding a SIM card. The hotel people had mentioned a booth just out the front gate - which I found and discussed with the guy running it - however I thought it a little too convenient being just out the gate, and figured I ought to check out the Main Street, especially as they might have a more non-tourist brand. Truth be told, I should’ve just bought the SIM card there as it took me ages to get to the Main Street due to the fellow pedestrians sharing a pavement that periodically had pavers missing, and then between them, periodic open manholes (which to be fair are big and square and raised, so not invisible). I also purchased a pair of sunglasses (some “Oreys” - ie fake Oakleys) and some gelato. By the time I had completed this and got back to the hotel, it was virtually 6pm, the closing time of the monkey forest and the Elephant cave. The rest of the evening I spent having a swim in the pool, having dinner and getting organised for the next days bike ride.

The next morning I woke up early again, and before breakfast went and got some supplies from the convenience store next to the hotel - just some water and chips. However a monkey had a go at stealing my chips, and on the second go right outside the door of my room  it succeeded in mugging me of them. It was a little sinister as I had no where to go, and wasn’t going to fight due to not wanting rabies or ebola. I had breakfast and got picked up at about 8 and we headed north for about an hour or two. I had been dreading this part of the trip for several reasons - one that it might be quite strenuous and I wasn’t particularly fit, and two that I got a seat that made me feel violated afterwards.

When we got our bikes, I was horrified to discover the seat was not particularly big, however both fears were unwarranted as 90%+ of the ride was downhill and required little pedaling, the strain was more on your arms and feat to keep you in position- which I think was also made harder by the fact the bikes had suspensions, meaning if you were facing downhill, you potentially were further forward than usual. What I wasn’t a fan of was the sharing the road with all the Bali traffic and the off-road bits could be rough in places.

However, it was over before I knew it, and the lunch we got was fantastic.

Once I got back to my hotel, I went and did the monkey forest - which was nice, albeit less special after my run in with the monkey that morning.

That evening I had organised to meet up with an American girl. It ended up she got back later from her tour than expected, and then had a massage booked (which was Ok, as it allowed me to fit in an hour massage too) but by the time we met, I was starting to feel like going to bed, so my conversation probably wasn’t on point.

The next day I was told to be ready to be picked up at 7-7:30 to head to my next hotel. At 6:45, whilst on the toilet I got a call saying the driver was here. Luckily I had used the time wisely the night before whilst waiting for the American girl, to be all packed.

The Return to Asia - Bali

Yes, there is a Four-year gap I still haven’t filled, but I figured you may appreciate some current adventures in the meantime. I know it’s four years, as my niece Sienna has just had her Fourth Birthday.

After a weekend of packing and preparations, I spent the night at Mum and Dad’s so we could get an early start with Dad dropping me off at the airport. Admittedly somewhat self-serving, I promised him a McDonald’s breakfast. The stop there also gave me a quick paranoia inspired check that I had my passport and ticket before it was too late, of course it was just paranoia.

As we got into Auckland the traffic locked up at Takanini, and it was around this point I fell asleep, waking at the airport. This of course was a little bit of a shock to the system, saying my good-byes to Dad, and facing the reality of the situation after just waking up (again).

Relax: That's my intention!

I was nice and early so I wasn’t pressured for time. I had a quick look around in the general airport after checking in my bags, having a small chuckle to myself that there is a KFC based at the airport- presumably for the people who take home buckets of KFC to the Islands. As much as I’m a fan of KFC, I was still full from McDonalds, so I proceeded through security and into duty-free.

Once on the plane I proceeded to watch some movies and TV. I started with “The Breaker-uppers” a recent Kiwi film - it had some good one-liners that had me laughing out loud. I followed that up with “Good-bye Christopher Robin” - about A. A. Milne and his son Christopher- who was the inspiration of his namesake in the Winnie the Pooh stories. That had me crying at the end - my neighbours in the seats next to me may’ve thought I was a bit nuts. I watched about half of Deadpool - but as I was next to the toilets I decided it was a bit too graphic considering I had kids walking past. So I switched to watching most of a documentary on “Back to the Future” and a few 5-10minute travel documentaries. As I was travelling through the day, I only dozed off briefly at one point.

On arrival to Bali, I was hit by the heat as soon as I hopped out of the plane and into the airlock into the airport. Customs took a while to get through, solely because of the number of people that were coming in - our  plane had been put into a holding formation for about half an hour before we landed as the run way was busy - I think out of all my travel, that’s the first time that’s ever happened, or at least the first time the pilot has mentioned that is the case - despite reading about it when I was a kid.

I’ll leave it there and continue in a new post...