A Vacation From Our Vacation

3/7/10: Paihia, New Zealand

Today’s post will cover three topics.

1. Miniature golf
2. The re-emergence of a certain someone as the undisputed Scrabble QUEEN
3. Book exchanges

Miniature golf

There is a miniature golf course not too far from our hostel that bills itself as “the most difficult miniature golf course in New Zealand.” This description appealed to both of us – to Kevin because it contained the phrase “the most difficult” and to me because it had the word “miniature.” (What can I say? I’m quite small myself.) So this afternoon we walked over to the course and paid our $10 each to challenge ourselves with the daunting task of playing the MOST DIFFICULT MINIATURE GOLF COURSE IN NEW ZEALAND!

I don't know what the Blues Brothers have to do with miniature golf either.

A particularly delicate and well-hit chip shot.

Getting ready to tee off on the first par three.

I think I had four do-overs on this one.

Kevin wrestles an alligator a la Happy Gilmore.

Since Kevin has been playing golf since before he was old enough to go to PG-13 movies (which obviously gives him a great advantage in a round of miniature golf), we leveled the playing field by allowing do-overs at our own discretion. What’s a do-over? You’ve never heard of that in the game of golf, you say? Well, I invented it on the first hole. A do-over is when after you hit the ball, your first instinct is to immediately wave your arms in the air and loudly shout, “Do-over! Do-over!” I took twenty do-overs. Kevin took five. But! In the end we tied, 81 all. I consider that a victory for myself.

[Kevin informs me after reading this section that do-overs do exist in the game of golf, and they are referred to as “mulligans.” But I like my way better, so I'm leaving it. Besides, who wants to shout “Mulligan!” every time you mess up? It sounds ridiculous!]

Re-emergence of myself as undisputed Scrabble queen

You may have noticed that we haven’t been playing Scrabble recently. In fact, our last Scrabble game before we arrived in Paihia was played in Africa. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that one of the reasons we haven’t played any Scrabble in the last few months is because Kevin was leading in our running tally by two games and over 100 points, and I really didn’t want to lose again and get even more behind. (At an earlier point he led by as much as four games and 200 points) But since we have been on a vacation from our vacation here in Paihia, we had lots of time to break out the (t)rusty Scrabble board and play a few games. A few being seven. What can I say? We had a lot of time on our hands. What do you do when you go to the beach? Anyway, out of those seven games we played in the past two days, I won five of them. This means that I now lead Kevin by two games and fifty points. Which means I have finally taken back the Scrabble crown after a tough string of losses (at one point six in a row), and I have to write about it right NOW because tomorrow I probably won’t be able to truthfully write the same thing. Because even though I know more words than Kevin, he is the more strategic player. At least for now… We’ll see what things are like in another 1000 games or so.

That section was really boring for you guys to read, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, but that’s our marriage.

Book exchanges

One of the good (and bad) things about this trip is that unless you want to spend a ton of money, you don’t have too many choices when it comes to what books you read. Having patiently examined the book exchange at every single hostel we’ve stayed at, I’ve come up with some general guidelines for the kinds of books one might find at a book exchange. (This excludes our Acacia bus. The Acacia folk all seemed to have good taste in books.)

1. Every book that looks interesting upon first glance will inevitably turn out to be written in Dutch.
2. There will be at least three books by Robert Ludlum. Two of them will be the same.
3. There will be at least two romance novels, each of them written by women with big hair who will be pictured on the back cover.
4. At least 30% of the books will be (bad) science fiction or fantasy.
5. At least 50% of the books will be (bad) crime thrillers.

This usually poses a problem for me – because I don’t like crime thrillers, I can’t read Dutch, I don’t read sci-fi or fantasy anymore (except re-reads of the Pern series and the occasional Piers Anthony and of course Harry Potter, but everyone reads Harry Potter!) and I don’t enjoy romance novels. But sometimes I do get lucky and find a winner, like when we stayed at the Black Sheep Lodge in Queenstown. Have you ever heard of www.bookcrossing.com? At Black Sheep Lodge, I found a book that had been registered on bookcrossing.com and then set free! That made my day.

Liberate your books!
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: My dad shows off his new Pumas to us on Skype. What did people do without Skype?

Read Full Post »

All the Cool Kids Read Books

3/5/10: Paihia, New Zealand

Kevin books read for fun all through high school: 0.
Kevin books read for fun today: 1.

Yes, I finished an entire book today. No, it wasn’t Dylan’s Day Out or The Bernstein Bears or even Where’s Waldo?. It was actually James Patterson’s 147th international bestseller, Four Blind Mice (surprisingly, it was just ok and I probably wouldn’t recommend it). I know what you’re thinking: “That book is almost 400 pages and you read more slowly than Karl Malone shoots free throws! You’re a dirty rotten liar.”

You’d be wrong. I’m a reader now, and you need to get that through your thick skull. Here’s how it happened:

Zhou and I woke up late today because we’re near a beach and that’s what you do in beach towns. The plan was to go kayaking after lunch, so after a quick breakfast I dove into the Patterson thriller. By lunchtime I had read almost 70 pages, nearly equaling a record for me in one day. At that point I began bragging to Zhou about how I could read faster than she could. Then I realized she had already finished the first 200 pages of the book she just started. I switched gears to the tortoise and the hare example, saying how silly it was for her to read so quickly when I’d get her in the end.

After lunch we kayaked out to a small uninhabited island not too far from shore. We had the beach all to ourselves, so we did what anyone would do: we picked our books back up and read.

Page 103!

After a couple hours with our noses dug into our books, Zhou had finished her book which was clearly meant for a first grade audience, while I had gotten to page 190 of my difficult adult book. (Ha! Zhou just reconfirmed what I wrote by saying her book won the Pulitzer. Isn’t that the medal they give to the children’s book with the best illustrations each year?) We kayaked back to Paihia and Zhou immediately took a nap, giving me more time to read and catch up to her.

That's Paihia in the background – wow, we paddled far.

By dinner time I was up to page 290 and at this point I realized that nothing was stopping me from finishing the book in one day. After all, it has been a lifelong dream of mine to waste a whole day with nothing to show for it. It’s not easy being as productive as I have been every day for over 25 years now.

After dinner (and a quick walk to get Zhou some ice cream), Zhou did end up finding the only thing that could possibly come between me and my dreams: TV. More specifically, American Idol. We spent the next two hours watching 12 girls we didn’t know sing very mediocrely. As I look back on it, there were only two good performances: one by the girl who looks just like Brooke White and sings a bit like Megan Joy Corkrey, and one by the Ohioan girl (O! H!) who plays the harmonica and guitar. We actually did enjoy Ellen though. It would be nice is she was a little harder on the contestants, but I liked how she didn’t pretend to be a world-class singer and just said things like “as a person who loves music, I thought you were really good.”

Back to the books though. It was now 10:30pm, but I wasn’t about to let one two-hour setback get the best of me. I immediately grabbed my book and kept reading. I was so engrossed in the book (well, technically I was engrossed in the idea of finishing the book) that I lost track of the time and plowed through page after page at a rate of at least one page every minute or two. (Even in pressure-packed situations like this one, my mind still continuously wandered to other things, like if bugs always fly toward lights, do they ever try to travel to the sun during the day?)

I just realized that I gave away the ending of this post at the beginning, so by now you know that I did end up finishing Alex Cross’s last pre-FBI case before going to bed. It was a great day, one that I’ll remember for at least another day or two. Unless of course tomorrow I read two books. And who knows? It may just happen. I’m a reader now.

[To see all of the books that Zhou and I have read, check out our new "Reviews" tab.  You won't regret it!]
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: On the way to get Zhou’s ice cream, we stopped by the docks so I could pump some gas.

Read Full Post »

Shoeless Zhou (Zhang)

3/4/10: Paihia, New Zealand

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed this strange Kiwi phenomenon. It’s not terribly common, but it’s not uncommon either. It’s this: people go shoeless. And it’s not just in places where you might expect people to be shoeless – say, at a shoe store, where one, by necessity, has to be shoeless for a certain amount of time if one wants to actually try on shoes before one buys them, which I think I can safely say that most people do like to do. But here in New Zealand, you’ll see people walking shoeless around town, at the grocery store, down the street – and they’re not crazy hippies or anything like that. They seem like perfectly normal people, except that they have these inimical feelings toward covered feet.

After arriving in Paihia today, a cozy town by the Bay of Islands, I thought it would be a perfect time to do as the Romans, or this case, the Kiwis, do and go around barefoot for four days. I just really wanted to immerse myself in the local culture, you know? Ok, that’s not why. It’s really because we discovered that I had mistakenly left my flip flops in Auckland at our last hostel. “I thought you packed them!” “I assumed you packed them!” No matter. This is just like that time I left my sunglasses on the bus in Kuala Lumpur or that time I lost my wristlet in Hong Kong. By some magnetism or luck or combination of the two, my belongings always find their way back to me. So I wasn’t worried about getting my flip flops back, I was just a bit concerned about what I would do without them for four days in a beach town.

But then I thought – this would be the perfect time to try on the shoeless lifestyle. Would it be more comfortable? More breathable for the toes? More free and airy and in touch with nature? Maybe I would find going shoeless so pleasant that I would want to do it all the time. I could start a revolution in the States! Down with shoes!

Everyone goes shoeless on the beach.

We started the shoeless experiment with a trip to the grocery store. The grocery store, which was a 20-minute walk from our hostel. In hindsight – and I know you’re thinking exactly what I’m about to write, because you are a smarter person than I am – this was not the best idea I’ve ever had. The walk wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been on grass or mud or Jello or SOMETHING WHITE, like fluffy clouds or marshmallows or Cool Whip, but crossing the asphalt streets with the tiny bits of gravel everywhere and walking on the hot, gray, gravelly sidewalks for twenty minutes to the grocery store – well, it wasn’t too fun. By the time we got to the store, I felt like there were dozens of tiny rocks embedded in my heels (which there most likely were), digging deeper into my foot with every step. It was a huge relief to step onto the cool white tiles of the grocery store. I think my feet even sizzled when they first hit that floor. “They won’t kick me out, will they?” I nervously whispered to Kevin. “You know, like at home sometimes they won’t let you into places if you don’t have shoes on.” He just shook his head and sighed. “Why didn’t you just wear your shoes?” he asked me. A good and quite reasonable question. I ignored it and went off in search of some cheese.

We bought four full days worth of groceries, carefully accounting for all meals and snacks so that we wouldn’t have to go back to the store. Because shoes or no shoes, a 20-minute walk for groceries is a bit far. We left the store with several bags of groceries. I asked Kevin to push me back to the hostel in our grocery cart, but he declined to commit theft for the comfort of my feet. Or perhaps it was because he was afraid of looking ridiculous. Either way, it was quite ungentlemanly, if you ask me. So we made the long, 20-minute walk back to our hostel, Kevin strolling along happily a few feet in front of me in his flip flops, me stepping very carefully and gingerly behind him around the bits of rock and broken glass – shoeless still.
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Silly puppy, plums are for humans!

Read Full Post »