What am I doing in Auckland?

Written at the Silver Fern Backpackers Hostel, Auckland

In the great portrait gallery of cities there is San Francisco, a Saxophonist breathing mist into Pacific sun; there is Paris, a Chef among his pots and pans, a mass of flavours, colours and delightful concoctions. London, the Dibler of the world, the jack-of-all-trades, his quick hand and his obvious tics only endear him. Dubai’s the toddler boy, obsessed with ‘shiny’ and ‘tall’; Rome, the legacy-laden geriatric begrudging modernity.

Among the army of the personified metropolises there is the care-free deserter, languishing prostrate on the beach, Auckland. The place where banks would drive John Cleese to  satire that would strain his every joint, that open at only those hours when everyone else is supposed to be at work; the city where if you want something done quickly, you’d best ask someone who’s fresh off the plane.  In contrast to Taiwan’s effervescent night- and day-life, Queen Street – the closest to Oxford Street, London, that Auckland gets – is comatose after 10, and at peak shopping hours you could still swing round a Koala holding a bottle of beer. Granted, the sparse population of the city streets could have something to do with the limited total population (a mere 1 million people, it’s still a whopping 25% of the country’s population).

The city of Auckland lies atop New Zealand’s north island, arms and legs jutting up and down and out. On the flight in, it was beautiful, and Auckland is supposed to be one of the least attractive areas of NZ. It took about 10 hours to fly from Singapore to Auckland and, while JetStar is distinctly cheaper than other carriers, the plane was reasonably comfortable. No meals on the plane and about 1 hour of sleep added a good meal and a nap to my to-do list… right at the top? Find my hostel.*

* I am pleased to say that I made it all the way to NZ wearing my PhD hat on every flight and in every terminal en route, for at least some of the time. The distinctive Britishness of the hat made me wonder what people were thinking: there’s a clot who’s about 100 years out of touch, how quaint?

Silver Fern Backpackers is a fairly new hostel, and at $27 a night it was among the cheapest in the area. Paying a full two weeks in advance had the bonus of a few extra 50 MB codes for the wifi:

Before I go on I should explain what wifi means to the underclass of cash-starved backpackers in NZ. It’s expensive, $0.10 per megabyte, that’s $70 to just download a movie (the exchange rate coming over was about 1.8-1.9 NZD to 1 GBP). Over my first few days I hunted for free wifi like I was searching for water in a desert. I wasn’t the only one. The Auckland Central Library has 100 MB/day free wifi, available 24 hours, the funny thing is that the library closes in the afternoon… a cluster of internet-hungry laptops swarm around outside for hours afterwards no matter what the day.

Back to the hostel: my first day you would have thought that I’d crash, and start work come Friday. Ahuh. Something about the sun and the novelty or maybe the exercise of getting my two cases around Auckland’s hills lit a fire under my feet, and by evening’s end I’d scouted out the banks and the phone vendors, explored the University of Auckland campus and Albert Park, and popped into a wine shop for a free taste of a very nice Riesling. I didn’t feel like buying anything at the time so I felt the need to excuse myself – that didn’t stop me going back the next day for more.

The hostel provided free breakfast from 8-9 AM, but what with the lack of sleep, all day walking and adapting to the heat I was too out to wake up in time the next morning.

Over the last few week I’ve met my supervisor (David Williams, apparently loaded, having once been the head of the research group that invented the pregnancy test), signed up for short-term work as a technician at the University of Auckland (UoA) and completed my enrolment. Regrettably, my supervisor twisted his ankle yesterday and hasn’t been around to fill in the final forms for technicianing or for my student visa. 

Hopefully that should all be done by the end of next Monday (today being Friday 10^th Feb) and then my fate will be in the capable hands of Immigration NZ.

Auckland is a little empty to be honest. There’s plenty to see, but not a great deal of variety. I’m sure I could find a great collection of bars, hairdressers and shops if I went out into the suburbs, and there’re are certainly places well worth a visit for the sake of photography, but even in central Auckland there’s only one museum I’ve run across, a cinema or two and there’s Queen Street which is a fairly typical high street. I have yet to explore K-road at night however (the night-club/red-light street), so called because it’s a long name beginning with K and no-one can be bothered to use the full name apparently.

Speaking of places well worth a tripod and a couple of hours of walking around, since I’ve been in the hostel for a week I am dying to find a proper place to live. There’s a housing crisis* at present, and I’m hunting at the same time as all the other students. One place that peaked my interest was in Mount Eden, a borough a little way out from central; the place turned out to be too far from central to suit me, but the house was great: raised foundations, clear line of sight to the top of Mount Eden (a dormant volcano, a luscious green-topped hill with a level top free of trees – perfect for night-time shots of the city, I hope), and the two women living there were great. I’ve been invited round for dinner, despite turning down the room.

*Is it bad that my first guess for the spelling was Crysis™?

Mission Bay, one of the many such bays along the coastline of Auckland’s wider circle, is 10 minutes away from Central by bus. I went along for one afternoon, alone, with A Clockwork Orange as company – come to think of it that’s a little suspect from a psychological perspective but I don’t give an in-out. The rest of Auckland is nice, but it’s ordinary. Mission Bay on the other hand, for a Londoner at least, is a beautiful prospect: an extended beach in easy distance, with a quiet beach-level walk all the way back to Auckland, with only a few people around even at the height of summer. While the bus took 10 minutes, the walk back took a lot longer, maybe an hour and a half? A lot of that time I spent absorbing the sea-front view of a good chunk of the east of Auckland. There was a particular outcrop supporting a restaurant of some sort gave the perfect view and I will be going back to take shots at night: the Sky Tower is clear, the water is gentle and the coast-line path meanders all the way.