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09/05/06 - 16/05/06 -
MOVING ON TO WELLINGTON
Money. It's all about money.
It was heartbreaking leaving Queenstown (for more reasons than one). I got back on the Kiwi bus, feeling like shit and began the journey to Wellington. The first day was just a really long drive to Christchurch. It was depressing being back there because my memories of the town mainly consist of having the flu and stressing over my work visa.
The next day it was straight onto Kaikoura. Kaikoura is a beautiful little town on the coast. The landscape is quite dramatic here. There are mountains over 2km high right by the town, followed by a flat area that leads 2km out into the ocean, and then the ocean floor drops by 3km. Kaikoura is a place to do your dolphin swimming and whale watching. But since I couldn't afford it, Kaikoura was the place where I watched TV and drank my left over beer.
The following day we headed to Wellington. Most of the day was taken up with driving and the 3 hour ferry journey from the South Island to the North. It's not very far between them, it's just the ferry is really slow.
Arriving in Wellington I immediately began looking for jobs. And by immediately, I mean the next morning after a nice lie in. I visited a few job agencies and made appointments to register with them next week. This meant I had a few days to kill without spending too much money.
So I wandered around town, went up Mt Victoria (its just a hill really). Got some great views of Wellington, plus there's a Lord Of The Rings location up there. Speaking of which, the LOTR Exhibition was back in town after a world tour, so I (funnily enough) went to that.
It was really amazing actually, I must have spent 3 hours walking around it. They had all the costumes and weapons from the film; videos explaining how different parts of the film were made; the original conceptual art drawings were displayed on the walls; they had the minatures (which were nick-named 'bigatures' because they're so huge) of Minas Tirith, Isengard, Barad-dur and more; they also had the head of the Treebeard puppet; a life size model of the cave troll from FOTR; and Boromir lying dead in the boat that goes over the waterfall in FOTR - when you see the film you think its Sean Bean lying in the boat (obviously not when it goes over the waterfall), but its actually a model that looks so lifelike, you want to give him a nudge to wake him up.
The most impressive things had to be the Minas Tirith bigature which was about 3 times the height of me; Sauron's costume from the prologue of FOTR - all the other costumes are on costume stands, but because you can't actually see any part of Sauron's body with the costume on, it looks like he's just standing there; and of course one of the actual rings used in the film.
Afterwards I was lured into the gift shop. Would have loved to have bought a replica ring, but they cost $450 so I settled for a keyring that cost $12.
But anyway, I'm getting registered on Wednesday at the job agencies, and then I'm going to give it a week from them to find a job. If I have no luck then I'll finish my holiday and go home, because there's no point hanging around when I can easily pay the money back at home. It would be a really shame to cut the holiday short, but there's only so much you can get in debt. Hopefully it'll all work out though.
So it's crunch time. Will I be able to find a job and stay in New Zealand until August? Will the work visa I fought for go to waste? Will I be able to write remotely interesting diary entries when I'm working in an office from 9-5!? Stay tuned to Karl Watson's Amazing Adventures - so exciting that you may just wet yourself.
Next: Sorted.
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