Coffees, Dishes and a Brat

In New Zealand a black coffee is a “long black”—made from a shot of espresso added to hot water, not out of a filter or press, while a “short black” is just the shot. If you prefer your coffee with milk, order a “flat white”; a shot of espresso with some carefully steamed and slightly “stretched” milk poured in. This is not a latte or a cappuccino, for those you must stretch the milk even more, however all three require a foamy plug on top so that you can saunter around without spilling a drop.

I prefer my coffee chugged, so that it touches my tongue as little as possible. It seems I lack the “passion for coffee” desired in all baristas.

At Oceanside Café, we also offer a range of yoghurt-based smoothies and ice cream milkshakes. These are much easier to make as they don’t require artistry or experience, you just plop approximate amounts of yoghurt, fruit and icing powder into a blender. One of the blender’s bearings must be wonky because it screams bloody murder and starts to smell like melted plastic and bad wiring after a few seconds.

In the way back, past the grill and burners and around the corner from the chaotic coffee/smoothie bench is where the dishes get done. Here, where the hot water tap lets out a stream of scalding water that will burn you, and the cold water tap should be labeled tepid, is my favourite place to work. No cat swinging here, it’s a cramped, steamy, tight space, even a swung mouse would hit its head on something. On a single little trolley we stack teetering towers of plates and cups. When the cooks cover this surface with their hot pots and pans or their dirty bowls, knives and food processor bits, we dump dishes in the sinks. I like to tackle this mess, armed with only a tatty old piece of steel wool and a single dishwashing machine.

Wouldn’t you like to make coffee, wait tables, stand at a till, roll cutlery, clean glassware, wash dishes, scoop ice cream and at the end of the day clean, sweep, mop and carry in dozens of tables and chairs? I don’t mind it, except one of my coworkers (of which there are only two or three at a time) is a nasty little girl. She giggles and flirts with the cooks, talks trash about the manager behind his back, but uses a sugary singsong voice to his face, and ignores all of my questions, even if I have customers waiting. I didn’t much care for High School when I was legally bound to go, and this girl is everything gross about high school, put on two legs.

Neighbours

Over the road is a little standalone white and faded-blue caravan. It’s practically hidden behind a leafy wall of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and melons all grown in pots and buckets and lovingly tended by a lady, Patricia. Her second domain is the communal kitchen, which sits in a block next to her site. Almost every day she’s got something going; soup bubbles on the stove, bread browns to perfection in the oven, jars are sterilised for preserves, chutneys and pickles or the sounds of chopping and a blender echo out into the yard. As Patricia explains it, she’s a descendant of French-Canadians, and cooks for therapy, to relax and recover from 40-odd stressful years of working as a nurse in NY city hospitals. Everyone knows she’ll magically transform any bit of food into a meal, so before they leave for home they’ll drop off their eggs, potatoes, lettuce, un-carved watermelons, and let her create something delicious. All that she creates is passed around and shared with her neighbours, we’ve had coleslaw, country vegetable soup, avocado ice cream, banana cake and, last night, spicy beef and potato pie. She made it for us to celebrate my new job.

Next door are Ron and Liz, an older couple that periodically gets run off their feet by herds of grandkids. Both are always ready to offer a kind word of support or ask an interested question, and make us feel like we’re looked after. On the other side of their site live Paul and his 11 year old daughter, Alex. Under his bandana Paul’s got a shaved head. His arms are freckled with homemade tattoos and he sports a nose ring, and this is the generous guy who brought over our beloved beach chairs and table. When we first arrived Alex ran around with all of the other kids, but most of them have returned to their winter homes, and left her with only one playmate, Tioriori, a scrappy and silly Maori. Alex and “T” ride around on their bikes, make fun of each other, and come over to our site to be entertained. One night Chris had them run a race, and then he had to come up with about two dozen variations and pull out his stopwatch to keep them happy. The next day we ran into Alex and her dad at the supermarket, “can we please do more races tonight?” she asked, as if it were difficult for Chris and I to sit on our chairs and send them dashing off. Soon he made them wriggle under picnic tables, climb over trees, do push ups and star-jumps and sprint hither and yon in between. Snaking through the campgrounds are little gravel paths and roads, but even these feet-killers don’t slow the kids down. Alex navigates over them, skips the worst bits and leaps and stretches for the spits of grass. Tioriori in no way changes his stride, his little piston legs continue unabated and clouds of dust and gravel puff up under his barefeet.

Can I Take Your Order

For about two weeks we’ve been on the job hunt. To begin with my criteria were strict, detailed; the winning job would involve boats, beautiful days, perfect hours, a convenient location, and a jolly boss. With each pavement pounding step, however, my little spirit sank further and further, whilst my stipulations evaporated, one by one. Yesterday I was on my way to apply at Subway—the twelve hours a week of sandwich artistry sounded sufficient to me. But before I got there some sort of work-god intervened, lowered a blessed finger and pointed me towards a handwritten sign for a “Café Assistant”. I strode in, talked to the silly boys behind the counter and received instructions to go over and disrupt the owner, who was having a chat and a drink with some friends. This is pretty much a shy person’s nightmare, but I did it. I stumbled over, quivering CV in hand and asked for Gordon. He led me back into the café, out of the sweet breeze and away from the soothing view of the ocean, and looked over my CV, asked some questions and offered me a “trial” for the following morning.

A trial is the opportunity for a boss to get a sense of the newbie , see if she’ll be able to hack the work, or just suck. A trial, also, is a good way to have some free, and awkward, labour. The trial went well, the two hours passed fairly quickly and my duties seem diverse enough that the work won’t be too boring or mechanical. Amongst other tasks, I will fill those little espresso handle things and clatter, tap and press them authoritatively.
I must’ve done alright, because I start tomorrow.

In other money related news…Last night, still buzzing from the trial offer, we were hanging out when Management came down to our site. She told us a couple had reserved our site from Friday on, till forever, but that we could just shift to a different site. Then, she said we should just park next to the Bach, or up the hill, and not even pay at all. This was Management, the lady who runs the place, the woman in charge, she suggested we stop paying. Welcome to New Zealand.

Raindrops Falling on My Head

After a few days of sweltering, oppressive sunshine we were thrust into a cloud. Even when it wasn't raining, an ultra-fine mist covered every surface and made everything stick to everything else; hair stuck to foreheads, T-shirts to backs, little blades of grass and sand clung to our ankles and sodden towels stuck to the car like glue. Pretty much the only thing that did not stick were the strips of velcro ("hook and loop" here) that we glued to the windows to hold up our curtains.

The sound of rain on the roof of the car is endlessly soothing, but trying to brush off our muddy, grassy feet before getting into the car is endlessly impossible. The Mazda Capella has power windows so, although we won't get achey forearms, when in starts to rain in the middle of the night Chris has to knee me in the head, crawl over the front seats and strain past our backpacks to reach the ignition and roll the buggers up.

The night before the first big rain was the night I realised we really had to get the laundry done. I decided we'd do it first thing in the morning and the clothes would dry on the line in no time, it's so hot you could cook a chicken in the noonday sun. Then the rains came and now our laundry bag is almost bigger than the backseat, we'll probably have to sleep on the floor tonight.

This morning the wind came in and kicked the rain out, it just screamed and screamed till every last drop of humidity upped sticks and left. It's the sort of wind that immediately rips your towels and washclothes off the line and buries them in the dust. A perfect day for a hike up Mount Maunganui, another expired volcano. The hike up was gorgeous, hot and steep, so the winds were a delicious treat. From the top we saw the Pacific ocean rolling out to forever on one side, and the busy little harbours and bays to the other. I know we'll upload more photos, but they cannot capture the beauty and subtleties of colour and light, or the enormity of the views. Sigh, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Free Stuff

The car, our humble abode, gets pretty toasty when parked in the sun, so in the afternoon when we want to sit and read, or during dinner, we have to sit in the dusty, tickly grass outside. The results of this sort of seating are achy knees and the nagging sensation of ants climbing up your shorts' legs. We were in the dirt yesterday afternoon, having a snack, when a neighbour came over with two rainbow-striped beach chairs. After he set them up he came back with a little wheely table, "for our chips". This is the life!

Not long afterwards another pair of neighbours offered us their spare bed. I thanked them, but declined, explaining I didn't know where we'd fit a bed, folding chairs are one thing...But no, they were actually offering us use of their place. It's an old caravan doubled in size with an addition, and they only use it as a holiday home, so it sits unused 90% of the year. This morning they invited us over for coffee and left us with a spare key, to use the "bache" (beach house, short for bachelor pad) whenever we please, as they're going back home.

Tauranga means "safe anchorage" and so far it has lived up to its name!

Photos

After hours of downloading, uploading and commenting, we have a link for the photos we've taken so far. The link'll take you to Chris' public album, so the captions are all his!

New Zealand 1

Coromandel Peninsula

We've fled the confines of Auckland and spent the past few days in calm and friendly campgrounds all around the Coromandel Peninsula. Camping is the way to go if you want to fall asleep to the sound of waves, be surrounded by cheerful families and only pay about 12 dollars a night.

The Coromandel peninsula has a rugged mountainous interior, most of which is preserved as parkland, and a stunning coast. The mountains (you Coloradans would call them hills) are covered in dense forests of ferns, palms, kauri and countless species I've never seen before--in New Zealand ferns grow as trees. We went for a couple of hikes through this tangle of life and were at times deafened by the chittering, buzzing drone of millions of insects. These insects do not sleep, they just desperately click twenty-four hours a day.

The roads through this land were built by a bunch of men having a laugh. They twist and turn and wind over themselves, you speed downhill winding right and then complete the turn and start a sharp ascent, veering left. Over and over again. I felt like a ballerina, Chris felt like a race car driver, a nauseous race car driver.

After chugging our way up and down, left and right, to the top of the tippiest toppiest top of a mountain we pulled over for a scenic overlook. I slammed the door, camera in hand, and skipped to the ledge. Goodness you can smell the rubber off the tires, golly you can smell something else too, something more sinister. It is the smell of the car oozing plumes of steam and who knows what else. We threw the hood open and watched in horror as water bubbled and danced on top of the radiator. Fortunately in this parking lot there was no shortage of holiday-makers to offer advice and condolences. The crowds agreed that the car had overheated and lost water, this was clear from the not-so-clear stream of water trickling out from under the car. But why did we lose our water, overheat, this was up for debate. Every man had his own opinion; leaking hoses, too much water, too little water, bad radiator, holes in the radiator, one pessimist even speculated it was our head gasket. The head gasket is not something you want to lose, or so it seemed from his expression.

After a bit, and the help of an older couple from England, we decided it had been the fan. Apparently in a Mazda Capella you must turn on your AC to cool off the engine, their is no other overheat fan, and as the morning had been cool and shaded we hadn't use the air at all. All day today we've had the AC blasting and the engine seems fine, so don't worry!

Right now we're in an internet cafe in Tauranga, one of the larger cities on the coast of the Bay of Plenty. We stopped in Katikati (this doubling up on words is pretty common) to talk to a man about a job, but he regretfully informed us he doesn't have work for ladies, he's looking for more lads to help prune and clean up his kiwi orchard. In a month there'll be picking to do and anyone can pick. Even we feeble ladies. He also requires his workers lodge in the hostel he owns, so you have to pay 120$ for a dorm bed to work for him.