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I always dread getting back on the blog and feeling like I have to apologize for an extended absence of posts, but this is definitely one of those instances. So to get it off my shoulders… I’m sorry for the extended absence of posts!

I guess part of it’s due to a sudden realisation that the little things that happen in our daily lives can be so insignificant compared to the bigger things that have been happening to our friends. Congrats to Michael Field on his second son, Bryan Pauze on his second daughter, Sean Elwood on his approaching first born, Jackie & Dono on their marriage, and I’m sure a few others who I’ve missed who’ve had amazing things happen recently.

While not as significant as the above events, I’m still happy to finally announce that Angela and I are moving back to the USA! It’s been exactly 2 years since we first arrived in New Zealand and we’ve had a lovely time exploring the country and getting to know some of the people. Though the plans have been in the works for a while, we were waiting for the right time to tell certain interested parties (our offices). Luckily I was made redundant at Saatchi NZ, so the cat was let out of the bag and it’s all go.

The current plan is to stay here until the beginning of February (I have 3 months severance pay, Angela has a big John Cleese tour), then we’re packing up and travelling Asia for as long as we can handle it (maybe 4 months?). We’re aiming to hit 11 countries, but we’ll see how it goes. Then we’re going to move to San Francisco and get back into rat race. Woo hoo!

As for the blog, I’ve now got a bit more free time to keep it updated, including posting the remaining entries from the Campervan trip. Yes they happened 2 years ago, but we were just getting to the best parts of the country when I stopped. So hopefully I haven’t lost too many visitors – and get ready for excessively long posts and gargantuan photo albums!

As noted in our last post, the weather has been total crap here over the last month. Yes it’s winter, but it seems worse than last year. Anyway, the NZ International Film Festival just rolled through for a few weeks and we managed to catch considerably more films than we did last year.

Notable highlights: “The King of Kong” was by far my favourite and involved the true story of good versus evil in the eternal battle for the high score on Donkey Kong. Yes it sounds like the epitome of geekdom, but the story transcends the nitty-gritty of competitive video gaming and really gets into the people behind the chase. I think it’s way better than (insert name of your favourite movie here)! Honestly!

“The Visitor” was the other stand-out for me. It’s made by the same director who did “The Station Agent” a few years back and follows a similar path of a loner who’s life is changed by a chance encounter with people who’s lives are eye-openingly different from his. A quality feel-good movie with ample scenes of real NYC, perfect for those of us who’ve since left it behind.

We also saw “Time Crimes” which was sort of “Memento” mixed with “Back to the Future 2.” Pretty good, but not great. There was “Sukiyaki Western Django” which seemed like it should have been great (spaghetti western starring hipster Japanese Yakuza-types and a Tarantino cameo), but ended up sounding better than it was. Visually great though. And watching the trailer again is giving me second thoughts, but no, it was about a 5 or 6. Oh well. Lastly, there was a NZ documentary named “Rain of the Children” about a Maori woman and her son whose pasts intertwined with major Maori events. The movie wasn’t bad, but the most moving part was when the Maoris in the audience did a chant afterwards that you could literally feel in your chest. Awesome.

I saw that it made it up to $4.18 a gallon in the States recently.

Blah.
We did the math and we paid $8.72 a gallon today. $74 to fill up an 8.25 gallon tank. If only we had an Air Force here, we could do our part for cheap petrol.

I’m not a feet person. Some people are, even to the point of developing odd feet fetishes. My personal fetish is that I don’t have a fetish for feet. I don’t give foot massages. I don’t paint toenails. And I know I’m not alone. To be fair, I don’t expect any kind of foot favours from anyone else. A square deal, I say.

But yesterday posed an interesting conundrum to my devoted stance. Angela found a place nearby that gives supposedly super foot massages and invited me along to join in the decadence. I’ve never had a foot massage before. I only know them from chick flicks where the screen writer throws one in to show how sensitive the main character is. So why not, this might open a whole new world for me. And if not, at least tea is included.

The place is called Sante Spa, and though it’s only 6 blocks or so from our house, we drove. Don’t want to put all that work to waste if we’re just going to use our feet for walking. It starts off with a basic 15-minute shoulder rub. We’re then moved to big plush chairs, served tea, and given the 40-minute foot treatment. To be fair, I did enjoy it. It was delightful. But with all the hype that women put in it, I was expecting my face to melt off in pleasure. No melting. Would I get it again? Probably not for another $70. Am I now over my general revulsion with giving foot massages? Nope (sorry Angela).

Hey everybody,

Every November in New Zealand is officially known as Movember and all the guys are encouraged to grow vintage mustaches to build awareness and raise funds to help ease the lives of guys with prostate cancer in NZ. It’s a serious issue, even though the Mo’s may look silly. So if you have a few extra bucks lying around, it would be great if you could sponsor my Mo at this link. If they ask for my specific page, you can search using my name or just type in 192447 (my registration number). And if you’re on the fence about donating, remember, the US dollar is worth more than the NZ dollar, so $5US is really like $6.61NZ. That’s an extra $1.61 of global karma! Cash in while you can!

To let you know how serious I’m taking this, I’ve added a photo of the awesomeness that is my Mo.

I call it “Danger, High Moltage”

There’s no such thing as Thanksgiving in New Zealand. I forget that sometimes. Angela doesn’t, probably because she’s from the area where it all happened. But I forget. I know that the concept of Pilgrims and Indians is completely foreign to a nation built on actually making peace with its indigenous peoples (though, it was admittedly preventative measure so the French wouldn’t do it first, but that’s another story). But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take a little time to stop and consider what we’re grateful for.

Urs is thankful for:

-Living in a beautiful place. It’s great here. Lots to see and explore.

-Still having great friends back home. I know I don’t call often (or at all), but I know I can always count on you guys the be there for me.

-Perspective. Coming out here has definitely been an experience. And although I find myself falling into bad habits again (late nights at work, wtf?) it’s great to realize that there are better things in life than slaving for the next promotion.

-Visitors! So far this past year, we’ve had Brita and Mike visit, as well as Aaron and McKenzie. We’ve had an excellent time on both occasions showing off this great place with them. Hopefully we can blow-up the inflatable mattress for more people (hint, hint).

-Site visitors! Thanks also goes out to you wonderful people who’ve been visiting the blog. I know we’re crap at keeping it updated. We’ve been getting so lost in the day-to-day of life, that we forget to take time to reflect on things.

-And about a million other things. Health, happiness, family, friends, the occasional episode of Heroes, a pizza place that isn’t terrible, and the ability to still travel.

Enjoy the football and turkey (and/or turducken)! We wish we were there with you.

This blows my mind as much as it does yours, I’m sure. For ONCE a movie has launched in New Zealand before it has in the States. And as you patriotic flag-wavers hold your breaths for the 4th of July, New Zealand strode proudly into the future and launched TRANSFORMERS last night. My anticipation for this moment has been growing since 1984, starting at a cartoon and endless broken toys, all the way through to the awe-inducing video game. Luckily I was not alone in my retrospective youthful longing and many others at work were just as fired-up to watch robots in disguise wreak havoc on the puny humans. We managed wrangling together a posse of 17 people to go to the opening night 9:30pm show. Not only that, but we got to see it on the world’s largest 35mm screen (though truth be told, IMAX screens are much bigger, but I don’t care).

One word: Awesome. I won’t give away any of the movie or even tell you more than that at this point, because I hate going into movies with too many preconceptions. But as soon as you guys catch up to us and get to see the film, I’d be interested to hear what you all think.

Cards or Clarity? The decision turned out to be pretty easy in the end. It’s the frickin’ DALAI LAMA! Look, you don’t get a lot of chances to see people of such magnitude every day. Whereas these poker tournaments happen all the time. Not even close. And it (mostly) lived up to the billing. Ok, so I can’t float while meditating, and I can’t shoot laser beams out of my eyes (yet). But I did pick-up on a few bigger picture things:

1) The Dalai Lama is a friendly old guy with a case of the giggles.

2) Money doesn’t necessarily make you happy (I think New York Magazine scooped that one…)

3) When someone does something crappy, separate the person from the deed, forgive the person, deal with the deed. (Hip hop has this one covered).

4) If you’re only going to give a pet parrot peanuts so it’ll like you more than it likes your older brother and not out of sheer kindness, don’t expect the parrot to regurgitate those peanuts for you out of sheer kindness (long story, but apparently hitting the parrot with a stick doesn’t help either).

5) Most situations are a lot more complicated than you think, and if the solution to a major problem looks too simplistic, it probably is. Which sort of begs the question: Is happiness as easy as just being nice? Hmmm, put that one in your chai and sip it.

There were a couple other life-changing revelations but, like most things, I can never remember all the bits. And sadly, Angela has my camera so the best I could do was my camera phone:

He’s the 12 pixels on stage right of the red couch, but left of the 14 pixels that are his translator (for the trickier insights).

There are times in one’s life when one must choose between the present and the future. An indulgence in the now, or an investment in the eternal. One such choice has arrived. Thanks to an ingenious strategy by our friend Mark, we entered a poker tournament in a SUPER-SHADY pup that happened to be loaded with giant fake Egyptian statues, but that’s beside the point. The point is that very few other people could brave a trip to such a pub, so our group of 5 ended up owning the tourney, with Mark finishing in 1st and myself 2nd. That was several months ago, but somehow I earned enough points in that one match to earn an invite to the $20,000 Regional tournament this Sunday. Nice payday, but at what cost? At what cost???

The cost is higher than you think (because I’m totally down for some caaaaash). On the same day, I have a ticket for a lesson on Compassion and Kindness. From the DALAI LAMA. The Frickin’ Dalai Lama. The same dude who rocks so hard that it took three children to play him in Seven Years in Tibet.

Now, I like the poker. And I’m not that bad. Can I beat out enough people in what promises to be an all-day stare-down with NZ’s finest? Maybe. But most likely I’ll win a few hands, then get creamed by some rookie and leave feeling like a moron. Where as, you only get a few chances to catch such big-time people in your lifetime, and since Angela and I already got to see the Pope (John Paul, not the Ratz), I think it’s worth racking up another luminary.

And anyway, the best part of poker is dwelling on what could have been. And the best part of enlightenment is learning how to shoot lasers from your eyes.

Here is a map of the places I have traveled to or lived in – it really puts things in perspective…lot’s to see and do still!

My Visited Countries

Get your own Visited Countries Map from Travel Blog
Thanks Jills and Malc for sharing this link – very cool! But they need to add options for South Pacific Islands (Tonga) and Hong Kong!