Don't mistake contentedness for happiness
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
26
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Wellington,
New Zealand
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
I've been starting to get too used to the daily routine that makes your life rush past so quickly and before you know it you wonder where your life went.
- The weekend: you sleep in, maybe go shopping or do some chores, go out for drinks or dinner or to a movie, and generally laze around and then on Sunday afternoon you start to dread the next day.
- The week: you go to work, come home, cook dinner and probably laze in front of the TV and count down the days until the weekend.
One week after another and one month after another goes by like this, unless you have something special planned to break up the monotony
Imposter Penguin and Giraffe
.So the time has come to leave Wellington life and start travelling again. It's been good here but it's time to move on. Sometimes on my walk to work it felt so normal that I forgot I didn't really live here.
My summary of what I've done in the last couple of months can probably be combined into a similar length as one of my last 3 day trips in Oz...
Jobs: 3 (Ministry of Health, Bank of NZ, Wellington Hospital)
Boyfriends: 1 (thankfully Simon is still putting up with me)
Flatmates: 9 (2 French, 1 English, 2 Scottish, 3 Kiwi, 1 Irish)
Movies: too many to count
Meals which have included cheese: almost all
There are currently 9 of us in a 5 bed flat (4 couples and 1 single) which can get a little crowded at times. Thankfully there are 2 bathrooms (though sometimes no hot water) but another kitchen would be good
St Patricks Day cheesiness
. Sometimes it's nice that there's always someone there but sometimes you need your own space. Especially in the kitchen.Theoretically none of us girls should be there but it's kind of hard to complain about someone else's girlfriend living there when you're not meant to be there either. Besides, all the boys would be all be living off pies and pasta if it wasn't for us. (Actually Simon would be living off baked potatoes and chocolate).
We all get on surprisingly well though and there's been no major dispute besides some people not doing their washing up. Hopefully I'll keep in touch with most of them.
Setting up a new life somewhere else has been surprisingly easy. Too easy. I don't know why people complain about it. Granted, Simon had already got a flat so I didn't have to deal with that part of things, but there's enough rooms for rent I probably would've done ok. I've had trouble of trying to get sense out of anyone who works for the Inland Revenue but that's nothing new.
We've done most of the obligatory touristy and cultural things whilst living in Wellington - a trip on the old cable car, the botanical gardens, climbing Mt Victoria to get a lovely view of Wellington where I unfortunately lost Simon (he's been found since), a visit to the Te Papa museum and watched lots of foreign films (predominantly French given the ethinicity of 2 of our housemates)
The flatmates (the good ones)
.The flat celebrated Easter with an Easter egg hunt, which I think I won, although the eggs weren't that nice so Simon ate most of them. I think the most ingenious hiding place was on top of the door, the most dangerous by the TV which currently has no back to it and is waiting to severely electrocute someone at any moment, and the most disgusting hiding place was in my freshly made pumpkin soup.
(I seem to be turning all my leftover food into soup recently...)
When I started looking for a job I was reminded how I hate temping sometimes. Sure, it gives me the flexibility I like, but it also means hours of trudging round agencies, doing their various competency tests, getting dull jobs that no one else wants to do, and constantly being shoved from one environment to the next.
It's been doubley frustating by the fact that since I've worked in HR and training, I have certain expectations of what to expect when starting a job. And I don't think being sat down at the other end of an office without being introduced to anyone, not being told anything about breaks, facilities or fire escapes and being expected to instantly know everything about the in-house computer programs, terribly acceptable
View of Wellington from Simon's office
. But this lack of input did allow me to take twice as long a lunch break as everyone else - assuming it was an hour for lunch - until someone told me 2 weeks later that everyone else took 30 mins.My latest job at the hospital has been bareable simply because it's been varied and I get to look up weird medical terms. But recently I've been tearing my hair out (its gotten shorter by about 8 inches) at the state that the Public Health Service is in (probably worse than the NHS) and actually starting to get stressed about my job.
This only compounds the fact that I've been here too long and am starting to get too settled.
It's time to move on...
