The big news lately is I have a job now, working for Trade Me, basically New Zealand Kijiji. I wish I had started sharing this story sooner and then there would have been some suspense, but if I had been in the habit of telling you the stories of job searches that hadn’t ended well, you would have gotten awful tired of it. I sure did. But this one was a doozy, including by my count five separate stages:

1. Initial interview
2. Technical interview
3. Meeting the team (to ensure “culture fit”)
4. Psychometric assessment
5. Meeting this one dude that I’m still not sure why I met him? They may have been stalling.

All told it took several weeks, but whatever it’s over thank the LORD it’s over. I think it went like, approximately: good initial interview, killed technical, accidentally started talking about cartoons in the team meeting, produced worrying psych results, was checked for sanity by senior staff. Actually the psych test was pretty fun. Choice nuggets from my results:

• “You have answered in a way which is quite different to others […]”
• “You appear to be reasonably disciplined but may not be highly detail attentive naturally. You may be a little more spontaneous and sometimes may get bored if things are too dull.”
• “You have some tendency to question rules and ways things need to be done.”
• “Your profile indicates that you can sometimes be a little inconsistent in how well you apply
  yourself to work […] you could be a little easily distracted and find it hard to get motivated.”
• “You have strong views and are happy to share these with others.”

But it seems I got away with it. They have slides in their office, that’s neat.

Anyway, near future steady income secured, life is good, and the time was come again to sally forth. I went from Wellington up to Rotorua, famous for simmering volcanic activity and smelling kind of like eggs. I had a good time in a hostel there, proving that it is in fact possible. I also have started to be really into wine, which I thought I didn’t like before but maybe I just never had New Zealand wine. There’s a cool Maori village there, and a park full of sulphur pits, although to be honest once you’ve seen one sinkhole full of boiling mud you’ve pretty much seen them all. My Rotorua friend Daphne and I went for a hike one day through the redwood forest just southeast of town that was estimated at 3.5 hours. We took about 7, partly because we took a bit of a walk on the way there but mostly because of our two extended lunch/nap breaks. We understood each other. My view most of that day:

Then Paihia, plus a bus out to Cape Reinga, which was a really good time. Off the cape is where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet, and the currents get all mixed up and sometimes there are giant whirlpools, a seam in the world. There weren’t giant whirlpools then, but it was still pretty sweet. We drove back along Ninety Mile Beach and stopped to do some sandboarding, which is basically the “climb to the top of a dune and then slide down it” thing we all did as kids on the North Shore, but everything has to be extreme in New Zealand so the dunes are gigantic and they use little laminated sleds. I think I got sand, like, literally under my skin.

I stopped in Thames, apparently The Gateway to the Coromandel, mainly to hike up the Pinnacles, which was cool. After that was Hahei, a famous beach town where nothing much at all happened and I liked it that way. There’s a beach there with hot springs, you just dig yourself a little hole and sit in it and it’s like a spa. Seriously hot though in some places, not even just warm. People hurt themselves.

A lot of photos in this one, hey? Dad and Kendra were on me about that, so I took a bunch. Most of my photos end up on my Tumblr, so maybe bookmark that or subscribe to it with RSS or something if you want to keep posted on those. I’m back in Wellington now, where the weather is markedly less nice. Soon I’ll have to start thinking about doing some work, I guess? Maybe some wine first.