"I'm a big fan of money. I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I'd like to put more in that jar. That's where you come in."
I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler, but his voice (as Robbie Hart in the Wedding Singer) came to me as I searched - fruitlessly - on Trademe for a replacement iPod for less than $20. (yes, I'm still grieving).
His words also come to me when I'm searching for special deals on holidays/petrol/clothes/music/wine. Anything, really - as long as I'm paying less than I normally would, I'm winning.
Money. That's what I want.
While I can't claim to have ever been poverty-stricken, I'm no stranger to finding my cupboards bare following a poorly-timed over-indulgence with my eftpos card. I've been known to live off carrots or silverbeet for days at a time (for reasons other than my own weird experimentation with vegetarianism) and, despite the fact I have been an 'adult' for some years now, there are still times when paying the bills requires a call to my dear Ma and Pa. Shameful.
I can blame the recession; I blame my non-lucrative career path; I can blame my student loan; I can blame the windowed envelopes that cruelly appear in my letterbox more often than should be considered fair. (note: red wine and chocolate are up there with oxygen and water and therefore do not count as financial burdens).
Burdens aside, I can't help but admit that I have always been - and probably always will be - poor. Even when I was earning a relatively decent wage (working for a certain call centre that shall remain nameless) and paying minimal bills, my bank balance seemed to hover around zero more frequently than not. Whatever it was I needed, I had to have - and then lamented not having more.
These days, I depend on automatic payments to keep my money in a safe place (under the bed does not work). Because, while getting rid of $100 over the counter in Portmans takes but a relatively painfree swipe of an eftpos card, the act of actually transferring a monetary sum from one bank account to another hurts. Don't ask me why - maybe it's something to do with seeing numbers drop before my eyes and not having something tangible (i.e, red wine/chocolate/new hot-off-the-catwalk boots) to replace it.
But if I'm to buy that new iPod (not a Touch, mind - I can't afford that) or visit India's fair shores again, then it's carrots and silverbeet for a few more years yet.
Of course, the cupboard is never bare at mum and dad's...
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
when the ambulances have gone.
It's an eerie place, the edge of a state highway.
It's a place littered with McDonald's cups and split rubbish bags and beer bottles, with broken tarseal and wild blackberry and possum carcasses. It's a place not often tread by human feet; certainly not by the leather-bound feet of myself, armed with camera and notebook.
Today I stood on the edge of State Highway 27, calmly swapping my wide-angle camera lens for a zoom so I could get a better shot of the carnage spread across the road.
It's the silence and stillness that haunted me first. The 100kph buzz of cars and trucks had been diverted down another road. All that remained on that stretch of highway was sirens in the distance, flashing red and blue lights and a wrecked car covered with a tarpaulin.
It wasn't until later, as I picked my way back over the roadside rubbish (I remember a yellowing phonebook and a glossy packet of cigarettes) that one of the officers told me someone had died.
An eerie, empty feeling.
Oddly, it was my morbid curiosity for these situations as a kid that is in part to blame for where I was today. I grew up on a farm on the same highway and, whenever cars ploughed through our front fence (fairly regularly in the winter) I'd dig out the binoculars and jump on my BMX and go for a gawk.
Perhaps I was a weird, morbid kid.
But, shocking as today's fatal was - and as any accident is - we still want to know about it.
These days, I go as a reporter, not a rubber-necker; I get in and get out again as soon as possible. Most of the time, there's nothing major to report. A mishap with a power pole, a scrape in the car park, a bumper-to-bumper.
It's still news, even if the cars usually suffer more than the people.
Other than the purposes of satisfying our (shared) curiosity for the morbid side of life, I'd like to think there's some good in my having to stand on the roadside today.
Driving back to Tirau down that same highway tonight, with the image of that orange tarpaulin over crumpled metal still fresh in my mind, I found myself holding back from over-taking the slow truck ahead of me. A few hours earlier I wouldn't have thought twice about it.
And, as I watched a sleek sedan defy an oncoming truck to pass six cars in a row, I hoped the driver would be reading the newspaper.
It's a place littered with McDonald's cups and split rubbish bags and beer bottles, with broken tarseal and wild blackberry and possum carcasses. It's a place not often tread by human feet; certainly not by the leather-bound feet of myself, armed with camera and notebook.
Today I stood on the edge of State Highway 27, calmly swapping my wide-angle camera lens for a zoom so I could get a better shot of the carnage spread across the road.
It's the silence and stillness that haunted me first. The 100kph buzz of cars and trucks had been diverted down another road. All that remained on that stretch of highway was sirens in the distance, flashing red and blue lights and a wrecked car covered with a tarpaulin.
It wasn't until later, as I picked my way back over the roadside rubbish (I remember a yellowing phonebook and a glossy packet of cigarettes) that one of the officers told me someone had died.
An eerie, empty feeling.
Oddly, it was my morbid curiosity for these situations as a kid that is in part to blame for where I was today. I grew up on a farm on the same highway and, whenever cars ploughed through our front fence (fairly regularly in the winter) I'd dig out the binoculars and jump on my BMX and go for a gawk.
Perhaps I was a weird, morbid kid.
But, shocking as today's fatal was - and as any accident is - we still want to know about it.
These days, I go as a reporter, not a rubber-necker; I get in and get out again as soon as possible. Most of the time, there's nothing major to report. A mishap with a power pole, a scrape in the car park, a bumper-to-bumper.
It's still news, even if the cars usually suffer more than the people.
Other than the purposes of satisfying our (shared) curiosity for the morbid side of life, I'd like to think there's some good in my having to stand on the roadside today.
Driving back to Tirau down that same highway tonight, with the image of that orange tarpaulin over crumpled metal still fresh in my mind, I found myself holding back from over-taking the slow truck ahead of me. A few hours earlier I wouldn't have thought twice about it.
And, as I watched a sleek sedan defy an oncoming truck to pass six cars in a row, I hoped the driver would be reading the newspaper.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
coming home.
Like most high school kids, I wanted to leave my home town the minute I put down my pen at the end of my last Bursary exam.
During those years, references to our harmless little town usually revolved around the words "hole", "dump", or even "Hell".
Such is teenage angst.
True to our word, most of us did leave immediately, pursuing university degrees or travel or jobs in other, 'better' towns or cities. Anywhere but here, we said.
And now, most of us are back.
Walking down the street now, I am as likely to pass someone I went to school with as if I am actually back on school grounds. The guy at the gym, the girl at the supermarket checkout, the couple pushing a baby's pram down the main street. Physique isn't all that has changed with growing up; somewhere along the way, we changed our minds about Matamata.
So, were we wrong?
It's true that Matamata has changed as well. As much respect I have for the place now, I am sure it actually was something of a hole at some point. In the five years after I left, Matamata gained a shiny new New World, a McDonalds, Robert Harris and several swanky boutique-y style shops. Lord of the Rings helped; the tourist interest in the few remaining Hobbit holes is yet to wane. In fact, the next movie 'The Hobbit' will only bring more hordes of fantasy enthusiasts clambering to have their photo taken with the Gollum statue in the centre of town.
Still, as fancy as Matamata has become, I think there's some truth to "Home Sweet Home", and the old addage, "you don't know what you've got til it's gone".
I don't mind admitting that while my cold, draughty bedroom in my first Wellington flat spoke volumes (albeit barely audible over the howling wind) about freedom and indepedence, it lacked something that couldn't be posted in one of my mum's care packages.
Familiarity.
And so, like others in my year who lamented our lack of a cinema/night club/coffee bar, I've learned to appreciate that bigger isn't always better. That there is comfort in knowing the person who just vaccinated your dog is a friend of your parents and that the lady doing the wine tastings at the supermarket knows your favourite red.
Anonymity can be lonely. And, really, there's no place like home.
Perhaps not for good, but for now.
During those years, references to our harmless little town usually revolved around the words "hole", "dump", or even "Hell".
Such is teenage angst.
True to our word, most of us did leave immediately, pursuing university degrees or travel or jobs in other, 'better' towns or cities. Anywhere but here, we said.
And now, most of us are back.
Walking down the street now, I am as likely to pass someone I went to school with as if I am actually back on school grounds. The guy at the gym, the girl at the supermarket checkout, the couple pushing a baby's pram down the main street. Physique isn't all that has changed with growing up; somewhere along the way, we changed our minds about Matamata.
So, were we wrong?
It's true that Matamata has changed as well. As much respect I have for the place now, I am sure it actually was something of a hole at some point. In the five years after I left, Matamata gained a shiny new New World, a McDonalds, Robert Harris and several swanky boutique-y style shops. Lord of the Rings helped; the tourist interest in the few remaining Hobbit holes is yet to wane. In fact, the next movie 'The Hobbit' will only bring more hordes of fantasy enthusiasts clambering to have their photo taken with the Gollum statue in the centre of town.
Still, as fancy as Matamata has become, I think there's some truth to "Home Sweet Home", and the old addage, "you don't know what you've got til it's gone".
I don't mind admitting that while my cold, draughty bedroom in my first Wellington flat spoke volumes (albeit barely audible over the howling wind) about freedom and indepedence, it lacked something that couldn't be posted in one of my mum's care packages.
Familiarity.
And so, like others in my year who lamented our lack of a cinema/night club/coffee bar, I've learned to appreciate that bigger isn't always better. That there is comfort in knowing the person who just vaccinated your dog is a friend of your parents and that the lady doing the wine tastings at the supermarket knows your favourite red.
Anonymity can be lonely. And, really, there's no place like home.
Perhaps not for good, but for now.
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