My Great Prank: The Demon Clock

Two posts in two days. Try not to faint out there. This morning saw the end of one of my little pet "projects". Though I hadn't invested a lot of man hours into this little ongoing event it has taken three weeks to come to fruition.

Andy the German living down the hall from me is notorious for leaving his door unlocked when he is not in the room. Those of us who hang out with him have been trying to train him to change this habit for obvious reasons. The foremost of which is his flatting next year with a dozen strangers.

Now efforts up until I really stepped in had been rearranging his furniture, hiding some of his things, and even planting other peoples things in his room (mostly Dinosaurs from my room).

I only partook in these efforts once (apart from letting people borrow my dinos for plantation). Duct taping his ping pong paddles behind the flags on his walls we were rewarded with a good amusing 30 minute search on his part. Now that might seem mean, but I gave the give away clue of search "wall to wall", and I thought giving me away 5 minutes into the search one of the paddles fell out from behind the flag. He didn't bother looking behind the right one at all! I had to tell him where it was...

Well the ladies (these days dubbed Craig's Angels) had been pushing these lessons for about 2 weeks with no real change in Andy's behaviour. One day walking by his room after dinner I checked his door to discover it was, you guessed it, unlocked. Opening the door I would have just been content to report to Rhonwyn or Clare that the German wasn't locking his door still, but something caught my eye.

It must have been the red shininess of the numbers, but I fixated on the alarm clock. A brilliant scheme entered my mind within seconds. I ran in and set his alarm for 10pm. The idea being the alarm clock would startle him. Also in the back of my mind was the plan of repeating this several times, and hoping he'd conclude something rather than someone was behind setting the alarm.

Unfortunately Andy didn't come home till after the alarm sounded (fortunately though I was able to reenter the room due to lack of door locking and turn it off). I did keep up with the campaign of setting his alarm. Now you might feel sorry for him, but in my defense this couldn't have been done if he just locked his door like he should have...

Andy didn't mention a thing about the clock. Leading me to worry he wasn't noticing it or had figured out what was happening.

Where things got cooking was when we were all hanging out in his room a couple days ago. I made an excuse to hit the alarm clock in a joke deliberately trying to bait him into talking about the clock. I was rewarded with him "speaking of the alarm somethings wrong with that clock".

I barely contain my laughter. Andy though thinks that the clock is simply broken, and is going to throw it out... Time to salvage this. I casually in a very me type way "what if it was a ghost?". It's the kind of thing I'd think of and ask anyway, but in this case for true purpose not just imaginations sake.

"I'd never thought of that," Andy replies clearly a little wigged out. He than makes the most critical mistake of the conversation (if you're thinking I'm evil... which everyone now thinks I am MAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA). He informs me this is not his normal alarm clock, and that he'd been given it by a friend who just moved away. Normally Andy uses a dinky little clock I'd never noticed before... Till now!

Yesterday I launch the ultimate arm of this prank. Finding his door unlocked AGAIN (see I'm not pure evil. Only casual. This won't have happened if he'd JUST LOCK HIS DOOR!) I set both clocks. My main one for 10pm, and the other for midnight. My plan unfolds perfectly as you'll see, but try to predict why I set them for different times. Before I'd thought about it I was just going to set them to go off at the same time, but I came up with something way more scary!

10:05 comes and I get a disturbed knock at my door. Opening it Andy stands there "it happened again!". Knowing it would be him I keep my game face, and come to inspect the clock with him. I do nothing but objectively talk about it being a ghost, and for the most part deny ideas the German hasn't even thought of. The best way to plant ideas in peoples minds: That's a tip kids.

Then I setup the real life twist for Andy, and the reason I set the clocks differently. I suggested I take the clock to my room to see if it'll repeat its behaviour in my room. Andy eagerly agrees. I joke that the "demon clock" won't get me tonight as I leave... Well aware that'll be a key line of logic Andy's going to be left on with the clocks.

Midnight and some minutes while dozing off to sleep I'm awoken by... the demon clock?!?!?!? no my cellphone! with a message from Andy "it happened again!". As the "evil" son of a bitch I am I laugh myself to sleep.

This morning I'm rewarded by the German seriously freaked out. I'm faced with a morale conundrum. Do I keep the prank going, and possible drive him mad. Or do I take this as a victory, and salvage the argument I'm not actually evil.

So telling the German I'm rewarded with an embarrassed laugh from him and punch.

All things considered though it was worth the 20 seconds a day and a bit of planning for three weeks to get to this point. Sadly that climaxes the pranks I can pull this year at Salmond (but with only 5 weeks left to normal uni I guess that's alright).

The Last Break

Having passed my posting, and the primary school term ending there was only one thing to do this last week. Take a break!

Now in all honesty I probably shouldn't have taken it as off as I have been. I have a TON of stuff I need to get done for a month from now, but I have at least started to look for resources and such.

The big highlight of my one week holiday (the last holiday before the end of the year) was a fishing expedition south to the Catlins with Scott, Shannon, and Courtney.

Our destination was Cannibals Bay an estuary me and Scott have fished at before.
Fun was had by all. Whether partaking in the fishing or simply wandering and enjoying the beauty of the area...

There was just a major problem fishing. There were no fish! The reason; at least we believe, is this. The area has been completely smothered in slit and fine grain washout. So much so that at one point Scott just about sunk into it. In a spot that last time we were here was a nice rocky beach.

The floods of a couple months ago probably are to blame. Washing all this stuff in here. The change on the ecosystem is clear. The only species of crab still alive are of a kelp cameo variety. There is no kelp at moment, and they stick out like a sore thumb. I figure the fish have left for the moment due to a lack of proper food.

We even shifted to the other end of the bay in an attempt to catch something. Even a nibble (of which we had 2 all day). No go...

So instead we went on a sight seeing tour of the Catlins. With views of stuff like this!

It's also lambing season in NZ so everywhere we went there were heaps of "cute" new born lambs. Their mom's can be really protective. This mom head butted our car when we stopped to look... Well okay not really, but Scott assured us it does happen.


The big highlight of the day for me was the stop at Curio Bay home of New Zealand's Petrified Forest. It is among the only such fossil sites from the Jurassic (I'd never heard of a pet forest from the Jurassic before in fact!)

It was cool just in that the fossils were located along a rocky beach. I've never looked for fossils by or in the ocean before!


Not that they were hard to find mind you. There were two types of fossil trees. Still standing stumps like this one.


Or fallen over dead logs like this. The logs of course were the more impressive to look at. This one for example was among the longest at about 4m. The stumps more cool because you got an idea of the layout of the forest when it was alive.

Did I mention that they were in the water to? There's 3 different fossil trees in here. Can you see all of them?

As the sign above said these were all buried in a volcanic eruption. Which explained the lack of animal fossil remains... Not that I didn't look for any!


Wrapping up our out of Dunedin excursion was a stop at "one of the best fish and chip shops in New Zealand". Their specialty blue cod. Which I can say theirs was very very VERY tasty!

Enjoying this lovely weathered day (almost forgot to mention the weather yesterday was exceptional) with a finale late lunch by a tidal lake it's back to the world of school and kids next week.

In the meantime I need to get back on the ball, and get some work done here today and the rest of the weekend.

New Favourite Show

My second go at second posting has been much more successful. As of the end of last week's control I've passed. That said I have my last evaluation tomorrow during what has been at the best of times my gong show unit. I HATE yeast and bread... More on that this weekend with my big summary post of the last month.

Needing to post something, but not take too much time (it's 11pm and I have to get up in 8 hrs) I figured I'd throw something up here on my favourite show of the year. Granted I don't watch any TV anymore, but this is still the coolest thing since sliced bread. Except I hate sliced bread. Okay I'll just get to it (I think even by now you're seeing the wear and tear of the last while on my brain).




So as you can tell from the pic the show is called Primeval. Peter Bond alerted me to its existence early this year. However due to it's being a British show, and New Zealand not getting anything till at least 6 months after everywhere else I had to wait. Fortunately unlike North of America we DO get British shows here at all. I had to wait for the DVD release as I missed this when it popped on TV here due to my funny enough not watching TV.

It was worth the wait!

The shows basic formula is:

Ghostbusters + Dinosaurs x Weekly TV Show = *BEEP*ing Amazing

_

The show goes like this. Holes have opened in space and time back to various points in Earth's past and future (haven't made it to this ep, but I know it's coming) allowing various critters from those eras to wander into ours. They being prehistoric instinctively know they must eat and kill anything remotely human with as much property damage as possible. Now it is up to a team of government scientists to not only deal with the critters, but stop the mysterious time holes.

If they didn't make this show I was going to... With the effects people of the Walking with Dinosaurs series on this though it is the best it is ever going to be!


Even more amazing despite the premise formula I gave you technically not a SINGLE Dinosaur appeared in the first season! Many animals from the same time frame, but none were true Dinosaurs. Creatively I find this very brave of the producers, and very telling of the shows quality that it can make it without Dinos in its opening.

All I can say is it makes my top 3 TV shows of all time, and making this even better. The show has been renewed for a second season! This time around with confirmed Dinosaur appearances in at least one episode (Velociraptors!).

Lunar Eclipse

My posts seem to get more and more past tense.

So not this past weekend, but the one before that Dunedin experienced the fun natural phenomenon of a Lunar eclipse.

The funny tale about it was making a great effort the whole gang managed through separate means get up to signal hill (the highest point in Dunedin) to watch this wonder as it unfolded. Of course in a stroke of "irony" any sitcom writer could have devised (thus proving my life IS a sitcom, whose writers rotate every week or so) the sky suddenly were shrouded in unending cloud. This change in weather also, incidentally made the evening very cold and unpleasant for all concerned.

_

Having returned home defeated and unimpressed about an hour later of course we were "rewarded" with a crystal clear sky. Walking into the parking lot of Salmond we were rewarded with a lunar eclipse in progress. You'll note the roof of Salmond there for, I don't know, scale.

Kind of awesome that my grunt camera could actually pick that up. Who says you need a gazillion dollar camera with time exposure capabilities anyways?

Riot

Much to my surprise word and news of the annual Dunedin student riot actually reached North America.

First off I wasn't in it. I however do live only 3 blocks from it's location, but this space is occupied by the botanic garden which was locked up during the events in question.

Second though we did try to go see if we could see something we missed the first round of riots by an hour, and the second round won't happen till an hour after we all went to bed. When we went we headed up to a safe far away look out point.

I did manage to get some pics of a fraction of the aftermath, but the city was quick in cleaning the mess up. Due to homework tonight I'll have to wait to post these later.

My final comment on this is that what New Zealand calls a riot is not the same as a North American riot. The only difference between this and the celebrations of the Flames or Oilers making the Stanley cup is that riot police showed up here and escalated things.

There was next to no damage to buildings. It was just a LOT of broken bottles and burnt coaches (a Dunedin student trademark)



I assure you I didn't take this footage, just found it on youtube, but give you a far more accurate idea of the event then I could

This Week In Review

Nothing to earth shattering going on in life at moment.

I'm a week away from control take 2. As of such I'm not going to take too much time on this post, but trying to get back in the blogging habit.

A number of random interesting things did happen this week. Some for good others for bad...

Quiz Night

The local neighborhood (which my current school is located in as well) held a fund raiser for a boy in my school who is in need of some medical stuff. It was in the form of a trivia quiz night. Entering a team of a mere four (smallest team present) international students (emphasis on there being NO kiwis on this team) we took second out of 20 teams. I wish I could claim credit, but in all honesty the main credit go to my co-teamers. I did however know that a Honey Bee needs to hit 2 million flowers to make a kg of honey!

_

Spring Arrives (for good we hope!)

_

A streak of nice weather hit this week that has been a nice morale booster, but not ideally timed for school planning. Well I sit here working on this post, and my school plans the sun shines warm and bright for the second day in a row... BOO!

_

I did manage to manage to get outside yesterday, and enjoy the weather. While in the park I managed to spot for the first time since April some of my fav inhabitants of the garden. Little New Zealand skinks.

Their very shy and even more fast! Yet I was able to snap these 2 along with 3 others of these typically elusive lizards.

A Departure

It can't all be good and fun stuff I'm afraid. Mid week a bomb shell was dropped on us in the senior wing of the hall. One of our key note residents informed us only 2 days before hand of his impending disappearance.

As of Friday night Dr. Peter left the hall and New Zealand forever to seek his fortune in Hong Kong. He will be missed. Despite the last minuteness of our learning of his leaving (a secret of his own design it should be noted) we were able to throw him a going away dinner.

So that's the last little while of my life in brief.

Now back to "wonderful wonderful" planning and homework... Groan

Like X-Mas Only "Better"

Life has been busy as (that's a kiwi form of slang. To say "insert verb or noun" as), and as of such my life has been fairly boring due to the static routine of homework and planning.

At the same time I haven't posted on my blog in about a month. So I'm taking a bit of time here while buzzed on pain killers (I didn't realize the headache pills I bought had caffeine in them) to fix that situation.

Now the events in this post occurred 3 weeks ago. Oops, but here it is none the less.

Due to the otherwise none existence of a life this feels like it was JUST yesterday. I'm sadly not kidding.

So due to the fact that by the time X-Mas rolls around the corner everyone will be gone from the hall, the good people here at Salmond had a X-Mas in July event.

The dining hall was all done up to be festive and X-Masy. I certainly approved of the use of tube lights!

A very yummy and holidayish meal was served by nearly every member of the kitchen staff (who all dressed in Santa gear).

Fun was had by all including at my table Owain and Peter.

Santa even put in an appearance. I was told that had the hall not had something else in mind for me at this event I was the prime candidate to be Santa. Not a bad casting call I'd venture, but again they had something else in mind for me...

I've had a minor secret down here for the last few months. Not a very tightly held one or covered up mind you. To many of you reading this blog this is old news, but I'm officially admitting it.

Since the Salmond Ball I've been going out with a girl here at the hall named Rhonwyn. She's an Aussie marketing student from Tasmania.

Why do I pick this entry to bring this up? Well a tradition here at Salmond for the X-Mas night is Santa to circulate with a missile toe and expose all the various relationships that are on about the Hall.

Me and Rhonwyn were the feature couple of this ritual out of 10.

Now for those of you on facebook the pick of our kiss may be up. So I thought I'd beat the rumours by going on the record.

So added to the planning and homework is hanging out with Rhonwyn I guess. So I have a bit more of a life then I admit I guess.

I'll try to post something sooner this next time around (but my track record hasn't been so good these last 2 months... Oops again)

North Island Adventure

So this post is a little over due. It has been now a month since I actually left to go on the trip this post is about, but in my defense we got back the day before classes resumed, and frankly I've been putting double the effort in on that end since my set back.



Our expedition up north.

To sum it up in one word: Awesome!

Two words: Freaking Awesome!

I could keep going up in word number but that's be tedious for me to write and annoying for you to read.

Instead I'll give you the photo version which like my last vacation post means you'll have a novel sized version (ah got to love pictures been a 1000 words a piece!) once again.
_
I'm not going into gross detail here. Rather just anecdotes and weird happenings of the trip. If I peak your interest about a certain place or event post a request in the comments and you'll get a special post on it. I took over 800 pictures this trip (I had space on my camera for exactly 2 when I got back!)!!! These are just some of the more interesting...
_


Wellington

Our first major stop was the capital of New Zealand. In most regards it is just a bigger version of Dunedin.

It's only major difference is that it is indeed bigger. With tall sky skappers and everything just like a "real" city.

Wellington's waterfront was very very nice.

A major highlight for me was the Te Papa museum New Zealand's national museum


A "pygmy" Blue Whale. Still very huge for a pygmy. It took up the whole ceiling in the natural history gallery.

Lake Taupo

Having ventured up as far north as the city of Hamilton (just an hour or so south of Auckland) we ventured into the center of the North Island rather then further up. We based our selves at Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest body of fresh water, and stayed at a batch owed by some Rebecca's friends.

Because we are teachers in training we have the same break as schools across the country, and as of such we weren't the only tourists riding around. This is my fav example of some of the cool custom painted rental vans in New Zealand.

Rotorua

The city that we in the end spent the most time in was Rotorua (affectionately known as Ro-Vegas by Kiwis). Out of everywhere I've been in New Zealand this was the first true Tourist trap, and most places in this country are focused on tourists. Not only do retailers jack their prices here (good thing we had a free batch to live at 2 hrs away), but even the museums charged admission (a true oddity for NZ as every other museum except those in this area are free).

Our first stop was the gondola and outdoor recreation joint on the edge of town. Andrew here is primed and decked out for land lugeing. Rebecca in the background also partook in this fun and fast pursuit.

I OWE YOU ONE PICTURE...

Here was our craziest activity of this day. Andrew, his friend Dan (who travelled with us for 90% of the trip), and myself partook in a bungee swing. Not quite as hardcore as a true bungee jump I'll admit, but as the one who had to pull the cord to release us into freefall (which meant my hands weren't braced and made the whole thing a little interesting) it was close.

One of Rotorua's most defining features, you can't help but notice it getting out of the car, is the smell. It is on top of Volcanically charged thermals. Which were a fun geologic component to the whole holiday.

These thermals were sacred to the Maori as well, and as of such this area in times past was a major hub of Maori settlement and culture. Hence the Maori gateway arch in the middle of the thermal hiking trail.

With so much Maori culture in the area we couldn't pass up the opportunity to take some of it in. So for our one truly late stay in Rotorua we visited a Maori traditional village.

Included was a rather cool encounter with a band of traditionally decked out and equipped Maori Warriors who made a grand enterance by war canoe.

One of the highlights was the Hangi, the traditional Maori method of cooking food in an underground coal pit. Now most of the food probably wasn't traditional, but I suspect most of the meat components of such a meal would be endangered and thus illegal. Man oh man though. I'm sad to say that all none Maori prepared potatoes are inferior as of this dinner...

Mount Tongariro

Despite being quite famous now for being the country Lord of the Rings was made in, the majority of filming sites and locations are quite remote, and sadly I've now been to a grand total of 2 of them. Being 2 hours from many of them in Dunedin I do intend on fixing that situation sometime this year.

Of these 2 one of them includes this one which was the top of my list anyways. Mount Doom is this areas middle earth name. All the mountains you see here served a purpose in the film as this major Mordor landmark. To the left (if not covered in cloud) was the longshot full on volcanic version seen in CG Mordor. To the right was the mountain they filmed all the closeups of Frodo and Sam.


Cook Strait

As our trip grew to close we had to get back to Dunedin. Now we could have flown,but we discovered one last true Kiwi cultural event we had to attend in Christchurch (north of Dunedin on the South Island) which meant we could take in the ferry ride across the strait between the islands.

As we pulled out of Wellington the weather was somewhat miserable, and unpleasant.

When we hit the open sea of the strait the wind was quite annoying for me up on deck (where I was the whole trip), but it had one advantage. Lots and lots of Albatross flying around the boat. In total I probably saw some 40 of them on the crossing. The largest was probably just a wandering, but I couldn't be certain due to distance. I'm going to get around to a birds of New Zealand post with all the avians I've seen and photographed down here.

Was a very beautiful voyage come the South Island. The weather even was amazing.

Rainbows and all.

Picton

Our first stop on the South Island was the most northerly Picton. In the 30 minutes we were in Picton I saw my favourite sign ever!

This sunken dingy should be on some sort inspirational poster. Or uninspirational poster.

We had barely walked up a block of Picton to see these two things (and discover the aquarium was $15 with 10 minutes to go) before we had to leave.

Kaikoura

During the bus ride I slept for the majority of the time due to the early get up (6am) to catch the ferry, and not sleeping during the 3 hour boat ride. The bus made a stop though in one of my favourite places in New Zealand, and that was of course Kaikoura. Though we were only there for 30min it was nice to wander up main street again.

Christchurch

Now from what little of it I've seen I'm not the biggest fan of Christchurch. Helping make up my mind about the place was our first night there I awake to a somewhat disturbing and unpleasant discovery.

Awakening to a sound like a trickle of water I look to the foot of my bed to discover some drunken dude in our hostel room peeing all over my stuff!!!

At the time this was something of a terrible thing (it's 6am, and I'm tired as), but now it's at the point I can kinda laugh at it. It did seal the deal on Christchurch being categorized as something of a dump in my books.

The only nice area of town was Cathedral square. It supported a HUGE variety and selection of buskers. These two kids are of note as their nationally known due to their opening for Jack Black when he came to play here in Christchurch in January. Part of why I found this so significant was if you recall Jack Black was ON my flight when I flew through Christchurch initial to get to Dunedin. Just a couple hours after he got off that plane he saw these kids playing, and impressed by their rocking out had them open his show.

To be honest they were cool for the first 10 minutes, but after exhausting their 3 song repertoire they got a little annoying (still impressive for kids I could be teaching in my current classroom!)

Amongst the buskers was this giant Kiwi trying to sell me stuff.

Our favourite of the street performers were the Motley Two. These guys entertained us with juggling, whip tricks, and a 10 foot high unicycle. One of the best busking routines I've seen. As we learned in the show if the street gig failed them they had the backup of returning to primary teaching.

Wonder if that was an omen of some kind?

The other big highlight of Christchurch (emphasising it's crapiness in my opinion as this is touted in every brochure as a top 3 thing to do here) is to play large size chess in the square. Me and Andrew finally got a turn at the end of the day. He was possessed to win till he made a mistake that resulted in the game being a draw.

Just off the square (but still part of it in my opinion) was the Museum. It actually is in some ways nicer then Dunedin's (though nothing compared to the Te Papa in Wellington). It also has the first Dinosaur I've seen here in NZ. Granted it's only a cast of an American Allosaur. They also have a cast of an Edmontosaur (made me almost homesick for Drum again) and the same Triceratops as the Tyrrell's mount.

Overall the layout of this museum was really well done I thought.

Later that second night (after being moved to a none peeing room) the event we'd made the journey for. An rugby game with the All Blacks, New Zealands national team.

This was a big game in the Tri-Nations Cup. The tournament between the three powerhouses of rugby New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Tonight we'd see New Zealand eventually beat the stuffing out of South Africa. It took them till the last 5 min of the game, and it was a pretty boring match till then, but the experience was cool. That and we got to see the coolest part of the game live in person...

The concluding highlight was the Haka or traditional Maori war dance the All Blacks made famous. Man it was cool as!

So that was our trip. The brief version mind you. Again if you're curious about anything let me know via a comment on this post and I'll elaborate.

Stay tuned here again once a week as I'll be posting reliably again (just this big post took me the 2 weeks to get done inbetween homework)