I've now been in country for about a month and am settled in my small house,  As an independent contractor I get a free house and a free car. Neither are flash:;  meaning fancy, as a Kiwi would say. but are functional.  The car is an '07 Toyota Corolla - manual transmission, steering wheel on the wong side  with what's left of a paint job and body that looks like a fire breathing dragon, after a night of reptilian debauchery and immodest drinking,  threw up on.  The house is in a nice middle class neighborhood on a good Catholic street - 94 Sinnott Road.  (check it out on Google maps) The most important thing about the house is that the roof doesn't leak because, as I've said again and again,  it rains A LOT!  I have 3 bedrooms so if anybody can get into New Zealand and wants to visit.... OK.  I just ask that you bring as many bottlers of A1 Sauce and boxes of Grapenuts as you have room for.  I've got my 5, 7 and 10 mile running loops mapped out so I'm all set.

Since back I've also reconnected with some of my old mates.  I ran in to Allan Rooney aka Captain Ahab; (but with 2 legs) a weathered old salt of 65 years, at the Nelson Creek Pub last week.  He is the skipper-owner of a 70 foot commercial fishing boat that sails out of Greymouth.  He goes out for 3-5 days at a time and, since there is no alcohol allowed on the boat, he, as do all good sailers, more than makes up for it while on shore. The skipper and I have an informal arrangement: I buy him beer at the pub and he gives me all the fish I can eat right off his boat.  He's offered to take me out for a short trawl on his boat but we all know how those 3 hour tours can turn out.

Talking about the alcohol driven black market, I went back up the Moolight River (7 miles up a gravel potholed road) to vistit my old whiskey for gold friend Mark.  Unfortunatly Mark has moved on to Goldendale; a tiny village on the other side of Greymouth with a name more promising for a small time gold minor.  I did meet Paul at the Moonlight campground.  He is also gold panner and a pretty sucessful one from what I saw so the whiskey for gold business might live on.  While there I decided to take a small tramp up the river and try my luck at gold panning.  I did find some color in my pan and I think I know where there is more - hopefully enough to quit my day job.

I also dropped in on my old friends Trever and Gail - who are totally on the other end of the social spectrum from Captain Rooney, Mark and Paul.  Trever and Gail live in a great house on an acreage about 20 miles up the Grey River from Greymouth with a pond and adjacent  kiwi (the bird) sanctuary.  Trever used to work for the NZ Dept of Conservation and so is authorized to have  his own official kiwi fenced off protected area where he raises baby kiwis until they are ready to be release into the wild. He says some night we can go out there with his night vision goggles to try to find one.   I was planning on spending Christmas day crying alone in my house in the dark but since Trever and Gail invited me over I think I'll go there instead.

Yesterday I bought a propane barbecue  grill.  After I did the  "some assembly required" part with only a few extra screws and pieces left over - "instructions? I don't need no stinken instructions!" I'm ready to teach these Kiwi folks what good American barbecue is all about .........Assuming  Helen; who is, by the way, my one and only true sweetie pie, and  is (fingers crossed) reading this, sends down step by step directions (I said I don't need no stinken instructions.  Directions are OK) on how to do it.  A copy of "Barbecue for Dummies" would also work and it doesn't even have to be a first edition.  

 I realized  two odd things about NewZealand today.

First.  Even though they don't have Thanksgiving down here the still have black Friday or, as we now call it in the US,  Friday of color.  Go figure

And second is that people down here sing in American. I just got back from listening to a 5 man band at the Settlers Hall in Barrytown which is a dinky little beach town about 20 miles (YES MILES - none of this metric BS for me) north of Greymouth.  And when I say dinky I mean dinky.  Think about your average dinky and then your small dinky and then your itsy bitsy teenie weenie dinky and then  take 5% of that and you're close.  So a small pub, the Settlers Hall which is about 1/4 the size of a basketball court and about 5 houses and that's it. For some reason though the Barrytown Settlers Hall is must stop for bands and singers doing the New Zealand circuit. What's really amazing is that some of the bands that play there are pretty good and the one today was great.  They could have burned the palce down but there were only 18 hearty soles who braved the monsoon deluge to show up.  The hall is actually pretty cool.  It looks like it was built in the 30s and, while some would say it's small,  I prefer to think of it as intimate....very intimate but in a platonic sort of way.  The seating is a bunch of big old cushy couches and overstuffed chairs that were probably aquired by donation, from the local second hand stores or just picked up off the side of the road, all lined up in front of the stage.  For $5.00 NZ ($3.50 US) you can get a bottle of beer or glass of wine from the window in the back to drink at your comfy seat during the show.  The whole thing is typical New Zealand South Island West Coast quirky.  Anyway, like I said, tonight's band rocked.  The lead singer gets up on stage and introduces himself and the band and their songs and thanks everybody and yata yata yata and world peace all in New Zealand but as soon as he starts singing he sounds like he's from Iowa.  I could see it maybe if he was singing a US song but even songs he wrote himself he sounds like one of my well spoken American homies (but maybe not so much like one of my old goomba New Jersey homies.)  Kiwis are a strange bunch but you gotta love 'em

Sunday    21 November

 I was originally scheduled and, with a generous  supply of top shelf Scotch and bourbon,  well prepared for, a full 2 weeks of quarantine but I guess New Zealand's Dr Fauci decided last week that, with the Delta COVID varient being so contagious it's a losing battle to shoot for zero covid in the country so he shortened the quarantne time to just one week and I got out after only 9 days.  Ah, sweet freedom. 

 But not so fast.  After all I am coming to the West Coast where people totally wig out in a panic about a drought if it doesn't rain for more than a week.  A lot of people around here, who live outside the city, depend on rainwater from the roof of their house collected, unfiltered,  in a big cistern  for all their domestic water. They seem unconcerned about the inevitable results of all the birds flying around down here and poo poo the whole thing whenever I bring it up.  Botteled water for this cowboy when visiting friends in the wopwops (boondocks).  So on the drive over the mountains from Christchurch the clouds got darker and a slight drizzle progressed to a thundering downpour as I got close to Greymouth.  Bottom line is that for the past week I'm still basically in quarantine but restricted to my house by the weather rather than by the NZ army.  A few days ago a water spout was sited a mile or so off shore in the Tasman Sea and yesterday it hailed cats and dogs, or whatever animal units in which hail is traditionally measured.  Anywhere else these would be seen as unmistakable signs of the end times but it's just businseess as usual on the West Coast

Probably none of you know this and even fewer care but the day before I was set free The All Blacks; the Kiwi national rugby team, lost to Ireland and so, I kid you not,  on my 3 hour  drive from Christchurch to Greymouth on every radio station, I had to listen to endless nonstop whining about the game and a litany of, sometimes creative, excuses as to why The All Blacks lost.....I mean, come on,  the sun can't be in your eyes the whole game. I found myself praying for a tampon commercial.  So now I have to deal with a whole country of grumpy Kiwis

Oh yea,  And FYI: clockwise.  The water down here spirals down the drain clockwise.  Urban legend has it that the Corriolis effect is in the opposite direction above and below the equator.  Go take a bath and get back to me on this in the comments

 12 November              Quarantine day # 7

The walls are starting to close in a bit  but they're not bleeding (yet) so I guess I'm still OK.  NZ TV is OK but no Law and Order reruns,  Jepardey is on only occasionally and only one old Big Bang rerun a day.  My HBO doesn't work so all I have is Netflix and the voices.  Not The Voice but the voices.  You know.  Everybody knows.  Everybody hears.  Everybody sees!  Everybody!  Everything! All the time!  Right now I'd happily trade my favorite child for some tin foil and a colander.

 Of more concern is that my self imposed  socially acceptable time for my first drink of Scotch of the day has gradually drifted  from after 5 PM to after sunrise. Fortunatly I have an adequet supply so no worries there. But drinking a lot is a good thing because a full bladder is one of the few  things that gets my fat lazy ass of the couch.

 They let me outside for 50 minutes twice a day.  There is a small place to walk (21 laps / mile - 556 .5 laps / marathon)  Meals are delivered in a brown paper bag left at the door to my room three times a day.  The food is OK but I swear hand to God I will never ever take for granted Helen's miraculous  cooking skills again.  I miss my women.

 7 November 2020  - Quarantine day # 2

Good news.  My first covid test came back negative so I got the coveted blue bracelet of life rather than the red bracelet of death they give to the cov-pos losers.  Now that I am in the elite blue bracelet crowd I get to go outside in the "yard" for an hour or two a day but always under the watchfull eyes of the NZ army folks.  Check out any good prison movie for an idea of what life is like for me.  

After just one day in quarantine I can tell already that maintaining any socially acceptable level of personal hygiene will become increasingly optional.

\

 6 November 2021 - Day 1 of Quarantine

........... "Hello"..."Hello"...."Can anyone hear me?"........."Check..check"...."1,2,3,4"... "1,2,3,4".........."When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to disolve"......."Is this thing working?"....."we hold these truths to be self-evident"....."Is there anybody out there?"....... "damn computer!"......"1,2,3"....."Double, double, toil and trouble.  Fire burn and cauldren bubble."..... "Does anyone hear me?..... "Eye of newt, toe of frog; wool of bat, tongue of dog."....... "Anybody?" ....."Anybody?"......... "Nobody?".........

"I think therefore I am."......"I blog therefore you are."..... I hope.

Since you are reading this you either must already know that I am back in New Zealand or you are so far down the internet rabbit hole that you stumbled on it accidently in which case: get off you fat ass and go outside.

Yes I am back in New Zealand; The Land of The Long White Cloud.  I'm contracted to do the usual doctor stuff  from 22 November to 22 March back in the Greymouth Clinic; the same place  I worked last time.  Greymouth is an OK town but it is always hurting for doctors and so,  being the great humanitarian that I am, I agreed to help out.  Greymouth is a very blue collar working man's place but, despite what its' name suggests, it is in a beautiful area.  On the NZ west coast and sittng at the mouth of the Grey River as it flows into the Tasman sea there are  hundreds of miles of wild beach north and south with alternating long streaches of open sand and gravel and  cliffs of fantastically eroded rock formations stumbeling  into the sea. all bearing various amounts of gold for those clever and patient enough to find it. Greymouth backs up against the Southern Alps which is what Kiwis call the pretty significant mountain range that runs north and south down the west side of the south island cutting Greymouth and the west coast off from the rest of NZ and the world.  Between the coast and the mountains is a nearly impassable temporate rainforest with giant big fern trees, huge and always hungry man eating carniverous plants, vines that reach out and grab you as you try to get by and moss covering everything, all dripping from the rain which either just stoped or is still falling which are really the only two weather options.  And I'm talking a real Tarzan / Jurasic Park type of forest not your weenie Disney Land faux forest.  Anyway,  the atrocious weather (google " average anual rainfall in Greymouth or Hokatika, NZ") and the physical isolation from the mountains has kept the population of the west coast from Westport in the north to Haast in the sound (200 miles) at around 30,000 hearty soles (about 1/2 of whom live in Greymouth) and the west coasters perfer to keep it that way.

Actually right now I am sitting in an airport  hotel room in Christchurch on day 1 of the 14 day covid quarantine isolation which is  required of everyone entering New Zealand.  While I'm not looking foreward to the next two weeks, with the help of  the two botles of top notch  single malt Scotch that I bought in the duty free shop on the way down I think I'll make it.  You might want to check back later to follow up on the status of my liver and to see if the deep psychological scars caused by two weeks of sensory depravation are permenent or will fade with time and counceling.  New Zealand is pretty strict about all this covid stuff.  They've almost totally cut themselves off from the rest of the world which is easy to do if you are in the middle of the ocean and far way from everythng.  Good for fighting covid but  really bad for their tourist centered economy. But like I said NZ has very little if any covid and to keep it that way EVERYONE who comes into the country has to be vacinatrd for covid, have a negative covid test upon departure, have a visa indicating they are coming to NZ to meet a critical need and spend two weeks in Quarantine upon arrival and so here I am.  

The 14 hour flight from LA was tolerable but upon arrival in Auckland there was the covid screening, then customs and then the biohazard screening then another flight to Christchurch and then a militay escort by a bunch of NZ army dudes to the quarantine hotel and then here's your room and shut the door and don't come out for two weeks.   It was an ordeal and I think I would have been entirely justified if I chose to  bite somebody's head off but Kiwis are all so damn nice and friendly and helpful that, try as you might, you just can't  get mad at them.  It's like a whole country of Mr Rodgerses and, democrat or republican, Q-anon proud boy or antifa anarchist,  stones or beatles, extra crispy or original recipe;  I think we can all agree that  it's an against the law felony hate crime to hassel or  in any way diss Mr Rogers.

The words to the Greymouth / West Coast official anthem:

It rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simple bogs
It started raining cats and dogs

After  a drought of half an hour
We had a most refressing shower
and then most curious of all
A gentile rain began to fall

Next day for one was fairly dry
Save for one deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And then at last the Rain set in.