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.