Archive for January, 2005

So, it’s been forever since I blogged and I’ve got so much to catch up on. What better place to start than with the now notorious New Zealand Holiday story.

Myself and my best pal, big buff Reuben had been planning a break from work for a few months, and eventually decided on a snowboarding holiday in New Zealand.

Anyone who knows me well will know that this is a completely laughable idea, as I’m completely uncoordinated and very prone to smacking into things at inopportune moments (“Hi there completely hot guy, can I buy you a drink? I’ll get it just as soon as I trip over something that’s not there and bang my face on a concrete pillar….”) but I was feeling adventurous and was extremely excited about seeing snow for the first time.

So, flights and accomodation booked, agoraphobic panic attacks taken care of and suitcases packed, we arrived at Perth airport for the first of three flights that would take us to Queenstown.

All was going well at check in until we were told that we were supposed to be on the previous night’s flight. Our travel agent had booked us for 12am Sunday morning rather than 12am Monday morning. This meant that all of our connecting flights would have to be rebooked too. It was at this stage that we also realised that our itinerary didn’t mention where we were staying when we got there. Well done, Flight Centre lady. I made a mental note to make her cry on our return. Not just a little cry, either. Big, heaving sobs with snot bubbles and a subsequently shameful afternoon of puffy face.

A bit of hyperventilating (me) and gentle co-ercing of counter staff (Reuben) managed to get us seats on that night’s flight. Our connecting flights were a bit trickier, but they worked things so that we would arrive at our destination in about eighteen hours. Yep. Eighteen. Flight Centre lady was going DOWN.

The first flight to Sydney was pretty uneventful. We watched a really bad Kate Hudson movie (is there such a thing as a good one?) and tried to get some sleep. In Sydney, we had a few hours for breakfast and a bit of duty free shopping before our connecting flight to Aukland. This is where I realized that having a gay best friend must be influencing Reuben’s taste as he bought five bottles of designer fragrance and completely ignored the sports shop. To make up for it I made sure we talked about boobs for twenty minutes thereafter.

On the way to Sydney, Qantas had managed to seat us together, but the Auckland flight was heavily booked, and we had to sit separately. We asked the guy sitting next to me if he’d swap seats, but he just pulled an annoyed face and said no. To explain properly the indignation and rudeness of his tone, imagine how you’d respond if someone walked up to you and asked if you’d care to eat some of their boogers. Talk about rude.

Of course, me possessing an incredibly low tolerance for rudeness doesn’t help this situation, as I plonk down beside him and say ‘Thank you SO much. I hope you’re not going to need to go to the toilet at any time, because it’s going to be far too inconvenient for me to get up.’ This of course made him turn slightly purple as he suddenly became very interested in the contents of the in-flight magazine. It was then that I realized that although I’d gotten the last word in, I now had to share an arm rest with the guy for the next five hours. Uncomfortable? You bet.

Meanwhile, Reuben had struck up a conversation with the gorgeous english girl next to him, and proceeded to have a very enjoyable flight, filled with laughter and stories about binge drinking and waking up naked in stranger’s houses. Not fair. I was stuck with captain grumpy, the grand poo-bah of nastyville. At least I had some consolation in the fact that he probably came very close to peeing himself towards the end of the flight.

When we finally got to Auckland, Reuben and I helped the english girl with her cases and snowboard and offered to share a trolley with her as we went through customs. She was hilarious, and really sweet. As we waited in line to fill out our customs forms, it began to finally feel like we were on holiday. We only had one more flight and we were at our destination. It was finally coming together.

Except for one minor thing. This being my first international holiday, I wasn’t as sure as I am now about the do’s and dont’s of entering another country. I now know that if :

a) You have a new passport, especially one issued in the last month, and

b) You can’t tell the nice customs lady where you’re staying when you arrive (thanks again, Flight Centre!!) , plus

c) There’s been a mix up with your flights and your tickets have been re-issued, therefore making it look like you just bought them, and you’ve

d) Truthfully filled out your ‘entering the country form’, putting ‘nightclub dj’ as your occupation,

…….you might as well walk up to airport security and say “Hello, I’m a big, nasty drug trafficker, please pull me aside and search me thoroughly, making me miss my connecting flight.”

Both Reuben and I were pulled aside and asked to wait at a search counter, along with our english pal, who started looking extremely worried and immediately started denying any knowledge of ever knowing either of us, even though we’d spent the past half an hour in a queue talking and laughing loudly with her.

An officer, who I can only assume was New Zealand’s attempt at a butch lesbian, called me over asked me to open my bags so she could search them. She also made me turn out my pockets and hand over my wallet and phone for ‘drug scanning’. She told me that if I had recently used drugs and handled my phone that it would show up instantly. I hadn’t, but began to panic anyway.

I handed her my backpack, and she began to rummage through it. She then pulled a face, and pulled out a book, completely covered in electric blue coloured slime. A giant bottle of shower gel had burst in my bag during the flight, and had completely coated everything in it. This didn’t make her happy, and she immediately began quizzing me about drugs.

It’s pretty much assumed that if you work in the nightclub industry you use drugs, so even if you’re truthfully saying that you don’t, people think you’re lying. So I said no, and of course she didn’t believe me. Half a dozen pointless questions later, and with our flight leaving in less than three minutes, I was ready to slap her, and began to ask her questions about the compensation I’d be entitled to if she made us miss our flight. She ignored me and began searching my suitcase.

After unfolding all of my (admittedly obsessively) neat packing, and then being totally unable to fit everything back in, she unzipped the top compartment of the suitcase and rummaged around. I was about to tell her that I never pack anything in there when she said ‘Hello, what do we have here?’, and proceeded to pull out

*suspenseful pause*

a really big, long box. She let out a gasp, and then held it out for me to see. On it was a picture of a giant pink penis, with the words ‘realistic, multi speed satisfaction’ emblazoned in yellow across the top.

I nearly died on the spot.

Seven years earlier, I had been living in Sydney, and when I left to return to Perth, I was given the “Pleasure Master 2000″ as a joke going-away present from my co-workers. I had packed it in my suitcase and completely forgotten about it. Every time I had gone through airport security with that case on subsequent trips it would have shown up on x-rays and I was blissfully unaware that I was ‘the 6 foot five guy at work today with the giant dildo in his suitcase’ story being told at dinner parties around the country.

I did the whole , ‘I swear I had NO idea’ thing, just as Reuben wandered over, saw what all the fuss was about and burst out laughing. This lightened the mood considerably, and the New Zealand version of a Lesbian Security Officer seemed to be so amused at the shades of red I had turned that she decided that we were harmless and let us run to catch our flight.

A quick sprint through the airport, a two hour flight to Queenstown and the lucky discovery of the name of our hotel in a local travel guide and we finally reached our destination.

A week of face planting in snow, being flung around in jetboats and an almighty stack while racing down the side of a mountain in a brakeless go kart followed, alongside a Ben Stiller movie festival and the discreet disposal of a certain sex toy. Combined, these events ensured a fantastic holiday and a near flawless return journey.

Now if only people would stop calling me Dj Dildo.