It’s 11:19pm right now on a Monday night and I feel like I will fall asleep before I finish this post.
Yep, I’ve started working in a ski resort (just when season is ending) and I only gotten the job because someone I knew wanted to leave early and I became the replacement hire. Well, I’m totally not complaining as.. I kind of gotten the best of both worlds? I had time to earn (and spend) a little more money in Christchurch and experienced city life for a good 2 months and met the most amazing housemates. Now that I’m feeling comfortable and confident in this country, it’s easier for me to adapt to the unfamiliar surroundings. It’s a little surreal that I got to do what I wanted to do when I came to New Zealand.
Back in Feb/March, I prepared a list of ski resorts that exist in NZ and was planning (and eventually did) to apply for all, irregardless of their location. Oh wells, better late than never I guess. I’m glad to have completed this ‘dream/goal’ of mine. So much so that I do have thoughts about going back home earlier and not do the Visa extension (well, this thought had been fuelled by a rejection from one of the cherry picking/packing company. To be honest, if I can’t get a cherry job, I don’t know if I should be doing a visa extension as I haven’t figure out what I wanted to do and I’m still pretty much traveling solo too.
Oh wells, everyone I’ve met so far that plans disruption is the norm so its perfectly fine not to have any plans and let’s just live by the.. hour.
So, what have I done the past week? It was definitely more tiring that I have expected though. I was out and about crashing every single event/party/gathering/meeting invite.
Last Tuesday, I went on a short walk (well it was more like a medium walk) along the Upper Clutha River Track with two people that I met for the first time that day. It was a fun and enjoyable walk, comfortable within my pathetic level of fitness and we were greeted with beautiful mountain/river views with a sunny and clear bluebird sky day. We even concluded with a visit to this salmon farm/restaurant and my friend introduced me to the ‘Just Dance’ mobile app which was pretty entertaining. Anyone, one of the girl apparently stays like 2 mins walk from me and it’s really nice to have a neighbour/friend. The sad thing is that she is probably leaving in 2 weeks and I’ll be left on my own again. Oh wells ><
Started work on Wednesday. There’s like 3 million variations to the product(s) and I had a couple of mistakes within the first few days but everyone was so kind and nice that nothing was really bad. The company culture seems pretty decent and everyone I’ve met has been really nice so far. With all happy things, there must be a sad thing right?
Well, I lost my pair of new Timberland Boots which was a Limited Colour (lilac ice cream) edition. In it, was a new pair of $75 insoles that I bought. I bought this pair of boots during my last event roadshow of my last job and.. this was the first overseas trip that it is accompanying me. Only after it was gone, I realised that I haven’t taken much photos of it (unlike my yellow timberland shoes) which makes me wonder.. did I really like it that much?
I’m super tempted to buy back the exact same pay and lie to myself that it never went missing but.. there isn’t any Timberland shops around here and the only way is to ship but the shipping fee is way to expensive.
So.. how did I lose it? Well, I left it on an open locker/cabinet when I went for my ski lessons. Viola~ I came back from my lessons and my boots were.. GONE. Seriously, the person must have been really mean to steal boots cause do you know how much trouble I had when I realised my boots were missing? I had to walk so many places in my super uncomfortable rental ski boots. It was between wearing ski boots or go barefooted on the cold floor which didn’t make much sense either. Anyone who ski before would have understand how much agony and pain I had to go through and I even had to take the 1 hour shuttle bus + walk home in my ski boots. I felt pretty hysterical that afternoon but I had to put on a calm and cool front because it was after all my first day of work but deep inside I was fuming and cursing the perpetrator. The ‘kindest’ reason I could imagine was that someone took my boots because he/she couldn’t find his/her shoes and mine just appeared convenient and I was hoping that it may be returned to lost and found SOON but this was such a far-fetched imagination that I just gave up.
I ended up buying another pair of waterproof trekking shoes (not boots) from a relatively unknown brand called Mountain Warehouse and it was discounted till $65, less than a third of the price of my Timberland Boots. I truly miss my boots so much but I guess it’s time to say goodbye and I’ll stick with the classic yellow in future.
Okay that’s enough of the sad story. The happy part was that I had 2-hours of ski lessons as part of my work familiarisation which aka meant that I was paid to ski. I fell 4 times that day. Once was when the instructor ask us to balance on one leg and I lost balance and fell. Second was when I couldn’t stop the first time going down the slope and third was when someone crashed into me. The last time was damn geikiang cause the lesson ended and the instructor asked us to remove our skis and walk down. I wanted to ski down in style and the slope was too steep and I fell. Yep, I could count the number of times I fell down; not like my snowboard experience where I lost count. Ski-ing was so much easier than snowboard that I think I’m gonna give it another shot.
Work was pretty alright and a lot less tiring than my job at the plant nursery. The hours were also lesser and we won’t get money when we are on the one hour shuttle which means two hours a day is spent on transport. Nevertheless, I am not regretting this decision cause there had been a lot of realization for me since I started. I’m happy to be working with CRM systems and POS and finally, my brain was being put into use again. I had to think about the various combination products and small talk with customers (which was something I couldn’t do with plants) and it seems like I really missed this part of me. I kind of found back a part of me in this job. I like talking and I was perfectly comfortable interacting with strangers. Seems like I am a service guru. I haven’t had much difficult customers in this one week (or perhaps 4 days since there was a closure on thursday) compared to my one hour doing a roadshow booth back in SG >< Feeling pretty thankful that the customers here are more polite and understanding compared to err.. yea.
Then again, snowboarding/skiing is such an expensive sport – can I rank it on the same level as golf? A family of 4 could easily clock up $500-800 and if you add in private lessons, the price goes all the way up.
Apart from work, I’ve also been meeting interesting individuals who are living their passion – snowboard/skiing. They shuffle between the winter seasons from Aussie/NZ to Hokkaido/Canada/China and to be honest, instructors don’t get paid that well either but they are doing it because they really love the sport. Furthermore, there are others that are not instructors but just work in the supporting team (F&B, reservations, admin, etc.) in order to ski/snowboard the season. They may not be doing jobs that they like but its just a means to their end goal. For me? I just love to be in a cool job and.. hoping to go down the green slopes at least once in my remaining 4 weeks here.. I hope to graduate from the beginner slope. Oh wells.
I also had a really cool stargazing experience too. I think it deserves a post on its own so I’ll leave it for next time.
Oh gosh, it’s 12:45am now and I need to wake up for an adventure tomorrow. We’re gonna have some fun and gosh I’m so thankful that people are including me in their plans. Sadly, everyone is leaving cause the season is ending and I’m still figuring out what to do next. Oh well, hoping a farm/cherry job would reply me soon so I can ‘secure’ my future.
^Cheers (this is what everyone says here.)