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An Inevitable American

June 2nd, 2010 by admin
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In her new position as a Marketing Manager for the Department of Stodge, Winona is supervising two staff. One of them, a sonsy, mild-mannered woman, is half-time doing desktop publishing and suchlike. Winona had lunch with her Tuesday and found her pleasant, if opaque. Today she is having lunch with her other staffer, who is also part-time.

“Oh my God! It’s so great that they’ve hired you!” Jennifer half-shouts. At least, that’s how it sounds to Winona’s sensitive Kiwi ears. Because, awh may Gahd, Jennifer is an American living in Wellington.

“I’ve been here five years. We moved here to get away from the Bush regime.  My son Ryan – here’s his picture – he’s twelve and he loves it here. I hope you don’t think it’s unprofessional of me to just want to be part time but half of it is that this Department needs a real Kiwi touch, y’know? And I just don’t have it. I’m from Pittsburgh! I’m not even Native American – half Polish, half Jewish. That’s how I wound up working here, I ran into Nervberg at synagogue right after that whole scandal. And half of it is that Ryan is really important to me because since I had serious uterine fibroid surgery, obviously, no more kids, Ryan was four at the time so that wasn’t what we planned. I wasn’t expecting to nearly get divorced over it but Abe and I are fine again now. The move was what we need, it really freshened us up.”

“Abe?”

“My husband!” Another picture.  A big beaky man. Jennifer seems to reach into Winona’s mind and strip away layers of politeness. “He’s huge by Kiwi standards, isn’t he? We both are! My hips! Look at you, you’re tiny!”

“Oh, but you have a lovely figure,” Winona breathes, and it’s true enough: Jennifer is busty, curved, with a bouncing mop of bronze curls. Her fingers flash with rings. Her charm is capped by her dazzling white smile, which makes you forget that her face is a plain cameo for such an opulent setting.

By the time they get back to the office, Winona is recovering from Jennifer’s torrent of personal information. For Winona has somehow managed to return to Wellington without encountering last decade’s influx of American migrants. If she had met a few more of them, she would know that Yankees often have deeply personal conversations with people they sit next to on the bus, and then blithely move on.

As it is, Winona decides that Jennifer is adorable, but she’s going to be a handful to manage. Especially if she goes to the same church – wait, Jewish…place – as the Department’s second in command.

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Winona Woolgathers

May 31st, 2010 by the_lifer
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Winona’s first day at work is full of lacunas. Meetings are delayed. Her laptop isn’t ready. So she has plenty of time to think about how the impromptu party went on Saturday night.

Now that everyone is older, last-minute parties don’t work so well. Wayne and Henny couldn’t get a sitter. Neither could Helena and Henry. Wazzer was working. A Facebook invitation garnered a wall’s worth of friendly comments, but few clicked the “Attending” button.

The folks who did show up didn’t gel.  Will’s young IT workmates came, with other junior males in tow, pulling on beers and waiting for someone else to make them sparkle. Woodrow, the American contracting at Weta, showed up at ten with a big smile and a tropical shirt defying the moody weather. But he brought the cad supreme Wayland, under the misapprehension that this was a “fun guy you should meet.” At their arrival, Willow turned white, and left ten minutes later. The only food anyone brought was bags of crisps.

By midnight, the party was split into three groups: smokers huddling outside, buzzed guys talking about sports, and a few women in the kitchen, where it was the Winona and Ulrika show. Winona was slightly appalled to find how much she and Ulrika had in common. Nearly identical taste in clothing; fans of Polyphonic Spree and, of all places, Demel’s cafe in Vienna. Neither of them was the type to wait for someone else to start talking, they both plunged right in, Winona’s voice clipped and chiming, Ulrika’s drawing listeners with her unusual accent.

She remembers when Will peeked into the kitchen. And she clocked how Ulrika’s pout became a smile, how she leaned forward, uncrossed her legs, swayed a little towards him. Wryly, she acknowledged both Ulrika’s good taste, and the fact that this was rather too much affinity for them to be friends.

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Any Way The Wind Blows

May 28th, 2010 by admin
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What has Will been up to, anyway?

At work, he has been accepted into the tribe. He goes around with colleagues to lunches, drinks, software user groups, and the occasional sporting match. A great mob of them always go out for curry on Wednesday. The rest of the week, three or four of them tend to have lunch together, two expat Brits, Will, and Ulrika.

Will’s half-articulated ambivalence about leaving Europe subsides in their presence. When it’s just the blokes, they mostly talk football. Ulrika changes that to mostly talking Wellington.

Ulrika, too, is a European expat, from Switzerland originally. Her opinion about Wellington veers. On a good day: “I could never have my hair like this there, and be a professional. Unheard of! And to buy a farm, like so many do here, just impossible. The film community, it is so vibrant.” On a bad day: “I used to wonder why everyone here dressed so terrible, until I had to put up with this weather. Filthy, they would call it, in England.”

Today, Ulrika has spent ten minutes over sushi giving the weather a good tongue-lashing. Will waits until he can get a word in edgewise. Then, he says, “Hey, Win and I are having a party this weekend. She’s got a job and wants to celebrate. You can come if you like.”

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Mud and Petals

May 26th, 2010 by the_lifer
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It’s done. Winona emerges from an unrenovated office tower, clenching a mud-colored folder to her chest. The mud tone is the official branded colour of the Department of Stodge – all the signed paperwork for her Winona’s new job is now being clasped to her breast against a sudden downpour.

The stony, low sky might have been imported from Britain like the outdated Stodge procedurals. Winona eyes the ranks of commuters trudging towards the train station. In their black and olive coats, slumping, tired, they seem to be melting in the deluge. She is one of them, now. She’ll be shuttling between the Stodge offices and the indifferent flat, throughout the lashing Wellington winter.

Suddenly, irrationally, this feels dreadful. What was she thinking? Will she even remember how to work again after nearly nine unemployed months? When will the rest of the team realize she’s a chartalan? How will she keep up on her favorite online forums?

Then a woman struts by in a red coat, drawn as tight around her waist as the sepals of a rose clenching petals. Winona smiles in approval. Is she young or old? Pretty or homely? It doesn’t matter, with the red brave against the rain. That’s who she wants to be.

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Bogan 3.0: Our Bogans, Our Selves

May 24th, 2010 by the_lifer
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Wazzer has been asked to model in an avant-garde fashion show. Wayne, having received an okay-for-the-recession bonus for managing his software development team, is listening to AC/DC on his upgraded iPhone. Wayland runs a hand through his hair and says, “I’m rough as guts, under the suit,” and everyone swoons. Welcome to the triumph of Bogan 3.0.

Wellington is an incubated petri dish developing Bogan 3.0. The city draws the best and brightest of Kiwi boganity from Waiouru (where Wellington’s gravitational field begins) to Invercargill.  With Wellington’s high cost of living, employment that rewards intelligence, and proximity to the Hutt Valley, the bogan is both challenged and nurtured here.

The result is recursive, self-aware, but determinedly not post-bogan. Bogan 3.0 may demur that, despite their heart’s yearnings and metal T-shirts on Friday, they are not truly, worthily bogan. They may also defiantly declare that they are bogan to the bone, and their friends can take them or leave them. Most of Wellington happily claims Bogan 3.0 as their own.

The bogan look of heavy black, silver metal embellishments, and enhanced hair dovetails neatly with Wellington’s dark, avant-garde, enhanced hair aesthetic. Often all that separates a bogan’s look from an old-city ministerial analyst is, nowadays, not one but several tattoos.

What separates them mentally is another matter. Bogan 3.0 remembers Grandpa Bogan, domestic upheavals, and what happens to school leavers 20 years after they’ve left. And Bogan 3.0 wants better things than that. They wrap up at least the educational basics, and work as hard as they party.

Government work is good to Bogan 3.0. In the more cultural ministries, a dash of bogan earthiness is seen to bridge the gap between Pakeha and Maori. Even when this doesn’t apply, Wilson Wellington, at his government desk, likes hiring Wayne and Wayland. It makes him feel like he’s keeping the ministry connected with the Real New Zealand. Two desks over, Wilson’s equally empowered colleague, an old-time bogan made good, is happy to sign off on their invoices.

After work, young Bogan 3.0 has the choice of partying old-school on Courtenay Place, or being ironically bogan on Cuba Street, where the drinks are better.

Having made their bones downtown, paired-off Bogan 3.0 units often retreat to the Hutt Valley to buy reasonable houses (which leaves more money for cars) or shift to Australia or Europe.

Refined in the crucible that is Wellington, outside of the region, Bogan 3.0 often fails to read as bogan at all, and suffers an identity crisis.

Note: Why Bogan 3.0? The Australian varietals of Old School Bogan and New Bogan are piercingly described at the seriously choice Things Bogans Like.

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It’s About Time

May 19th, 2010 by the_lifer
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Winona has received a job offer from the Department of Stodge. She is not surprised.

Twenty years ago, an offer like this would have meant a job for life.  Everyone knows that it isn’t, anymore. But the employee selection system around it is still constructed as if this had not changed. Winona has been through every kind of test but DNA analysis.

Will comes home to find her poring over the offer paperwork. “Are you utterly sure  you want to work there?” is soon followed by “They’re offering you HOW much?”

Winona names the satisfactory sum again. “And I’d be managing two staff. And it’s a permanent position.” In contractor-heavy Wellington, this stands for something.

The Department of Stodge has taken long enough that someone else is also expressing interest in having Winona work for them. However, they, too, want to analyze her at a molecular level – and the position is only a year’s fixed term covering somebody else’s maternity leave.

As they talk over her taking the job, Winona tells Will all the details of that, too, except the “maternity leave” aspect. She has her reasons.

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1 BR Avail., Hataitai, Share W/Prof F

May 17th, 2010 by admin
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Meanwhile, far from the Flat of Legend, Willow’s been finding the mortgage a bit tight. Sitting down to balance her budget, she grits her teeth. She knew home owning would change her spending, but there were things she hadn’t anticipated. She shouldn’t have paid so much for that kitten. Or to have the peach-coloured tub and sink in the bathroom re-enamelled white. Or –

Anyhow, Willow is trying to find a flatmate.

When she mentions this to Winona, her friend says, “Well, how about Wazzer? She’s looking for a new place!” But Willow shakes her head. She is afraid that, comparing herself to the popular bartender all the time, she would feel even more painfully dorky than she does. She posts an ad on TradeMe, and another on Gumtree, and sits back.

There are several young Europeans, all fresh faces and floppy hair, who say they want to work in Wellington for a few months. None of them have jobs yet.

There is the toothy Auckland divorcee, attempting a fresh start in a new city, frighteningly hungry for “girl bonding” fueled by ample cocktails.

There are a few white-collar blokes, so perfectly late-30s that it is odd they don’t have a place of their own, so colorless that they’re sinister.

There are a few more people. They want to bring large, mature tomcats; or a waterbed; or to smoke in the courtyard.

Then there are all the ones who simply don’t turn up.

After gritting her teeth again well past the expected time of another no-show, Willow remembers how gently Wazzer handled her adored kitten, Cilla, on a recent visit. Could she handle it if Wazzer smoked in the courtyard?

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The Flat of Legend

May 14th, 2010 by the_lifer
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Flatting isn’t always bad. When flat veterans are in a more mellow mood, they will talk to each other, in hushed and reverent tones, about the Flat of Legend.

Somewhere in the mists of Aro Valley, up a leafy side street, there is the Flat of Legend. On winter nights when the Pleiades shine unimpaired, if you have bought the right person a drink from the top shelf, you may be invited back there.

The first thing you notice upon entering is that it smells good. A combination of wood smoke and ginger cake. The hallway is a jewel box of immaculate Edwardian rimu paneling and door lintels. Soft music is playing, just loud enough to mute the purr of a large heat pump.

One door opens upon a rollerderby beauty, setting her hair into retro pincurls as she sits at her Art Deco dressing table, by the light of a tall, fringe-shaded lamp.

In another room, the main furniture is an easel; a third door is closed.

The living room has deep soft sofas, layered rugs, and art around an open fireplace. You are introduced to the other flatmates; lanky, lovely Aroha, strumming melodies on her guitar; Fabien the French baker; and jolly transman Chester. Rollergirl Ruby joins the group soon, her curls-in-waiting tucked under a bandanna.

Over it all presides a benevolent wizard, a bearded man of indeterminate middle age. The easel is his; you have had a glimpse of his studio. In his mellifluous baritone, he explains that he inherited money in the mid-90s and bought the place just before the real estate boom. “It’s like a family really. Fate just brings the right people to join us. Care for a cuppa?”

You stay far longer than you’d meant to, eating Fabien’s ginger cake, listening to Chester’s tales of attending Burning Man, getting an impromptu ukulele lesson, savoring a crystal tumbler of single malt whisky, working out a better way to run the country. At three, you tear yourself away.

Your own abode is sad and cold in comparison, and if anybody is waiting for you there, they are very cross. The next day, you blame the single malt for not being able to remember the flat’s address.

This flat is a Shangri-La, with one difference. Time does not, in fact, stand still there. If you live there, it is all too easy to blink one day and realize you are now 50 years old and still living in one room.

But if all flats were as the Flat of Legend, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

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My Squalor Was More Squalid

May 12th, 2010 by the_lifer
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Winona has joined Will and his co-workers for after work drinks.

One of them has asked where Winona is working, and gotten more than he bargained for as she describes her ongoing interviewing experiences with the Department of Stodge. “…so then I spent all afternoon taking those bizarre employment-fitness psychological tests. The ones where they ask you if you feel like killing people always, sometimes, or rarely. I assume they’re determining whether I’m sufficiently mad to work there.”

“Where are you living?” he asks, politely.

“Oh, Mt. Vic. It’s all right, I suppose. I think it’s the coldest flat we’ve ever had here.”

Everyone in their cluster of 10 people blinks sharply and turns. And the Dreadful Flat Stories begin.

“I used to live on Cuba Street in the 90s. In our flat…the walls didn’t even reach the ceiling! We got this freaky draft.”

“Remember at that time all of Mt. Vic was a slum? I was flatting in a house with six others. No insulation. Just heaps of blankets. It was like insulation hadn’t been invented then.”

“I was in Mt. Vic, too. But on the hill. The very top. We caught the southerly full on. Windows used to rattle, even fly open. I caught what they call ‘walking pneumonia.’”

“I had a boyfriend once and – who’s that comedian who says that men are “bears with furniture?” He was a bear and a half. At his man-cave the shower was lined with black plastic. I don’t date men who say they’re living in a warehouse loft anymore.”

By the laughter, nods, and requests for more drinks, this last raconteur seems to have won. The storyteller is the only other woman in their group. While she was speaking, she slipped out of her hooded black coat, and revealed an amazing head of hair, dyed deep ultramarine. It makes her look unreal, jewel-like. Winona gapes.

“Ulrika,” she says, holding out a hand that, when Winona takes it, is bony and cold. “I didn’t know Will was married.”

“Um, we’re partners, not married,” she mumbles, abashed. And doesn’t quite know what to say after that, as Ulrika settles in to be the centre of attention.

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