Day 28: Paranoia Sets In...

My daily routine has evolved to one which involves spending as little money as I possibly can, and phoning my employment agents to make sure that I am not forgotten. Disappointingly, it is true that things which would appear to be worth writing about are generally the sorts of things which cost money and thus the sorts of things that I am not actually doing. Of course, even the costs of the mobile telephone calls to the agencies gradually accumulate until I find myself making a reluctant trip to the bank to extract just enough cash for a new top-up card. Having said that, the phone calls themselves seem to be getting considerably shorter:
"Hello, Grays Recruitment. Chris speaking." The voice is automaton-like, reeling off its too-familiar corporate welcome message with minimal enthusiasm.
"Hello," I say, trying to sound as though I haven't just stumbled out of bed, "May I speak to Alana, please?"
"Sure... can I say who's calling?"
"Uh, it's Vince... Vincent Haig?"
I never seem to sound very sure of myself when quoting my own name down a telephone, and so it invariably sounds as though I am asking a question, to the extent that at some point I half expect someone to answer me by telling me that I am actually someone else.
There is a slight pause, followed by a momentary scream of static before I am connected to a looped advert which tells me in cheery tones how adept the agency is at securing people work. It gives me time to consider that they have been failing to secure me work for over a month, but the advert is so compelling, that it almost convinces me that it is all my fault. Eventually Chris picks up the phone again and I regain my senses.
"Hello? You still there?" he asks,
"Yes." I say.
"I'm afraid that ... ah ... Alana's not here at the moment." He says, but for some reason I find myself choosing not to believe him. There's an improvisational quality about his tone which sounds a little desperate.
"No?" I say anyway.
"No," He says, "I mean, she's here, but she's on the telephone."
"Oh, I see."
"To a client."
"Right."
"So, she can't speak to you. You see?"
"I see." I say again.
"Can I take a message?" he asks more brightly.
"Uh. Sure." I say, floundering, "Just say I called, You know. Just checking in. That sort of thing."
No wonder I haven't got a job, I think gloomily. It's almost as though every one of these phone-calls is testing my telephone communication skills and finding them lacking.
"Will do," He says, "Righty ho, bye."
He hangs up, and of course, I immediately get irrationally paranoid, because in the version of events replaying in my mind's eye, Alana was standing right beside him as he spoke to me on the telephone, holding up signs reading "I'm not here" or "Get rid of him."
Later in the morning, the mobile phone twitters into life and I pounce on it. It is Alana.
"Hello!" I say with reckless enthusiasm, then hold my breath, insanely hopeful that the only reason that Alana might call me is to offer me a job. But I can tell by the tone of her greeting that she is not here to deliver good news.
"I'm really sorry." she says, sounding as though she empathises with my plight as though it were her own, "But we really appreciate you calling in all the time, really. And if anything comes through, and I mean anything, you're first on the list, I mean it."
She sounds genuinely upset by the whole state of affairs and I feel rather foolish for having assumed the worst earlier. So much so in fact, that I actually end up apologising to her for incessantly nagging her with non-stop telephone calls.
"Oh no," she assures me, "It's fine, really. In fact it's useful to know you're available just in case ... that job comes up, you know? I just feel really bad that we haven't got anything for you at the moment... It's very quiet right now, you see."
She sighs, and I sigh.
"Oh well," I conclude.
"Yes." She agrees.
"I did say that I wasn't fussy?" I say as a desperate afterthought, "That I'm willing to do absolutely anything. I did say that right?"
"Oh yes." Alana assures me, "Every time."
We hang up. The illuminated keys of the mobile telephone go dull as I hold it in one hand and flick through the pages of my notebook with the other. I have a list of agencies with numbers to call each day. I scroll up and down the address book in my telephone until I find the next and hit the dial key.
It's a strange, rather perverse little routine. A list of agency phone numbers - a list of women's phone numbers no less, to be dialed patiently on a daily basis and to receive a rejection from each. For some reason, the whole set up sounds like something you might expect to find stuck in the window of a Soho phone-box printed on a coloured slip of paper: "Phone Alana for Rejection!" or "Want an Apologetic Dismissal? Call Louise!" or "Susan Spurns!"
There's a click at the other end of the line, and someone picks up the phone, reeling off another parroted corporate greeting. I pull myself together and put one my best telephone voice.
"Hello," I say, "Can I speak to Oddette, please?"

In Hot Water

The Coromandel Peninsula extends upwards from the hook of land to the South East of Auckland. Some fifteen miles across and some forty miles high, its bulk is covered with the Coromandel Ranges, themselves layered with the Coromandel Forest Park, an undulating mass of rolling hills, made vivid green by the densely growing pines and ferns, and only interrupted by impressively jagged mountains lurching out from beneath the canopy.
Around the edges of the peninsula, the coastline is crinkle-cut and frayed into dozens of islands and off-shore rocks and formations, and it is here, near the coast where we are to spend the weekend in a small holiday cottage.
It is with some relief that I do not hear from any of my agencies on the Friday morning, begging me to come back to work for them, as by three o'clock in the afternoon, Gary and I are picked up by one of the three cars, and joining a convoy towards the peninsula. There are fourteen of us in total - a largely international group anchored by a token kiwi - all friends of Gary and Julia's by various degrees of separation. A pleasant crowd, and the house is attractive too. Modern and functional with four bedrooms and various combinations of beds and spare mattresses. There's a large kitchen, a sizable lounge and most importantly of all, a wide wooden deck with a barbecue and a view.
The first night is spent eating and drinking and talking with decreasing coherence as the night goes on and the empty bottles proudly accumulate on the kitchen work-surface. With no neighbors to annoy.
"A group of people go to stay in a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere," someone says, "Isn't that the plot of every horror movie made since 1980 or so? We're all going to get picked off one-by-one by some axe-wielding maniac!"
As it happens, no maniacs - axe-wielding or otherwise - materialise, and our only unexpected guest is a small dog who takes a questionable fancy to someone's leg. The evening extends cheerfully and noisily into the morning, and one-by-one, we bow out and stumble back to our respective sleeping corners to recharge for the following day.
But Saturday is not exactly a day of strenuous activity. There is admittedly a forty-five minute walk to navigate in order to reach the beach at Cathedral Cove, but it is hardly strenuous and the destination is the sort of place which invites relaxation by its very appearance.
The name itself is evocative of course, even if there are so many places upon which the term 'Cathedral' has been slapped as a prefix to highlight a location's grandeur rather than its ecclesiastical trappings. I wonder how many of these places (Coves, caves, canyons, caverns...) are named more for the alliteration rather than anything else - this one certainly does not look like a cathedral, but it does inspire a certain kind of awe.
"More scenery like this," I hear someone murmur, "And you'll make a believer out of me yet."
The route here, winding its way along the headland affords breathtaking views out over the sea, from which rise a variety of assorted islands, lurking from the depths like petrified sea monsters. Even these are covered in greenery, softening the rocky outcrops and taming their saw-tooth outlines.
The islands extend far across the horizon on all sides, fading hazily into the distance made misty with the sunlight on the sea-spray.
Further up North, is an area named The Bay of Islands, but The Coromandel Peninsula could easily be described as the same if it had got to the patents office first - it is ravishingly, eye-bleedingly beautiful. But the beauty is not confined to the offshore portions of the cove. The beach itself is split in two by a vast limestone arch, and the cliffs looming high around it glow in the morning sunlight.
The sun is glorious and warm - it is easily the hottest day since my arrival in New Zealand, and the ideal weather for a beach visit, perhaps it is even the ideal beach as well.
On the way back to the cottage, we stop off at a nearby supermarket (which involves a ferry crossing to reach which may or may not make it an excursion worth mentioning here) to replenish the supplies for the barbecue, and once back at the house, we settle in again for the evening and the wine comes out once more. There are drinking games that evening - the sort in which additional rules are decided on the fly, and so by the end of one particular session, a drink could not be consumed without the participant clapping their hands, getting to their feet, turning around three-hundred-and-sixty degrees before sitting down again and singing the opening lines of "Happy Birthday To You". Ironic perhaps that a game intended primarily to get people drunk should make the act of drinking such a trial.
The evening continues with further silly games which became complicated by further silly rules. I suspect it would be rude of me to document these any further though for Gary's sake, although perhaps someone less charitable might see fit to make a comment on the subject with additional details.

The evening does not quite end there, indeed as the post-barbecue events seem about to wind down, a further excursion is proposed. A nocturnal visit to the nearby Hot Water Beach.
Hot Water Beach is one of those locations, whose primary appeal is exactly what you would expect from the rather unimaginative name foisted upon it. It is a beach beneath which are a pair of hot springs, and so when the tide is out, it is possible to dig into the sand and prepare a personal spa pool while the tide rushes and roars in the near distance.
At midnight, the tide is just on the turn, and so it is a perfect time to discover this. Although as we reach the part of the beach in question, located at the end of a rocky outcrop pointing out to sea, the water still strikes me as appearing rather high, which leads in turn to the sort of concern which can bring about instant, wide-eyed sobriety:
"The tide is going out, right?" I ask nervously as we pick our way through the ankle-deep water to reach the sands.
I need not have worried of course, the tide is indeed slipping further and further into the glistening darkness beneath the wide, full-moon, and the beach is becoming further and further exposed. Nevertheless, I mentally plan myself an escape route, just in case the tide does something unpredictable and breaks the law of physics just to spite me.
The sea water is blood-freezingly cold above the sand, but walking across it barefoot, it is disconcertingly possible to detect where the warm patches are located beneath the surface, and digging a foot beneath the sand to find that the warm water is a rather peculiar feeling. In fact, the water proves to be more than merely warm, it is hot - very hot indeed.
Six of us make it to the beach, and by the light of the moon set about digging into the sands. A curious endeavour for that time of the morning, I admit, particularly given the amount of alcohol and barbecued food products we had consumed between us. And yet, nestling down into the hole in the sand where the water is half-blisteringly hot and half-numbingly cold, it seems to make a great deal of sense indeed, even if further digging around the edges of the hollow in a half-hearted attempt to modulate the temperature of the environment only succeeds in heating the water further.
A bizarre idea as it most certainly was, the notion of traipsing down to Hot Water Beach at all hours in the morning is not ours alone. In fact, a number of other groups - a curious sight in the moonlight being armed as they are with shovels and spades - appear along the beach and set about digging holes of their own.
I don't know if you can quite picture how all of this ends up looking. A gaggle of bodies stripped to their swimming gear lying in huddles in home-dug sand fortresses, pasty and corpse-like in the grey-blue moonlight, while the diminishing waves lap out in the distance. It could easily resemble some medieval religious painter's vision of hell had the whole thing not been so bizarrely relaxing.

The following day, we find a list of instructions required for cleaning the house and so everyone charitably puts their hangovers to one side and brakes out the bleach and the J-cloths. Our deadline is half-past ten, and by then the house is looking pretty much as it had done when we had first found it. Even the chair-leg which had snapped in two looks as though it had done nothing of the sort, which is handy if rather dishonest. Certainly the woman who comes round to inspect the place - finding us waiting patiently by the cars - seems delighted by the sparkling house.
"I thought I was going to have to do that myself," she marvels, sending us on our way before she has the opportunity to look too closely at the chair.

On our way back to Auckland we make a few stopovers. The first to Hot Water Beach once more, in order to see what it looks like in the daylight. It looks very attractive, a shallow curve of sand following the coast into the distance. The hot-springs are still hot - someone has clearly left the tap running overnight - and have attracted giggling crowds, who find themselves dancing across the scalding sands in surprise. Most industrious of all are what look like a bus-full of elderly people armed with shovels, obsessively (and gleefully) carving up the sand into individual bubbling pools and then planting themselves in them awkwardly and proudly.
Another vision of hell then, it would seem.

Downstream

The name Waitakere translates as - and forgive me for being rather vague - something involving water falling off mountains, although the specifics change a little depending on whom you ask. The Waitakere Ranges are located only around a thirty or forty minute drive North West of Auckland's commercial district, and so could be considered almost a suburb unto themselves. Lush green woodland lies thick over the mountains here - interspersed with dew-damp meadows, and sparkling streams threading down through the rocks of the mountainside. This is a beautiful, fertile land - in stark contrast to the parched landscapes of Australia, where even areas where the greenery was abundant seemed to exist in some sort of compromised form, enduing constant battles with its inhospitable environment.
There are waterfalls here in the Waitakere of course as the name suggests, and it is here that we are to be spending the day. Gary and I have been canyoning before - the last time in Ecuador where after an exhausting but exhilarating day, our tour guide informed us that we were now "at a professional standard", something which we thanked him for but did not believe for an instant - hence the reason why neither of us has made a career out of it since.
Canyoning, is the term used to describe the activity of making one's way to the top of a waterfall system and then working down it by way of abseiling or by other, simpler means. The Blue Canyon in the Waitakere Ranges is a simpler proposition than the waterfall we navigated in Ecuador which we navigated by means of abseiling alone. Here there are lower falls and deeper splashpools, so the amount of hanging by rope over gaping precipices is kept to a minimum and simply jumping off the edges into the pools beneath proves to be the more practical option.
Our guide is Neil, who is pleasant and good humoured and thankfully seems more familiar with this line of work than either Gary or I, despite our unimpeachable qualifications. He leads us down the mountainside with instructions on how each jump should be made.
"This one," he says, striking a pose on a ledge overlooking blue sky and distant woodland and nothing else, "is a controlled jump. Jump from about here, where I've put that really small leaf, and bend your legs slightly as you go."
Although all of the jumps are actually pretty safe, it is the ones with the specific instructions which seem the trickiest when the time comes to stand on the edge and to actually see how far your fall will be. Particularly when the leaf in question keeps drifting off in the breeze.
It is strange that on occasions when you climb to high, exposed places, you often feel as though you do not quite trust yourself to remain safe and secure. As though something inside might make you irrationally succumb to some deep-seated lemming-like instinct to leap into oblivion in the misguided belief that you may either fly or bounce or some cheerful combination of the two. However standing on the edge of a waterfall, looking at the splash pool not really so far beneath you but looking dizzyingly so by virtue of perspective, the final push to actually make that jump requires a remarkable amount of mental effort. It is as though your centre of gravity has dropped to your feet and will keep you on solid ground as long it it possibly can.
It is reassuring, perhaps, that when the proverbial push comes to the proverbial shove, self-preservation can and will glue you to the landscape to such an extent that a push or a shove might actually be necessary for a jump to be made.
But, jump we do. And fun it is.

These of course, are undemanding jumps when put in perspective of New Zealand's extensive catalogue of big-things-to-jump-off, but they are massively enjoyable regardless.
There are those, I know, who look at this sort of activity and cannot quite get past the "why", but other than that reassuring confirmation of your sense of self-preservation, there is definitely something exhilarating about giving up control to the elements. Falling is terrifying - this is true - but landing safely and getting away with it tempers it into something more like elation. Even if the water which greets you in a sudden uprush is bitterly, bracingly cold, the elation is good and makes it all worth while.

In this case, to add variety, some of the jumps are not jumps at all, but slides down natural rock water flumes, either forwards or one one occasion, backwards - which certainly ratchets up the anticipation given that it is impossible to see how close or how far the water is as it rockets towards you.
We stop for lunch at the foot of one of the abseiling cliffs, cracking open the waterproof lunch bags we have been lugging around with us, each containing tough canisters which we open to find a welcoming (and thankfully dry) picnic of bread rolls and pumpkin humous with ham and cheese.
Neil recounts what sounds like an oft-told story about sitting in exactly the same spot with another group, when the foliage of a nearby tramping path began to rustle and a quintet of elderly men wearing nothing but hiking boots ambled out, waved nonchalantly and then disappeared into another path-way on the other side of the creek. It is possible, of course, that they too were startled to find a group of people in matching black-rubber head-to-toe outfits dining on humous sandwiches in the middle of nowhere, and that the event might have become a you'll-never-believe-what-we-just-saw anecdote of their own.
After lunch we continue down through further jumps, slides and abseils, and on finally reaching the bottom, follow the path of the river back to the footpath which will take us to the carpark where Neil left his minibus.
The weather, still early in New Zealand's spring, is warm and sunny enough to counteract the cold of the water, and we tramp back through the woodland paths to the bus, cheerfully anticipating the aching limbs and blossoming bruises which the morning will no doubt bring. Worth it, we decide without question. Definitely worth it.

Optimism

It could be a lot worse, of course.

With the job at the ministry having expired after just over one month (thankfully longer than the projected two weeks), I find myself unable to get any further employment despite having signed myself up with at least five other employment agencies.
As the days tick past without any further money coming in, the grand plan in which I vowed only to spend what had I earned during my time in New Zealand slowly deflates and I am forced once more to crack open by Barclays debit card and dig out some more cash from one of those machines which will probably scoop off a sizable percentage from my account while it is at it.

But as I said, it could be worse.

The employment agencies here are a peculiar bunch. Odette, the super-agent who managed to secure me my first employment within twenty-four hours of my first phone call to her, is on holiday and with her, seem to have gone all of the employment opportunities in the city. She leaves me in the capable hands of someone called 'Honan', whose name I ask her to spell in case I overheard her wrong.
"He seems okay." Gary says.
"Have you met him?" I'm a little surprised.
"Odette brought him round the office this afternoon," Gary says, "Introduced him to everyone."
I blink. Odette never came to visit me in the office. I tell Gary this, with a slightly accusatory tone.
"She comes round every now and then." Gary concedes. "With cakes."
"Cakes!" I squeal, "I never got any cakes!"

I sign on with a couple more agencies, but most of them seem to need to be told what "data entry" work actually is, and appear to believe that I wish to do this work as a career rather than on a short term basis.
"Do you have your CV?" asks a rather prim looking receptionist at one of the agencies, situated in a glittering glass office block on the exclusive Viaduct Harbour complex.
I pass over a pristine copy which she takes between finger and thumb and glances at it over the top of her spectacles.
"So what do you do, exactly?" She asks. "I.T. or some such?"
"Well, I was really just looking for some short-term temporary work. Data entry, that sort of thing."
"I don't think we have any jobs in publishing." she says inspecting my employment record.
"I don't want..." I start, but the receptionist cuts me off with one elegantly manicured finger and punches an intercom with another.
"Mischa?" She asks, "Do we have any jobs in publishing."
A burst of static replies, but it is good enough for the receptionist.
"No, we don't. Sorry."
"I don't want a job in publishing," I say, "Not specifically, I just need something short-term, temporary. Office administration jobs, data entry..." I hesitate, suddenly aware that the office does seem terribly grand "Am I in the right place? Do you deal with temporary work here?"
The receptionist nods.
"Oh yes." she says.
"So," I start, wondering if this is all part of the interview process: dealing with irritating receptionists, "Can I book an appointment to see someone?"
The receptionist smiles at me sweetly.
"We'll take this," she says, holding my CV with the sort of distaste normally reserved for those forced to clean up questionably moist toilet paper from the floors of public lavatories, "And we'll call you if anything comes up."
I leave, fuming. I do not hear from them again.

The next agency seemed more familiar. Half-way up one of the central towers, the office is neat but cramped. It feels human sized and the sort of place you would expect a company dishing out office dogsbody jobs would reside. This time, they understand the concept of data entry and I am made to set various further tests to assess my proficiency in the area, the results of which Alana, my new agent goes over with me.
"Well," she says, leafing through the papers before her, "You seem to type rather fast, for a man."
I don't really know what to say to that, so I just smile awkwardly.
Alana is very pleasant and she assures me that she'll "definitely" call if anything comes up. This all sounds very encouraging indeed and so I leave this office with much more optimism.
I call Alana many times during the following three weeks and she keeps telling me that she thinks "There's something coming." At first it was a prediction which sounded rather encouraging, now she sounds like some crazy fortune teller with a crystal ball, spouting whatever nonsense the client wants to hear so she can get him off the phone.
I call Honan, and Honan excuses himself to go to a meeting. He promises to call me back in the afternoon but fails to do so.

Still, it could be worse.

I phone two other employment agencies and ask if I can book an appointment to come in. Both ask instead that I email a CV to them and then reply with unencouraging form emails.
A third, whom I go to visit in person, again shoo me away after I have deposited my CV with them and later they send me an email informing me that "at the present, we have nothing available which might further your proposed career strategy."
I reply to them, politely clarifying that I do not have a proposed career strategy, I just want whatever they have the bottom of the pile. I want data-entry, filing work in basements, any old rubbish which people with proposed career strategies don't want and turn down.
They reply with an email thanking me for my email. I do not hear from them again.

But as I say, it could be worse.

Because the weather is getting better here and while it is still windy, I find myself spending the days, waiting by the telephone on the front veranda, with the distant bay glimmering on the horizon, the blue of the water competing with the blue of the sky. I put my feet up on the footstool, and lean back against the sofa and read through the books I have. The front garden is pink with scattered rose petals and rich with the smell of the honeysuckle climbing the porch.
The phone does not ring, it stays still and motionless beside me as I read. But as I said, it could be a lot worse.