How to Get Born Before You Die

How to Eat Inky

 My flight was delayed.

"Thank God," I thought. "I can sit for a second."

The delay was two hours. It felt like ages since I had been able to sit down and listen to music. I got through the new Vampire Weekend album and half of an Americana playlist. When they weighed my bag at the gate, I was four point three kg over the carry-on limit, but due to what must have been a miracle or maybe a grumbling, impatient line they let it slide without a fee. I had less than $100 in my bank account and a whole month to go before I flew out of New Zealand.

On the plane to Christchurch, I tried to listen to music, but all the low-end frequencies were drowned out by the roar of the tiny plane. Kacey Musgraves' Golden Hour cut through fine, though. Mountains blurred into a green and white matcha under the watchful, wistful gaze of the young American punk in the sky. Sometimes you feel like you're important, and other times you take an Air New Zealand excursion to the south island while you watch your spotty 3G coverage actually find a hotspot in the air. I was pissed. That SIM card barely worked on the ground, and now, thousands of feet in the air, I had five bars. It was displaying superhuman abilities. Or superphone abilities. Whichever is more applicable.

Christchurch is mostly unremarkable. There are some cool arcades and clothing shops, and the people are agreeable. The heart of the music scene seems to be a bus parked right on the outskirts of downtown called "The Party Bus," recommended to me by a young gentleman about my age.

"Oi, yeh mate. Ya godda mayke it een there!" The smoke shop was cool too. I've never really been a smoker though, so I moved on pretty fast.

I was under the impression that I would be staying in the city of Christchurch. This idea, as it turned out, was incorrect, which I realized when my google maps finally loaded and I saw the hour-long bus ride ahead of me.

"Damn." As I stared out the window on the bus, the apartments turned into tiny houses with tiny backyards, which in turn became larger houses with small paddocks. And the bus driver kept on going until we arrived at the

...

middle

...

of

...

nowhere.

I was picked up by the son-in-law of the people I was going to be helping for the next two weeks. He was quite friendly, but kept talking about his gun. I felt strangely at home.

In a few minutes I was on the doorstep of the farmers, who were in the midst of a massive family reunion.

"Come on een!" yelled The Woman, with a big grin and a friendly wave. It was the friendliest welcome I had received in a long time. There were cookies and candies and jams and jellies and skinny people that liked to hug you upon meeting you and far people that preferred to wave from the couch in the corner of the room. For three hours, I shut up and listened to aunts and uncles and grandparents tell stories and gossip. I was never bored. These people were entertaining.

After the family reunion was over (I was forced to introduce myself to every member of the farmers' extended family), I was shown my room (which happened to include a home theatre and three couches), introduced to the farmers' kids (both around my age and a little odd), and told to be in the kitchen at 8am sharp the next morning.

"The chooks'll wake you up even if your alahm doesn't." said the woman.

"Of course." I replied knowingly. I had no idea what a chook was.

The next morning I found out. The crowing of the multiple roosters and ah-CAW ing of the hens made it very difficult to stay asleep past 7:30. Thank God, too. I had forgotten to set my alarm.