Public Address | Cafe | Stories: Overseas Experience

Russell Brown

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:38:12 +1200

Be it a bacchanalian romp through the continent or a serious career development move, the big OE has been a rite of passage for young New Zealanders for a century or more. Feel free to file a report if you're on one now, or share the story of the journey?

Ben Austin

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:08:28 +1200

Ok –

In London the street people all seem to have dogs.
All food or drink seems to be organic some how.
People drink alcohol a lot more.

Che Tibby

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:27:53 +1200

ben, some words of advice.

1. don't fret.

2. all food and drink is supposed to be organic.

3. if they try feed you the plastic stuff, leave macdonalds.

4. if they try to feed you the soylent green, don't fret, it's organic tool.

Emma Hart

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:44:24 +1200

4. if they try to feed you the soylent green, don't fret, it's organic tool.

Lawl. Soylent green is dickheads!

andrew llewellyn

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:45:07 +1200

organic tool ?

Che Tibby

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:53:40 +1200

too*

weirdest typo ever.

Jason Dykes

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:39:11 +1200

Vancouver, 1986 – I had no money and no ticket home. I needed a job desperately. Unemployment was high, particularly for 19 year-olds, but the pre-Christmas period provided some opportunities. After landscaping for a while, I got a mall job – for a clothing store called, Randy River. It was?

Lyndon Hood

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:04:07 +1200

Here's something I prepared earlier about my Europe trip which I think was technically more holiday than OE.

The one thing I left out that I always want to talk about is the eurail passes. While it's possible to get from place to place free on them, if you try to?

Anne M

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:52:00 +1200

Melbourne. The joy of half-as-expensive Mars bar was more than overcome by the shock of the twice-as-expensive rent, and the realisation that what had looked like a very cosy scholarship was actually subsistance-level. This was compounded by the fact that, despite having received half a bushel of carefully filled in?

Ben Austin

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:07:29 +1200

Wow Anne, that is really depressing, I think you've destroyed my positive impression of melbourne in one foul blow (which was quite high, given their on campus donut stores)

Anne M

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:57:03 +1200

No, no, Melbourne is a great place, especially if you live in the inner suburbs (like Che, and unlike us). You can eat FABULOUS food, really cheap thanks to successive waves of immigration. And once my husband shelved his uni plans for a year and found a job assembling phone?

Felix Marwick

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:40:09 +1200

I could probably write a book (or at least a collection of short stories) on OE escapades. But I'll share the one that I told my interview panel (almost a decade ago) when I'd decide that journalism seemed like a fun thing to do. The question they'd asked me was?

Che Tibby

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:28:43 +1200

melbourne is great, and even the suburbs can have great places. you just have to be willing to think of the local pizza parlour as rustic gourmets...

even when i lived way the heck out in clayton (now there's a hell-hole), there was a place called monash pizza that i?

Anne M

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:56:18 +1200

way the heck out in clayton (now there's a hell-hole)

Guess where we spent five years?

Anne M

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:59:40 +1200

Felix!! That was brilliant, especially, the final touch of German. You cunning, cunning man.

Richard Llewellyn

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:49:07 +1200

Gosh, a good subject Mr Brown. Like most kiwis, there are a lot of different OE stories to tell ...

Going to work in Leicester Square one morning to find all the windows in the building blown in from an IRA bomb. Off to a Covent Garden pub for the?

Russell Brown

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:39:23 +1200

Needless to say when I applied for a visa when I got home it was turned down. I've never been back to Japan since – I'm still slightly worried about what might happen if I did.

Ah, but at least you have your memories. Brilliant story.

Felix Marwick

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:06:21 +1200

Cheers for the feedback.

And while I remember here's some handy travel advice.

Hitchhiking across the King Hussein Bridge from Jordan to Israel is not a good idea. And definitely don't be wearing a Palestinian kheffiyah when you do it.

Richard Llewellyn

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:43:38 +1200

"Hitchhiking across the King Hussein Bridge from Jordan to Israel is not a good idea. And definitely don't be wearing a Palestinian kheffiyah when you do it."

Heh – similarly, when going the other way, make sure you tell the Jordanian officials that you have just been in the 'Occupied?

Don Christie

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:54:21 +1200

Given that 25% of us "kiwis" forgot to go home in the other direction, and given that, elf like, we are all supposed to be fleeing for the Australian tax havens, I have an idea for another topic. Why the hell are you still here!

Don Christie

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:08:04 +1200

As for OE stories, finding shit smeared all over the rest rooms in a state park in Nebraska moved us through that state in a hurry. Getting offered a job coaching soccer kids, on the strength of of a rotting sports top and a cute accent, in Laramie, Wyoming the?

Che Tibby

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:47:13 +1200

finding shit smeared all over the rest rooms in a state park in Nebraska moved us through that state in a hurry

had the same experience in natchez, mississippi. i asked the service station attendant for the key to the loos, only to get the response, "you sure?

me: "yes?

Duncan McKenzie

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:26:42 +1200

Thanks Richard L for evoking memories of the bus ride to Lake Toba (more than 30 years ago). The bus tout in Palembang showed us a picture of the flash Mercedes bus that we were to ride on. We hopped on ... only to be driven to the big bus?

Joe Wylie

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:07:08 +1200

Sumatran buses in the 70s – oh hell.
A winding stretch of road between Parapat and Sibolga, with the bus's sound system playing a soppy Indo-pop version of The Archies' Sugar Sugar. Gave my precious window seat to an Australian who bore a striking resemblance to JC. A bad case?

Simon Grigg

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:09:34 +1200

So not much has changed then Joe?

andrew llewellyn

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:13:50 +1200

I thought he was gonna barf into the other bus there for a minute.

Rich, didn't Mike D have a sobering experience on a packed bus in the middle of india that needs recounting?

Not to mention Marty, he must be good for a few yarns about South American jails?

Simon Grigg

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:21:44 +1200

You can tell a lot by the TV.

Indonesian Idol's final in a massive stadium in JaBoTek somewhere, with god knows how many hundreds of thousands of people. The losing contestants all break down, come down off the stage and go their villages, there en-mass, get on their knees?

andrew llewellyn

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:35:54 +1200

You can tell a lot by the TV

France: An action adventure series whose name I cannot recall, but it "starred" luminaries such as Catherine Oxenberg & Fabio.

Great stuff.

andrew llewellyn

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:36:46 +1200

Oh yeah – Acapulco Heat. Maybe it wasn't actually french, but that's where I watched it with some degree of fascination.

Richard Llewellyn

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:53:29 +1200

"a sobering experience on a packed bus in the middle of india that needs recounting?"

Heh – yeah. Running towards the end of an overland trip through India, we decided to cool off from the 40 degree plus temperatures in Delhi and Rahjistan, and decided to head to the far?

Jackie Clark

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:34:17 +1200

Why the hell are you still here!

Is it really 25%? Silly people. I'm here because my heart would not have me be elsewhere. Anyway, hairy OE stories.I was a barmaid for most of the three years I lived in the UK. First year in London, working in the Ship?

Che Tibby

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:55:14 +1200

anne m. >that was my guess! good old monash and its scholarship programme.

you should have caught the train to caulfield. there was a sri lankan hole in the wall there that did the best hoppers you've ever tried.

and the greek places down the far end of clayton shopping?

Anne M

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:15:19 +1200

There was also a pretty decent Italian place (lunch only I think) up near the uni and a Singaporean place near the railway station where the owner would come and boss you about your order ("No, you can't have two noodle dishes. Have nasi goreng instead of sar ho fan").?

rodgerd

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:59:47 +1200

Why the hell are you still here!

Because I like New Zealand for all its many faults. Canada is about the only other English-as-a-first-language nation that really appeals to me, and that may only be because of unfamiliarity.

Nobody Important

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:50:32 +1200

one of many stories I could tell:

Surfers Paradise 1984 (I think). I'd been kicked out of Sydney by my Aunt's boyfriend who thought I was bludging. My younger sister was welcome to stay but I had to go. So off I went, with only enough money for the bus?

Nobody Important

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:53:18 +1200

sheesh .... I didn't mean to be a threadkiller! I've got lots of happy stories too:
The night before I flew home from London in 1987 I got horribly drunk and woke up at 9am with my flight leaving at 11.15am. It was the pre-booked cab driver who woke me?

Russell Brown

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:22:52 +1200

I can understand – especially with student loans as a fact of life – why young folk go to London now with their eyes on a prime job, but it was different in my day. I tended to see it as a chance to find my way without too much?

Andrew Stevenson

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:33:54 +1200

Another bus story:
On Penang Island in Malaysia when one of the people I was travelling with started to come down with a kidney infection. A plan was concocted to head towards Bangkok in case advanced medical treatment was required, the problem was that the trains had stopped running. So?

Michael Savidge

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:16:44 +1200

I wasn't going to post here as I couldn't decide which tale to tell. But since Russell has brought up squats....

Some good friends were squatting in Clapham Junction (which they eventually turned into a co-op) and their upstairs neighbours were some truly nefarious chemical hounds. I was working in?

Ben Austin

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:09:06 +1200

So Portebello Road reminds me of Cuba St, writ large. A great, fun little street with loads of character and cafes, but heavily gentrified.

Ben Austin

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:11:11 +1200

Oh and Singapore...wow...I've never seen a newspaper (Straits Times) so obssesed with women losing weight, oh and university education. Although to be fair to them, I guess they are just taking advertising.

Simon Grigg

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:10:20 +1200

Bonnington Square, in Vauxhall,

oh, yes....went to a party in Bonnington one night late in 83 and found my then girlfriend sitting in the lap of, and snogging a huge Nigerian guy called Cola, who I later found out was a a percussionist with Osibisa. Drinking a large amount very?

81stcolumn

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:53:35 +1200

In ?88, having lost my job with the revenue I did up the car, sold it and got a one way ticket to New York. Within an hour of landing I had been abused by an ex-lover and spent the next fortnight blagging my way round the better NY nightclubs?

81stcolumn

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:25:54 +1200

I might add that it was during this trip that I made the acquaintance of the US security services. By 1988 the first intifada was under way and I joined a protest outside the Whitehouse. I was clearly protesting in a vigorous/menacing way sufficient to get me a stiff talking?

Nobody Important

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:49:23 +1200

And then ? in walked my baby. We were never apart again.

I'm not having a go RB, but I'm always bemused how people can travel half way around the world and then still end up with a Kiwi (or worse, an Australian).

And Mr Grigg (still not having a?

Simon Grigg

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:04:20 +1200

NI ...Bogdan Kominowski of course...don't yer know yer kiwi pop history, bro...

Nobody Important

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:21:36 +1200

Heheheheh

Well I do now! I loved the bit about Flash Gordon (1980) .... Lieutenant of Ming's Air Force. Saw the film but missed that bit!

And BTW – these gravatar pics are quite small. Which is why I picked one that doesn't require glasses.

andrew llewellyn

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:36:40 +1200

That'd be a pretty odd place to wear glasses anyway.

Simon Grigg

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:09:51 +1200

Well I do now! I

He was quite the superstar in Palmy. When I was at school there a few in my class had had him as a teacher at primary school as I recall...or at least they claimed as much...touched the hem etc....

Jackie Clark

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:44:41 +1200

I'm always bemused how people can travel half way around the world and then still end up with a Kiwi

You mean, I assume, NI, people who go Over the Oceans, and meet one of their own, who has also gone Over the Oceans? One would imagine, nay one knows,?

Felix Marwick

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:30:51 +1200

I'm always bemused how people can travel half way around the world and then still end up with a Kiwi

I must say I have met the occasional foreign girl who promised to "love me long time" but they weren't what you'd consider the marriageable types.

But that's what you?

Russell Brown

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:42:03 +1200

I'm always bemused how people can travel half way around the world and then still end up with a Kiwi

You misunderstand. This was a permanent reunion, with roots way back.

If it helps, I had previously been having loads of sex with a Scottish bird.

Joe Wylie

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:54:06 +1200

If it helps, I had previously been having loads of sex with a Scottish bird.

She must have been grouse.

Tony Kennedy

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:59:14 +1200

If it helps, I had previously been having loads of sex with a Scottish bird

None of this was ever captured on film ? – just checking mind

on the other hand you should be aware...

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2121462005

81stcolumn

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:17:23 +1200

So 81stcolumn, did you manage to take advantage of the Love bomb before things got ugly? I mean, how 'far' do they go with the 'love'? I've always wondered.

NI- I'm afraid you are just going to have to keep wondering. I didn't sign so all I got was my?

Heather Gaye

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:23:36 +1200

She must have been grouse.

Oh, very good. (applause)

Peter Darlington

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:44:08 +1200

...the owners of Wellington's Caf� Verona, Janis and Sue

Or Caffe Astoria even. Thanks for reminding me Russ. I need to contact the fearsome pair.

BTW, we always presumed Janice felt nicely at home in such a flat. With her Nazi book collection and dim view of the world. Sort?

Russell Brown

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:33:46 +1200

Or Caffe Astoria even. Thanks for reminding me Russ. I need to contact the fearsome pair.

Duh. I was a bit dsitracted when I wrote that. Astoria it is, of course.

David Slack

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:21:45 +1200

I found that shouting and singing stopped me smelling it.

You could work for Investigate!

You've been in that hotel for two hours now. Is the coffee kicking in yet?

Peter Darlington

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:08:58 +1200

You could work for Investigate!

Or 'How clean is your house?'. Surely the most despicable piece of reality TV yet.

My kids love it...

Richard Llewellyn

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:42:45 +1200

Actually, on the subject of the OE, I'd like to note my resignation, anger, and sheer admiration at those who through fate or (no) choice find themselves in that most invidious of professions, the rip-off artist.

Those who devise a thousand different ways to match their wits against suspecting and?

Felix Marwick

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:01:37 +1200

The following story is all true. It's another tale from my sojourn in Japan in the days I was working with horses and journalism wasn't even a remote consideration. The mists of memory, and the necessity to protect the reputations of others means some of the names have been changed.?

Mark Thomas

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:10:50 +1200

pretty difficult to top that story, felix...

Matt Jeffs

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:21:14 +1200

Hows about landing in London the same day Diana died. Strange way to be introduced to a new city / country.
I originaly intended to stay for 18 months work in a few pubs aroubnd London then see a bit of Europe. Well I'm still here 10 years later. Married?

Matt Jeffs

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:24:28 +1200

Actually chucking up in a future Springbok's kitchen sink back in 1998 at a party in Sth Kensington – complete with dishes (nice) – is my crowning moment. The player in question will remain nameless of course. One of those beautiful moments that makes me proud to be a Kiwi.

Lea Barker

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:46:59 +1200

Back in '73, I lived in Leeds and worked in a theatrical costume shop. Whenever Leeds United was playing at home, the shop would be swamped with fans coming to buy blood capsules and stage knives so that they could add to the media frenzy about football hooliganism. Subversive little?