Here Breaketh the Drought

There has, I will admit, been something of a dearth in posts on this here website of late. I have been aware of this and no amount of reminders, gentle prodding or rocks being thrown through windows on the part of you, the readership¹, was ever going to change this. It is now the case, however, that, were I Adam West playing batman, I might find myself tempted (or possibly contractually obliged by virtue of it being in the god-damn script Adam ... would you just for once drag your pathetic B-grade actor's arse off of the booze long enough to learn your fucking lines?) to say that the purpose for this pusillanimous posting paucity is past, my post-perusing pal.

You see, I was always aware of what many people would have been thinking sniggeringly behind my back when I left Australian shores last month: "He'll be back. Sure he's thinks he's going to do a PhD and all, but let's face it to get that far the son of a bitch is going to have to enroll ...... Oh, chuckle, chuckle chuckle, tee hee hee, hee hee hee." Now, while I was at least a little tempted before now to post about my administrative peccadilloes on that front, well, I was always just that little bit frightened that you might actually be right and hence I thought I'd just hide quietly in a corner² for a while. Anyways, I am now pleased to announce that I am now officially enrolled and, perhaps more importantly, am as of today able to actually log on to the fucking computer on my desk³. It is from said machine that I write this seminal post.

Having left Brisbane airport at 9:00 on a 3 hour flight which arrived in Wellington at 15:00 local time, I was feeling a little cheated. Assuming that I do so during another period of daylight saving, however, I suppose I will get to make that up on a subsequent return journey and take a 3 hour flight into a city 3 hours behind my point of departure - thus achieving the giddy thrill of feeling like I am arriving at the same time I departed. Anyway, perhaps because I was bitterly knawing away at this thought, I didn't just go straight to the university as it turns out I should have done - resolving instead to do so on the morrow. Let me explain why this turned out to be a terribly bad idea with a little aside, yes?

There is something, I think, rather endearing about the working habits of mathematicians. These being, to my eye, not dissimilar to that of composers or artists generally. In between sometimes feverish fits of work, they often find themselves just kind of tossing ideas about, taking long naps, coffee breaks, three hour lunches, wandering around and generally waiting for inspiration to hit them. Sometimes, for instance, they just need to up and go surfing on the south island for a couple of weeks or so. Funnily enough, this is precisely what my own principal supervisor found himself doing as of the day after I arrived - as I discovered upon checking my in-box on the 28th. There are a few more points which I feel are relevant to our discussion at this juncture:

1. Australian students are here treated as domestic - and thus have to enroll in person.
2. I discovered the above after sending all of my forms over in November 2006. Not to worry, though, the relevant documents (including required certified copies of academic transcripts, degrees and what-not the originals of which I was to subsequently leave in Australia) were, I was told, forwarded to my principal supervisor for safe-keeping, and all could thus be made well on my arrival.
3. Even if I had all relevant copies (which I was cautious enough, in point of fact, to bring with me), and acquired minty fresh new forms to fill in on arrival - I still needed my supervisor's signature on one of them.
4. The terms of my scholarship contract clearly required me to be enrolled by March 7 else there would be "no dineros for me".
5. My supervisor was to return on March 11.

As it happens, the scholarships office people were surprisingly (given my past experiences with administrative types) quite prepared to ignore point 4. Further amusement, however, was to be had on my endeavours to open a bank account into which the dineros mentioned in point 4 should be payed. I'd opened an account with HSBC Australia before leaving with a view to conveniently subsequently opening an HSBC New Zealand account on arrival here - having been assured that they did, indeed, have branches in New Zealand and would in the mean-time be able to access the Australian account through ATMs anyways. It was, on reflection, a mistake to assume that "branches in New Zealand" meant "branches in Wellington, the fucking capitol". Happily, however, there are three branches in Auckland through which, being the bloody minded son of a bitch that I am, I resolved to set up said account. To do so, I required various certified copies of various proofs of identity and of address. Of all the various options for identity proving, the only viable options for me were a passport and a New Zealand driver's license. To prove address, I essentially needed an official letter from a New Zealand employer to a New Zealand address⁴. My next step, then, was to acquire a New Zealand driver's license. To do this, I required the following:

1. My passport
2. My Australian driver's license
3. A proof of address⁵
4. To pass the theory test you do to get a learner's permit.
   

The proof of address could take the form of a utility bill, a bank statement, or some other ambiguously worded letter of proof the exact wording of which I do not remember past to say that the meaning of said wording was not remotely clear. The utility bill one was clearly out. Thus, it seemed, I needed a bank account to get the driver's license and a driver's license to get the fucking bank account. Yip-de-fucking-ha. Not to worry, though, it turned out that any official-looking computer generated letter correctly addressed would fall into the third category. Not knowing, at this point that they wouldn't even keep a copy of the letter, it is a source of deep regret to me that I didn't simply invent a bogus company and letter-head and write the damn thing myself. Instead, I got my Aunt (who currently works as a policy adviser to the police) to write a bogus letter on official New Zealand Police letter-head instead (note that I was doing this before the actions of footnote 4). Note that the address in question also happens to be her own address.

Anyways, I am officially posting again, and shall write more anon.

¹The little people

² Some might say that this is an apt characterisation of what not just myself, but the entire population of New Zealand finds itself doing.......

³This is not to say that I wasn't happy with the various fulfilling pastimes I was able to enjoy with my nerd-machine. Why, I could make the keyboard go "click, click". I could rest hot beverages on it and play with the log-on screen for, oh, hours at a time. I just felt that it was time to take our relationship to the next level is all....

⁴This last was achieved in a quaint manner via a conversation with Rob (my administrative supervisor) which went a little something like this: Me: "Ah, could you possibly just write a letter on official letter-head addressed to me at this address?" Rob: "What should the letter say?" Me: *shrug* Rob: "Why don't I just write to confirm you're doing a PhD here?" Me: "No, I don't want it to sound like I asked you to do it....." Rob: "How about I just inform you you were allocated that office I showed you to yesterday, and that you should pick up at the school office that key you have in your pocket?" Me: "Perfect."

⁵Seriously, though, what the cock is with all of this address-proving crap you have to do here?