Seljakoti mantra

When I first moved in the house I was quite sure that I will be first one to move out. Contract for the house was till the end of January but I was sure I will leave before January starts, afterall I was here to travel. Due series small mishaps like getting work only 4 h. in day for couple of weeks when I started with agency, skipping work days because I was validating start up idea and going to meetups, after that going for 2 weeks to north island to sell my van and take part startup weekend and finally managing to sprain my ankle and I had to take off from work for a week, meant I hadn't saved up money much as I had hoped. After all that I ended up doing water pipe insulation. Work is basically cruising, people are nice and money is good. So, long story short, life happens and I am staying in Chch little longer to save up and prepare for travels.

After moving in the house everything was exiting and awesome. I managed to keep myself busy with the work, training, occasional business validation and taking part some seminars. Didn't pay attention to my housemates. Went out couple of weekends with them but lack of creativity and daily binge drinking got boring really fast. I didn't mind, they did their thing and I had mine. But slowly over time it became just depressing to see my house mates when they had day off and they headed to bottle shop for crate of beer in 10 am. and sat in garage whole day drinking trough it. Still didn't care, was too busy with my own things and occasionally it was fun to go bowling or do other small activities with them when I had time for that and birthday hike was definitely super fun. But when holidays kicked in, there was no work for some days and trainings were also off for couple of weeks I noticed what a shithole our house had become. I hadn't noticed it before because usually I spent maybe hour or 2 of my wake time in house and then it was usually cooking or doing laundry.

In NZ every house has 3 different color rubbish bins (RGY) and certain day of the week bins are supposed to be put next driveway. In morning garbage truck comes and empties bins by grabbing bins with huge robotic arm and emptying bins to truck.

No one hadn't taken bins to driveway for weeks and next to our house there were piles of rubbish bags, it smelled, there were flies flying around, bottle caps and empty beer bottles were laying around everywhere. After bazillion times of playing beerbong garage looked like there had been an explosion of  plastic cups, bottles, ping pong balls and rubbish. Of course everything was covered with a sticky layer of dried beer. 

I don't consider myself to be super tidy person but that point I was wtf is going on, how did this happen? Literally house had become symbol of white trailer trash life style. Some people were leaving anyway in middle of January but some wanted to stay in house for another month and get new people to keep rent low (rent was for whole house). By the looks of it, it didn't look like it wouldn't get any better after that point on.

Tho I wouldn't have been much trouble to stay there and save up money and just keep myself busy with my stuff there is good saying, “if you are smartest person in the room you are in wrong room”. Meaning if you are the pinnacle of the room or in this case house it can offer there is nothing left for you to learn, evolve or have fun. I value myself and those 2 hours in day I spend in house so it might as well be good time. After travelling and ending up to Chch some sort of hipi mindset had settled in and I didn't judge people by whom they were and just went with flow but in retro perspective I should have seen this coming when bunch of inexperienced people who had just met moved in one house. I don't regret time spent there but thing was starting to fall appart and place with it's people had lived it's time. Following expat mantra "if you don't like it anymore, move on" I decided to find another place to stay.

There were lot of rooms for rent but problem was that most wanted long term contract (6 months or more). After texting and sorting out people who were looking long term tenants I had I think 5-6 places to see. Took around 4-5 hours driving around city to see all the houses. I had made up my mind about one house before I got to the last house tired and bored of driving around. Because I am still not super familiar with chch I use GPS to drive around to new places and just typed address in and let google take me to destination I really didn't think about the houses before hand. With the last house, Google ended up bringing me to one of the fanciest and richest neighborhoods in Chch which is situated on a side of of hill with the view to the sea. First I thought I typed in wrong address but nope, it was right. House owner was really relaxed dude who didn't want bond and was okay with short term stay as well. Rent wasn't that much more expensive just it was little bit far from city center. and I would have longer drive to work, but if I thought about that I spent same amount time driving to work at my last place back in home. Week later I packed my stuff and moved in.

This is how I ended up in Chch rich and fancy neighborhood. House with 3 floors on top of the hill, tree tops same level with porch. My on room with the view on the bay and door to the porch. So far I think change of scenery was pretty wicked. House mates are really relaxed and could say like minded people with whom I share similar interests. After inviting one kiwi friend over who happens to live basically hill next to me I found out that one of my flatmate is also really fond of whiskey. After he bought out his 700 nzd whiskey collection it became clear that I am apparently just a scrub in regards whiskey tasting. None the less, I had chance to taste all sort of different whiskeys, also some made in NZ and some in Cuba.

Yehaa! Feeling wicked in my new fancy location.