Moving! ... sort of

Don't let anyone tell you that ability in the classroom directly correlates with being able to function in the real world. I may have mentioned that my first act in NZ (besides running through the Auckland airport with my bags at 5:30am and oohing and aahing at Wellington harbor) was to completely fry a power converter by trying to plug my laptop into it. (Flash, pop, smoke, the whole shebang.) My second act was to go out and buy an adapter for my laptop (which apparently has a built in converter anyway and fries external convertors) and all was happy again. Until last night. As I was packing to move, I found a little single outlet surge protector I had brought with me from the states. I figured now that I had an adapter that could handle its three prongs, maybe I should plug it in.

*Note to self: Never. Ever. Assume you know what you're doing with an electronic device.
*Note to others: I am completely inept with technology. If it has wires, don't trust me with it.

As soon as I plugged it in, I saw the familiar spark, smelled smoke, etc. Oh dear, another electronic fried. Thankfully for me, I'm fairly low maintenance when it comes to things that plug in and having figured out a way to charge my laptop, I shouldn't have a problem for the rest of the time here. (Because I've fried everything with a plug that I brought other than my laptop.) Then I realized that I couldn't get my lamp to turn on, and the internet had also turned off. On my last night in my flat (or so I thought -- read on), I had managed to knock out power to half the house. Normal people would have just gone to the circuit board and flipped a switch. I did not know to do this (and was too scared to touch anything once someone told me what to do) so I frantically called my flatmate and then sat and waited until he came home to flip the switch.

As I write this I am sitting in the bedroom that I have been living in for the past month and a half. The only things currently in the room are a desk and chair, an empty chest of drawers, a small overnight bag and my backpack.

Yesterday I moved all of my stuff out of my current flat into the flat I'll be living in from now until January. Julie, Michael (our new Aussie flatmate) and I rented a van and ran all over the Wellington area picking up beds and shifting all of our stuff to our new place. (Thankfully Michael was there and used to driving 1) large vans and 2) on the left side of the road. Julie and I would have gotten ourselves killed.)

After picking up both Julie's and Michael's new beds and doing a lot of shopping at The Warehouse (basically the NZ equivalent of Target), we arrived out our new flat. There we discovered that our landlord is painting all of the bedrooms in the flat (which he hadn't told us he'd do). Also, he is painting my bedroom bright green, the same color as the nail polish I'm wearing right now. I happen to love the color but you have to wonder what possesses a guy to pick highlighter green as a wall color without consulting the future tenant.

The downside of all this painting is that, even though he said we could move in yesterday, we can't really sleep there without inhaling paint fumes. This wasn't the biggest problem for Julie (who has her flat with her insane flatmate for another week) or Michael (who's staying with family friends). It was a slightly bigger issue for me whose bed is now sitting on its side in the living room of a half painted flat. I ended up sleeping on the couch of my current flat. So that is why I am sitting in this state of limbo: living out of a suitcase in my current, soon to be former flat, in an empty room that yesterday was mine.

Summary:
- Never, ever let me near something with a cord unsupervised. Unless you like sparks.
- I've sort of moved! Except not really, but kind of.
- At least it'll be green when I get there.