Wellington is Superdope

I've only been here just over 24 hours, and I already love this city. It's very compact, and easy to get around by foot. I've spent a lot of time walking around downtown, trying to get lost, so I can find my way again. It's the unmetaphorical version of what I'm doing in New Zealand in the first place, only the finding part is much easier.

I met a few buskers downtown today, one who played flamenco guitar. I think I need to learn from his technique, because he has an interesting way of adding percussion while strumming. His technique is different from my own, but I think there's a lot of potential in combining the two.

The other one had a Warr Guitar, which was cool to see for the first time. These guitars are designed to be "tapped" instead of plucked, like a Chapman Stick, or the technique used by Stanley Jordan. It's pretty cool to see these kinds of things on my second day in the city.

I'm planning to keep an ongoing list of observations about Wellington. And I think I should start with the most pressing issue:

1. It is my primary goal to avoid being hit by a car in the first week. It's not that I will suddenly stop trying to get hit by a car. It's just that for the time being, my instinct is to look the wrong way for cars. I'm also a bit jet-lagged and tired. This is a dangerous mixture.

2. The birds here know different songs than Canadian birds. This is probably true of most two places on Earth, but I find the differences interesting. They do still have untalented chirping birds, but the songbirds are quite different. Waking up to new birds songs is better than waking up to old birdsongs, even with the jet lag.

3. My leg muscles are not used to hills; they are used to prairies. Going downtown is great, because it starts by going down a hill. Coming back is tiring, and daunting to the point where I actually stay downtown to delay the inevitable climb home.