Pie-Full of Truth Part IV.

I am in a lot of debt. More than US$50,000.

The state of education funding in America is pretty bad. New Zealanders have it a lot better. They get really inexpensive tuition and a weekly student living allowance. Being a foreigner, I have to pay 4 times the cost that a domestic student has to pay. Even so, after the exchange rate my entire course costs only a few thousand dollars more than one semester at Boston University. Unbelievable.

But I had most of my undergrad covered through scholarship and financial aid (thankfully, because I never would have gone otherwise). But I did take out loans for room and board and other expenses. So here is the breakdown of why I am in so much debt.

NHFC is Natural History Filmmaking and Communication. My current schooling. Is it worth it? Only time will tell.


If you are interested, Other Debt is my car back home. There is under $500 left to pay on my auto loan, and it accounts for less than 1% of my total debt.

NZ commercials

I don't watch a lot of New Zealand TV. I get the basic, national, free broadcast channels(TVOne, TV2, TV3, and C4, plus Prime and Maori TV with very poor reception). Most of the shows I end up seeing are American anyway, but one thing New Zealand is really good at is making commercials. There are a lot of clever, funny ads. There are a lot of bad ones too, but that is to be expected.

Here are a few of my favorites:

First up: an ad promoting domestic travel. It really sums up the country well.





Next are a couple ads for L&P. L&P stands for Lemon and Paeroa. It is a soda made with lemon juice and mineral water from the town of Paeroa. It's an acquired taste.

The first ad is just fun. The second looks at unique fashion phenomena: stubbies.



Lastly there is this great Air New Zealand ad. The final scene was shot at Otago University.

Pie-Full of Truth Part III. Now In 3-D!

Welcome to the third episode in the Pie-Full of Truth series. So far we've seen I've lived about a third of my projected lifespan and spent about 4/5 of that time in schools. Today we compare how much time I've spent at each institution.

Time Enrolled in Each Alma Mater

I just realized I didn't include a summer course I took at Elmira College, but I suppose that doesn't count because I wasn't matriculated and it was during the time I was enrolled at BU.

Pie-Full of Truth Part II.

Here is the second installment of my pie-chart fiesta. Today we look at how I've spent my 24 years.

Percent of life spent in school

That is years of my life I've attended school (preschool, kindergarten, grade 1-12, 4 years undergrad, 1 year-in-progress post-grad) and the few years I haven't.

Pie-Full of Truth Part I.

Here is a new segment I'm going to try for a while. Blogging has gotten boring and tedious, so I've made up some pie-charts about my life. Enjoy the visual insight offered by comparing percentages and relative amounts.

First Up:

Percentage of Average American Male Life Expectancy* Lived

*77.2 Years. Source: The Internets

The What

I've recently finished reading Dave Eggers' new novel What is the What. It is the story of a Sudanese man who was a refugee of the Sudanese civil war and is now living in America. Calling it a novel is a little confusing because it is a true story told in the voice of the main character, but too many elements of storytelling like dialog and detail have been added to truly call it a biography. Usually this would make it a memoir, but I think the publishers are a little afraid to use that category after the whole James Frey A Million Little Pieces fiasco that happened about a year ago.
What is the What is the life story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. It recounts his childhood before the war through the attack on his village, his fleeing from one refugee camp to another and then immigrating to America. There are relentless accounts of the tragedies in his life, but in the book humanity is never overshadowed by the crimes against it.

The narrative structure follows Valentino through one day, while he tells his stories to the people he encounters, even though they aren't listening.

The title of the book refers to a Sudanese creation myth. God created a Dinka man and woman (the Dinka are a group of tribes in southern Sudan) and he gave them cattle. The cattle were perfectly suited to their life and would provide all the meat and milk the people could want. But then, and this is the part I love, God said the Dinka could choose between having the cattle or having The What.
I love this part because it is so much like Let's Make a Deal: They were offered a chance to give up a domesticated animal that could be the basis of a civilization and take what's behind curtain number 2.
I don't want to give any more away about the book, but it is a great and moving account of the civil war in Sudan and Darfur and features a cameo by NBA legend Manute Bol.

Strange Transmissions

The other day I turned on the radio on my alarm clock because I was sick of the music on my computer. I switched it to AM and slowly spun the dial to try to find 1125 Radio Hauraki for some decent classic rock. But as I was searching I tuned in something else. It was old, beyond oldies. The song was a sort of Mexican-influenced love ballad from the 40s or 50s. It was followed by another. I wasn't really into it, and I wanted to keep searching and hopefully get some good music. But I was transfixed, it was like the radio equivalent of a train wreck. I was listening to the most whack station I had ever heard, but I couldn't turn away. I didn't believe it, and I still kind of don't.

I finished what I was doing and turned the radio off. Then today I was folding some laundry and I turned it back on again. This time it was an Irish woman hosting a show of songs that were apparently write-in requests for English and Irish ballads. I think I'm picking up a signal from the past. Commercials or call letters have not been broadcast. I think it's a transmission that was made at least 40 years ago and got beamed into space and has bounced off a distant satellite and is now returning to the wire antenna taped to my bedroom wall. I don't really want to listen to this all the time, but I don't want to change the station for fear that I'll never find it again. I've decided not to listen long or often or investigate any further because I don't want to ruin this wonderful strange station with the mundane truth.

Update 6/2/07: It's gone.

The New Flat

I have been living in my new flat for almost a month. And despite difficulties paying rent and having the power shut off temporarily, it is going well (the difficulty paying rent is the fault of the bank, not of my own poverty, though that will soon be the difficulty paying the rent).

Meg, Nick, and I moved in on New Years Eve and threw a little flat-warming/New Years Party. Since we are living close to the center of town we left out flat at about 11:30pm to go to The Octagon for the countdown. It was a really good time. After midnight Nick, Meg, and I came home to our new flat and slept in sleeping bags on the couches and floors because none of us had beds.

Now that we all have some more furniture 395B is a great place to live. It is on the other side of town from our old place and it seems a lot more urban.

The real selling point on our place was the patio/balcony. The 3 upstairs bedrooms have sliding glass doors out onto a great tile patio with a BBQ and this fantastic view:

Number 3

I bought a new car. A 1989 Toyota Corolla hatchback. It is the third Corolla I’ve owned. The first was one I inherited from my mom who had to get a new car after I drove her maroon 89 Carolla sedan into a guardrail. I pulled the dents out and filled it in with copious amounts of bond-o and painted it myself, from then on it was my car. Until my brother came home from college and needed it for work. Later my dad drove that same corolla after I crashed his car into a tree at very low speed.
What happened was, I was turning out of a convient store parking lot and I heard something crack, then I couldn’t steer. Before I even realized that I was out of control I was up on a curb and stopped by a young maple. Getting outside I noticed that practically the whole undercarriage of the vehicle was dragging on the ground. Luckily I wasn’t traveling fast, or I and probably other people would be dead. Anyway, my second corolla, and the first car I ever purchased, was a blue 1990 sedan that I found advertised on the internet and bought for US$1550 from Mexico Auto Sales in Van Nuys California. I still have the “Mexico Auto Sales: You’re Numero Uno with Us” key chain in the shape of a number 1. I drove that shitbox all over LA county for 5 months and sold it, sight unseen, to a girl who was moving to LA to do the same internship program I was on at the time. She sent me a check, I sent her the papers and keys and left the car in the parking structure at the apartment complex for her to find. She paid me $1500. After moving home I broke the streak and bought a 1993 Honda Accord that wasn’t even paid for when I left to go to New Zealand. Now my dad is making my payments on it and my sister is driving it to school and work, but I’ll get it back when I go home. Now I’ve found this red 89 corolla hatchback. It’s a manual (my first) and has 260,000km (161,500mi) on it. But the motor is new and only has 80,000km (50,000mi) on it. It cost me NZ$1350 (US$900) and it runs really well. I'd been thinking about what to name it since I agreed to buy it. Then, driving home with it for the first time, I was thinking I wanted it to have a first and last name. The flatmates and I had just been talking about Kiano Reeves movies a couple days before and it came to me: Johnny Utah. The ex-star-quarterback turned undercover FBI agent/surfer from Point Break. So here you have it, ladies and gentleman I present to you Johnny Utah:

Welcome Back! More Blogging Coming Soon!

Faithful readers, please accept my apologies for the lack of updates. Know that I am alive and well and that my adventures have continued over these past few months.

Regular Blogging will resume in the near future, hopefully. Stay tuned for the true stories of: My Trip to Australia, My New (albeit 18-year-old) Car, My New Flat, Big News about My Documentary, and of course: General Disregard for the Proper Use of Capitalized Letters!