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!