A little less accent

It’s an odd thing, but I’m somewhat aware of my losing the power of accent. Not my own accent, which has always been a bit of a mish mash anyway, but my ability to distinguish accents. Between staff and customers, I’m being exposed to so many Kiwis, Ozzie, Brits, Kiwi Brits, British Kiwis, Ozzie Kiwis, Kiwi Ozzies, Ozzie Brits, British Ozzies, and goodness knows what other combinations, I’m no longer immediately able to tell them all apart. It’s just become the clearly foreigners, the people I understand, and those whose accents are so thick I’ve no idea what they’re saying (always those damn vowel sounds).

Welcome to another level of globalisation!

Refreshing

In this job with these managers there’s a certain amount of flexibility and discretion in how you deal with customers. For example, it was far from a sackable offence when I responded to a guy’s “what should I do if I’ve dropped my only car keys in the snow” with “put your head in your hands and cry?!”. Our supervisor Mairi specialises in wit and sarcasm. Confronted by bolshy punters demanding a refund on their lesson package (an already heavily discounted combination of lift pass, rentals and lesson), she offered to put them down for the bits they had used (lift pass and rentals) and refund the difference. She happily told them they now owed us $15 each.

Don’t get me wrong, we don’t take the piss out of customers (too much) and we’re actually a damn good Customer Services department. But it is just so refreshing to be allowed and even expected to be ourselves when dealing with members of the public, and to treat them like human beings as opposed to statistics and walking wallets.

Photos: Fox Glacier - Papatowai

Some more South Island photos:

Fox Glacier Heli-hike:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157600316324694/




Lake Matheson:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157600315874947/




Wanaka and Queenstown:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157600317024670/






Milford Sound:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157600316675505/

The normal life (group email)

Well, here I am, settling in. It sneaks up on you and before you know it, you’re in a comfortable wee routine, making new friends and once again worrying about things like insurance, rent and doing the dishes. Oh, and what’s going to happy next in Shortland Street and Grey’s Anatomy. The excitement of today was getting Sky TV installed – no more trying to distinguish between Joey and Chandler through a haze of static.

I lie, there WAS more excitement to today – I went and had an afternoon skiing on the ‘dark side’. Mount Ruapehu runs two skifields (same company): Whakapapa (my side, pronounced ‘fukapapa’) and Turoa (the ‘dark side’). They’re about an hour’s drive from each other and very different. They have different weather, different atmospheres, different styles of runs etc. So it was definitely interesting to take my season rental skis round their to suss it out on a day off.

The job’s going well. It’s still just about varied enough to keep me interested. Yes, there’re the usual politics that come with any company, but the Customer Services team is brilliant. My manager, Jane, ranks in my top 3 All Time Best Bosses (alongside Christie Assembly and Dave SAC) and my supervisor, Mairi, is an inspiration too. As anyone in a job will know, good management makes a world of difference. As a team we’re also settling in around each other and functioning pretty well.

I’ll be here until the end of October when I head up to Auckland to see Crowded House (woohoo!). After that, who knows?! In the meantime, I plan to save money, ski and enjoy a bit of the normal life. I’m also still taking the opportunity to catch up with people when possible. Roz and Frank came down for a visit a few weeks ago and last week I met up with Lincoln, one of the kiwi boys we hooked up with in Laos for a while. He trounced me at mini golf, we walked, we talked. It’s just so nice to see people again and some different faces.

I’ve been thinking of home a lot too. I missed my sister’s graduation, and thoughtful friends (thank you Sean and Linds) have sent me postcards of home. I miss you all and love hearing your news – even wee messages on facebook or bebo or snippets of emails are so important to me. Thank you everyone! I’m not homesick, just thinking of home and smiling.

Uptown Girl?

I think I'm coming to yet another realisation about myself. Much as I love the countryside, open spaces, peace and quiet, hills and rivers and lakes and views, fresh air etc, there's actually more of a (small) city girl in me than I ever realised. I miss so many things that come hand in hand with a 'proper' city: art, culture, history, variety of shops, bustle, vibrancy and a whole glut of other things that I just can't quite put my finger on. Wellington's pretty good, but it still doesn't quite hack it by my standards for some reason. There's still a small town, small world feel to it for me that I'm not sure I could ever fully express in words.

There's certainly not a city or anything that fully satisfies me within relatively easy reach of my current location. I'm guess I'm not cut out to be a fullblown country bumpkin just yet.

High wind carnage

We'd closed all the lifts, sent all the customers hom and put out a 'strong wind' warning, but it wasn't until we saw part of the chipboard cladding from the outside of our building fly past, swiftly followed by the insulation and (involuntarily) by one of our lift operators, that we knew it was getting serious yesterday. The five metre walk from building to bus was hairy to say the least.

It was even worse this morning when only the few necessary staff, including me, edged our way up the mountain this morning past many a partially torn apart ski club house. Our sister ski field on the other side of Mt Ruapehu had had their phone lines destroyed and the mid-morning reading showed wind speeds in excess of 160km/hour at our top café (2020m, 400m above us). It wasn't until we started to head gingerly back to lower ground this afternoon that we saw the wind had not only wrecked buildings, but also thrown rocks across the skifield car parks, leaving only a very few vehicles with windows intact.

And it's still going strong. Our litle farmhouse is shaking and we're just hoping we don't wake up to a starlit sky above our beds or to find the cars in the next field over. Or maybe we'll wake up in Oz.

Ruapehu

There are so many things I hadn't realised went in to running a ski resort. The sheer numbers of staff involved for a start. The fact that they top up natural snow with manmade stuff is another surprise. Yet another the vast number of people who will come up to slide down slopes even in the most disgusting weather.

It's a pretty amazing thing to be in the thick of. And in my job, we get to deal with a bit of it all - ticket sales, lost property and lost people, enquiries, information, complaints and compliments, cake recipients, switchboard, weather and avalanche reporting, PA announcements, group hosting, errand running, message taking and relaying, mail opening, queue control, ticket checking..... It's pretty varied and we meet an unbelievable range of people, from the lovely to the unpleasant to the plain odd. A lot of my blog is now likely to be spent telling you some of my favourite Mt Ruapehu stories.

One of my favourite jobs is looking after kids who've lost their parents (or usually parents who've left their young'ns alone while they go off skiing/snowboarding). We've had a fair number already and they never cease to amaze me. 8-year-olds with the family's entire phone book in their heads. And the one lad who was able to tell us the make, colour and registration plate of his dad's car and the carpark number it was parked in. They really pull themselves together to help us find their parents. And then they dissolve into blubbering messes when mum or dad finally turns up.

That Small World

Mt Ruapehu has almost 800 employees during the winter season. Eight of them work in Customer Services. Three of us lived within a 5 minute walk of each other in Edinburgh before coming here, although this is the first time we've met.

Claire had a flat behind Dalry Somerfield, my local supermarket, 5 minutes walk from the Gibson Street flat. Although Mairi now owns a flat by Gorgie Co-op (ooh, all of 10-15 minutes walk away), she used to live opposite the St Bride's Centre. Halfway between Claire and me.

Small small world.

Crowded House

I may have missed the Take That reunion tour but there was NO WAY I was missing this one. Crowded House in Auckland at the end of October. Just bought tickets and I am so excited! Can't wait.

Technology drowning

A fair few of you will remember my spate about 5 years ago of dropping mobile phones down the toilet. My beloved family, particularly my long-suffering parents, will have fond memories of my old habit of rolling cameras along the beach, dropping Mini-disc players from a great height, and, at my youngest, taking car keys to the grand piano.

Now, apart from the last misdemeanor (which was simply my early attempts at artistic expression), I have never abused technology on purpose. And I have become so so so much better with it. In fact, it's become almost worrying how little damage I've caused to electronic items in the past few years.

But it seems I've not lost the knack after all. This morning, I managed to drop my mobile phone in a glass of water. And yes, it was by accident. All is well in the universe.