Here's a little exercise for you - try to say this word: Maori. I bet you wont get it right by the time you finish this.

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One of the most important things in life we can do, that everyone has done already and will continue to do, hopefully, until their day of departure, is almost never thought about.
Besides that dashed handy little breathing reflex we've got, it is probably the biggest thing anyone ever does and we do it without any decisions or contemplation or conscious choice - and anyway we bypass that automatic respiration doohickey all the time, like you have done just now after I made you stop and think of it. Sorry. Do remember to breath in again, wont you.

It happens automatically yet it is the one crucial thing that keeps about 95% of us stable, happy and secure about 95% of the time. It can cause us to agonise pretty much indefinitely afterward, true enough, but this isn't something we think about, just something we do.
We all make friends; and they in turn make our lives, in a very real way.

But we never really choose to - have you purposefully decided on meeting someone you have no objection to but don't especially like either, that you will intentionally make them into a friend? Do you approach different people in a group you come into and make yourself exceptionally friendly and useful to the person of highest social status? Unlikely. It just happens that you get on well with certain people and it either lasts or it is allowed to drift into acquaintanceship.

Unless you are me, of course. Being the mechanical, emotionally-stunted fellow I am I devise cold and vaguely cunning plans to ingratiate myself into places I like the look of, circles of people that offer me a value-based benefit, a quantifiable asset to my portfolio of social options. Of course a lot of other people do this as well; they are called `women`, apparently :P More specifically feminus nuptialii manipulatus.

Now don't go screaming your heads off because I can personally recall half a dozen times one of this breed joined a circle of friends and dated them in series, starting off somewhere around the middle of the pecking order and finishing off at the top of the food chain with the loudest, richest, biggest or smartest bloke, depending on what kind of group it was. And if I've known it you've all known it too; in any case it's a stereotype of a certain kind of woman and those things do come from somewhere, you know. Stop booing. I don't care how un-PC it is or how often it doesn't happen, it's true.

Incidentally I would like to add for the record, as I think one or two friends of mine might eventually read this, that I almost alway go about things in the prescribed manner and would not know any of the superb people for any other reason than that they are all rather brilliant. If, however, I have borrowed your lawnmower, your vacuum cleaner and your wife, yet have still never managed to invite you round for cocktails, the chances are in your case I have been a manipulative bastard :D

So it was this weekend after I finally got off my highly polished posterior and went into the woods to play paintball again (we'll call it paintball even though it's not. Long story, can't be bothered to explain yet again) and generally busied myself with the business of acquiring acquaintances that I discovered I can relate to real people again. You might not follow, or be able to imagine it, but I was up until recently going slowly insane through not having any real human contact. The tens of thousands of people who've been near me this past 11 months notwithstanding, I have felt increasingly alone in the world this year, mostly because everyone I have met has been a `single-serving friend` (watch Fight Club again if you have no idea what that means).

It being me doing the doing, as it were, I was shit at paintball but met a good bunch of guys and managed to find at least two of them who can potentially help me out in different ways, and of course I will help them in turn if I can. Just because one recognises the usefulness of somebody doesn't mean that is all there is to it; if my friend is a lawyer and I am a carpenter I expect a little free legal advice and am delighted to help fit his new kitchen. If I am a writer - and let's pretend for a minute that I actually am, it's my favourite game - and my buddy runs a restaurant then I would think it only proper to write her advertising copy for her and occasionally pop in for a free feed.

So with a bit of luck I've found some good chaps there. In any case, I've got a regular Saturday game with them if I want it, and going to the woods to run about like a smarties-crazed toddler for 6 hours every week can only be good news for my already impressive waistline (I stopped counting at 38", the numbers just became too big and too scary). Also it means I can justify buying another gun, which is going to be good for a laugh, although of course I will have to find full-time employment first, which is proving to have distinctly less comedy value. I was really hoping for more temping assignments than the, let me see let's count them...; than the entire one I have been given so far.

I have to say, actually, that what work I have done and the meagre but regular shifts at Shooters (that's `my` bar/club, Friday and Saturday nights at least) have been pretty damned pleasing, despite even the tedium of data entry and the jealous fury nurtured from watching hundreds of other people getting drunk and dancing like partially-tranquilised chimps.
The staff at Shooters are an exceptionally decent lot and they rather like a drink themselves, bless them, and I guess doing the last of the tidying up about 3:15am yet not managing to leave the place until 5:30 on Sunday morning, quite a bit the worse for wear thanks to Jack (Daniels) and Jim (Beam) just about says it all.

There is a distinct cultural flavour to `my` bar at `my bar` too; I have the front bar and am sort of in charge in a strange and pretty unjustifiable way, so thanks to my seniority of a whole two weeks I have been training a new girl; and it seems there aren't any Kiwis with us on that frontline but a damn Brit ("Hello!" *waves*) and an Argentinian, namely that new girl, one Mariel. To help this theme along there is another Brit on the back bar in the clubby part of the place and one more Argentinian girl there as well: bizarrely the two girls used to work together back home (and no, they did not travel together) and it's only a mercy that neither of them is really old enough to remember The War, although I am saving my emergency mocking material all about the Falklands and Diego Maradonna's cocaine habit for just the right moment. I do hope they take it well.
I'm also desperately trying to think of a gag or something mockworthy to do with Evita, but seeing as I can't actually bring myself to watch a musical with Antonio Banderas in it I will probably have to to leave it out.

When Sunday came it was late in the day, and as I seem to be switching to a vaguely nocturnal sleep pattern it's probably a perfectly good thing that I'm looking at the hostel I now stay in for a night watchman job, or rather a night porter, or something. I have yet to sit down and talk to the owners as they have been ludicrously busy this weekend, but am scheduled to do so tomorrow. That I have finally a good idea and now the full plot sketched out for a book - and a pretty darned good book, too, if I can write the thing as I have it conceived so far - could only really be called serendipitous. Mind you that's a dangerous word to spell, so I'll be careful not to overuse it.

If I was a no-good stinking hippy (which I sort of am, in a way, ish) I might think something into the fact that those Argentinian girls in the bar can of course help me in my quest to learn Spanish, and my quest has actually begun now after talking with Mariel and it turns out I do remember more than just the word for window (it's ventana, in case you were wondering), previously thought to be the very limits of my Hispanic lexicographical retention. Actually I did know what a zapataria was as well (though the spelling I'm not sure of..) and I need to spend time and money in a good one as soon as I can afford to.

I had many weeks previously noted a gig set for Sunday, a heavy metal group that sounded really rather good, a lot like early Pantera who I still rate as the best metal band ever, even if they are all rednecks, the lead singer is a total dickhole, and the guitarist is now dead after being - get this, I am not joking - after being shot in the back of the head on-stage in the middle of a concert. Yes, I was likewise upset, for different reasons. Only in America, as they say.

Being a bit of a metal fan I was excited as hell and of course started my evening early after a hearty meal - I have now added beef stroganoff to my repertoire; the secret to this one is a good beef steak like sirloin or fillet, shallots rather than onions, and not too much of the sour cream - and proceeded to drink a frankly disgusting amount of booze throughout the day.

Now, we all know my liver works about as well or worse than my brain, which is a sad statement in and of itself, and I would never use this space to brag about my prowess at what is basically a very dumb display of self-anaesthetising. But on Sunday I downed a truly heroic quantity of the sauce, I mean really it was impressive. Stupid, but quite impressively so, at least.
After having a whole bottle of red (a cheap but pretty charming straight Merlot, from New Zealand, natch) I went downstairs in the hostel to where there is a bar - and no, this is not the reason I am now staying here, I was unaware at the time of booking so shut up O voices of dissent :P - and consumed three pints of local poison while watching the first episode of the excellent new Attenborough/BBC `Life` series, Life In Cold Blood which is superb, as always from Sir David.

He has injected a little more humour than usual into this one, and it worked extremely well alongside yet more magnificent photography from all corners of the planet. Every time I watch a new `Life` series - and if you go back to the original `Life on Earth` from 1976 you will also be amazed, I am sure of it - I am deeply, deeply impressed and grateful to Attenborough and the BBC for delivering simply the finest documentaries ever made. In fact I feel increasingly saddened that the man is so much older than I am and can only do so much now after such an exceptional life. But I digress, as usual.

After working my way through the dregs of the last beer I plodded through Nelson to the Royal Hotel and found myself in old and comfortably familiar territory: a dark and sleazy heavy metal bar with inch-thick grease on the walls where everyone dresses in black and drinks like tomorrow isn't going to happen. Nice. I know so many places like it - leading me to the intriguing possibility that, like L-space in Terry Pratchett's Discworld (where all libraries are interconnected throughout every known universe, essentially all being parts of the same library) perhaps there could be something like Dinge-space, where all rock and metal bars are connected, perhaps by means of a portal in the mens toilets. It seems somehow strangely appropriate.

While at the Royal I consumed a truly ungodly number of drinks, I remember at least four pints but where I really showed my colours was the shooters, which are double shots of various sticky and colourful liqueurs with blatantly sexual names. The Quick Fuck was my favourite although it was closely followed in the towering-mindfuck-steeplechase, if not the appealing-nickname-hurdles, by the Cocksucking Cowboy. Brokeback Mountain has got a lot to answer for in my opinion.

I do remember having four at a time. I don't remember how many times I repeated the exercise, although I do know I punctuated this routine with double Jagermeisters and redbull, which is probably how I mainatined my verttical stature. Needless to say, I drank it all up and got wasted and, inevitably, got booted out of the place for being considerably drunker than is properly legal, as is my wont.

I dealt with my randomised hangover guilt today by a) ignoring it because I was still smashed when I woke at midday, b) denying it around 2pm as the pain started to set in, c) accepting it guiltily and realising I may have caused a little trouble when being asked to leave, I will go back in a few days and apologise if it's necessary, and d) ignoring it again because what's done is done and hell, just because I know some of them from Shooters and will have to deal with whatever I did this weekend doesn't mean I don;t have the perfect excuse: I was mindlessly drunk. The answer to everything.

On a very much less fluffy note I do know I drank to such legendary extremes because I know how much I spent. Bearing in mind that a pint is $6, a double-shot shooter is $7.50, and a jagermeister-redbull is $12, I must have dealt my liver a proper good thrashing because thanks to Sunday night, and after a bottle of red wine and a couple of pints, the Royal Hotel now has almost $200 of my money. And I certainly can't have got a taxi home because I'm only 5 minutes walk away and bizarrely I do remember coming up the stairs. Eeek.

Some time earlier in the evening I went for one of my very frequent unloadings of superfluous fluid (possibly also having an inkling about Dinge-space and hoping to emerge in one of the really cool rock bars in L.A.) to find a group of people, including one girl, doing some cocaine of their very own in the Gents. That there was a woman there is hardly worth mentioning as this is a highly frequent occurence in rock club toilets, although very rarely do I, for example, get to see the inside of the Ladies', more's the pity.
What actually startled me was that they were doing it at all - have you any idea of the price of coke in New Zealand?

Let me put it into perspective. In the UK a gram of cocaine is (so my sources tell me) about £30 - £50 depending on how nice your dealer is and how well you know him or her. If you only just met and he's a shifty bastard you'll be paying the top price.
In New Zealand dollars that puts 1 gram at $125, and given that most of everything is a little cheaper than the UK pro rata, I would conservatively adjust that figure to $110 to allow for economic disparity.
Unfortunately for the youth of New Zealand, and Diego Maradonna if he happens to be visiting, the price for a gram of Columbian marching powder is a wallet-numbing $450 - $550, around three to four times as much as it is in Britain, which is itself paying a hugely inflated figure because of the key middlemen who transport the stuff from the villages where it is manufactured to the coastal crews who get it over the seas and into the noses of metalheads, pop stars and investment bankers the world over.

Getting it over the seas to New Zealand is, of course, one of life's big buggers, at least for those who would like to sell more of it Down Under and of course the hot young things of today in Kiwiland as well. I mean, Australia is a bit of a bastard to get to, but New Zealand has only 4 million people and is another 2,000 kilometres out across the sea from even there. Pretty little market for a pretty big boatride, so I suppose it's no wonder the stuff costs so much.
Anyway I was astounded, not least by the fact they had it but also because a) they were making some seriously hefty lines of the stuff, inexpertly if I may say so, and b) the poor sad fools were knocking it up right next to the sink, and one drop of water would have really rather ruined things for them.

I say this as a lifelong observer of the life habits of others, naturally, and of course could never claim to be knowledgeable of these things firsthand. That would just be wrong.

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Oh and the way to say Maori is this `Moe-(d)Ree` (almost rhymed with `mouldy`) or that's as best as I can reproduce the subtle `d`-sound click in the middle of the word. Australians and pretty much everyone else pronounce it `maowree` and if that doesn't irritate on its own then try saying it with a strong nasal Australian accent. Maori get kind of pissed off about that. Just thought I would share :)