Happy New Year

I am still on my travels with my BF but we have come into the southern city of Dunedin to welcome in The new Year 2007. I am in an internet cafe in McDonalds and thought i would take the opportunity to update.

The tent is still holding up on our travels even though it is very cold and very wet for the time of year. It is supposed to be the middle of summer but it feels like the middle of winter. We are on couirse for one of the coldest summers. Brrrr.

Today it is cold but sunny and no rain.

Ok, i am off to celebrate new year at the firework display. Tomorrow we are back off to the mountains to carry on the brokeback experience. (All going good so far ;)

Happy New Year to all.
xx
kev.in.real.time

Merry Christmas

Today folks, Im leaving to go to the mountains and to the Sounds down south. Im going there for 2 weeks and to play in our great outdoors which is New Zealand. The malls closed tonight at 9pm and they are open until 6pm tomorrow. The weather is finally improving and im looking forward to getting christmas lunch by the open camp fire. It should be a true brokeback mountain experience!

Im not sure that i can post again until after the new year but may i take this chance to wish everyone a very merry christmas and a happy and successful new year 2007. 2006 has offered me many things including the chance to get to know you all via your blogs and i look forward to continuing blogging in 2007.

Hugs to all.
kev.in.real.time

Worst Present?

Today all the malls in the city were open until midnight again. I sat down at my Starbucks in the mall tonight with my hot gingerbread latte which is pricey at NZ$4.80 (approx US$2.40, GBP1.70) and my eyes were drawn the christmas wrappers who were in the mall wrapping up peoples presents for free. The queues were long but i was astounded to see what people were having wrapped up. I saw:

1. A t-shirt.
2. A teddy bear.
3. A nice rugby jersey (NZ All Blacks)
4. A magazine.
5. A toy car that was about 1.5 metres in length and almost the same in diametre!
6. A bottle of vitamins!
7. A babys dummy!
8. A small bottle of supermarket brand mustard!
9. A packet of toothpicks! Yes toothpicks!

I am thinking 2 things to myself, first who would wait in a queue for 20 minutes to get gifts wrapped when you could pay a dollar for wrapping paper and do it yourself and second who is the lucky bugger who is going to receive the mustard or worse, the toothpicks!?

My worst ever present is Gift vouchers. It suggests people dont put any thought into a gift and you have to wait until after christmas until you can spend them. To me i'd prefer the toothpicks as it would be the thought that would count (although i would ask as to why they chose them for me!)

Any one else had bad presents in the past?
kev.in.real.time

Jim McGreevey

Now, im not a 'book' person. In fact, going out cycling or brisk walking or any kind of exercise gets me very excited. But when i was in New York, i picked up a book in Barnes and Noble from the Ex-Governor of New Jersey titled 'The Confession'. Strangely i have been unable to put the book down. To sum up, the book is about the ex-governor who led a 'straight life' getting married twice to a woman, having two kids and then he decided to 'come out'. Im not at the end of the book yet so i cannot comment on how it finishes but im finding it so damn interesting.

Now, for many reasons, there are men out there who do lead straight lives with women but they are gay. For many reasons they do not want to come out or cannot find the courage or for whatever reason. My respect goes to these guys in many ways because I cannot imagine the heartache they feel and how limited their sense of freedom they must feel. Hence, they deal with things in their own way. Also my respect goes to those guys who decide at age 15 that they want to come out and live totally OUT lives. They may get abused, respected or shunned for their right to live as they want.
The essence of what im trying to get at i suppose is that whatever lifestyle someone leads, it is their choice and who has the right to decide whether something is right or wrong for someone else? I guess that my philosophy is that i dont judge ANYONE. Believe me i have met what other people would say are pretty fucked up people for whatever reason but i have TRYED not to judge. It aint easy. All that i would like to say to politicians and religious people who think that it is their perogative to judge is that to look at themselves first and then once everyother person in the world finds you perfect, THEN YOU CAN JUDGE.

Phew thats a philosophical Post today.
Have a hot sexy wild christmas....Woof!
kev.in.real.time

Midnight Shopping

The two biggest malls in my city have been opened to midnight all this week so i took the opportunity to catch up with a bit of late night shopping. The mall stayed pretty busy last night up until about 11pm. It was great doing my little tiny bit of shopping at 11.15pm. I got tto look at what i wanted and even done some food shopping. It was great!

This morning i am off to pay a few bills (Yes, we even have bills in New Zealand!). The weather has been awful for the past few days ending with heavy rain starting at 2pm yesterday continuing all afternoon and night and it was COLD. About 10c. It isn't very warm so it feels like July instead of December.

Ok im off to town.
kev.in.real.time

Political Correctness

Yesterday i read on the front of the newspaper that Santa's at our malls and in our department stores are advised to no longer sit children on their knees as has been traditional but to have them sit next to you! In malls up and down New Zealand santa chairs have been made bigger to accomodate the extra room needed on Santas chair.

Now call me crazy if you wish but doesnt this seem to be going just a little bit to far. The child obviously sits on santas knee for 2 minutes maximum. The child has its photo taken with the photographer present and probably the childs mother and father there too. Now the santa is probably in his sixties or seventies. With all these scenarios what the hell do we think is going to happen. Just suppose that the mother and father and the photographer happen to go off shopping for two minutes leaving the child and santa together in full view of the rest of the busy mall. Also consider that the santa is NOT a young man. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN in that time that is inappropriate!?!

I sometimes think that in 10 years time we will not even be able to have santa talk to children!

kev.in.real.time

8 more days!

Not much longer now until Christmas folks! I am somewhat surprised at how quiet the shops are currently. Now i know the economy is supposed to be slowing down after its 4 year exceleration but i have noticed that the christmas shoppers are just not in the shops yet.

Today i have been to the local mall and sat and had some sushi before going to Mcdonalds for a coffee in one of their McCafe's. Now from my reckoning, the shoppers are going to be so very last minute or are just not getting into the festive mood. Oh shoppers are so crazy.

I have been having a few problems posting comments over the past few days due to blogger problems but now i think its been fixed.
kev.in.real.time

Giftcards!

One thing that i noticed when i was in America was the popularity of GIFTCARDS. Every store i went in seemed to have them lurking on their counters. Everywhere from Macy's, Eckerds, Duane Reades, Mcdonalds, Saks 5th Avenue, Abercrombie, American Eagle and even Starbucks!! The designs on some of then were a masterpiece on their own.

Now these must be a American phenomenon. Today i trolled through our shops in NZ and i found only 2 shops out of many that sold Giftcards. One was The Warehouse (www.thewarehouse.co.nz) and New World supermarket (www.newworld.co.nz) . There were plenty of places that sold gift vouchers but no cards!

You know, i even bought a giftcard in Saks 5th Avenue for i think $5 and they giftwrapped the card in a stylish box with a lid and greeting card and then put the whole box in a fancy bag with rope handles....i love it!
kev.in.real.time

Report on NY

Im still thinking about my great time in New York. I took in a Broadway show. I went to the TKTS office as advised by some of my blogger friends and got some tickets to hairspray. It was my first time ever to a musical and i was soon in the swing of almost singing along! If i didnt know that i was gay before hand then i do now!

Central Park

Anyways, i definitely recommend any one sees it. The tickets were 50% off which cost me $50 which i thought was really expensive before i went and afterwards i thought it was a total bargain!

We went passed the studios were David Letterman airs. Also saw Hello Deli. Times Square was great but so busy. We went into the Hersheys Store which was packed and got some chocolate. In fact im eating one now.

Im still trying to get some pics loaded on here so please hang on in there.

I flew with United Airlines from Sydney. The airline is pretty basic i thought but the ticket was cheap so i aint complaining! The fights were long.

Ok, let me try and post some photos again.

kev.in.real.time

Jetlag!

Im not suffering from too much jetlag. In fact i feel pretty good. Im in bed at 10pm and up at about 7am which is pretty good. However i have a cold at the moment. Some lady on the New York/LA stretch of the flight home who was sitting next to me had a bad cold so i just knew i would get it.....and voila, i have it.

I met so many nice New Yorkers. In fact there are so many stories to tell that i could be typing all night.

I dont think i have ever walked around a city so much. I think i saw virtually everything. The city is just so big and noisy and exciting. The yellow taxi's are very interesting not to mention their driving! We got from the airport to the city on Supershuttle. The drive was entertaining to say the least. In the airport we were met by Indian and Middle Eastern men touting for business to drive us to the city. We did think for a few minutes that we had arrived in the Middle East but then we found out quickly how diverse the city was. We stayed in Chelsea. Took breakfast every morning which were truely American size portions...Extra large.

I done lots of shopping. In fact i havent looked at my credit card balance yet because i think i will need a stiff drink first! I loved the discount stores of Loehmanns and Century21. Macy's was also cool. I loved the christmas decorations and street lights which were just so beautiful. I enjoyed my visit to Trump Tower where i had coffee and the Staaten Island Ferry was so good. We had lunch on Staaten Island before travelling back to Manhatten.

The one thing that really impressed me was the friendliness of the people of NY. People seemed genuinely interested in you and were not too stuck up to talk. I think that if anyone has problems with Americans then it would be only their politicians as the people seem nice enough to me.

Oh and i just fell in love with the squirrels in Central Park. I just wanted to bring one home with me. We dont have squirrels here. So cute.

Im going to try and put some pictures on here now if i can figure out how to do it so here it goes....
kev.in.real.time

Home

I arrived home this evening.

Trip went very well.

I am sooooooo tired that i cant write. I will update tomorrow. Zzzzzz.
kev.in.real.time