I Feel Like I'm On Reality TV...

...only there is no chance to win a million dollars.

The place Stacy took me to is awesome. It's a really nice resort on one of the beaches here. It turns out that the resort is willing to hire transient young adults like myself in exchange for food and shelter. That, coupled with the fact that the shelter is in the resort, and the food is food from the resort, means that I've stumbled across a pretty sweet deal.

I get up fairly early every morning and work till the early afternoon. The rest of my day is dedicated to surfing. There are some other guys who work at the resort that surf as well. After going with them once, I've been wracking my brain for excuses to never go with them again. It's not that they are bad surfers, it's just that they don't really care about surfing. My love for the sport is the sport itself. Theirs is to be surfers, not to surf. And I'm not saying they don't love surfing. But their love for it isn't as pure as I think it is in me.

That's why I try to go off on my own as much as I can. For me, surfing is about more than a thrill or a cool thing to do. It's about the solitude I find amongst the chaos of the waves. That's the real reason I came to New Zealand (which is different than Australia). Surfing is just a medium for that.

Unfortunately, I do have to spend some time with people. And to make things even more "Reality TV", they have all of us transient young adults living in a common building. There's about twenty of us, which is nineteen too many. Last night, I tried to go out onto the beach and sit around the nightly bonfire us staff have. There was only one other person around it, and I hoped that if I sat down, he wouldn't start talking to me.

He did. It wasn't just small talk, either. His name was Pat, and he was your stereotypical bonfire philosopher. He has straggly long hair, an ugly beanie and a gross beard. Oh, and he plays the acoustic guitar incessantly - that should have been a tip-off. He started saying something about corruption within the institution we work at. That always puts me in an awkward situation, because I know if I disagree, he'll just carry it into a useless argument. Conversely, if I agree, he'll think I actually like his moronic musings and keep going.

Luckily, Stacy came out and sat with us. I figured this would happen, since she has been following me since I got here. I believe our relationship has developed into the same one I have with so many girls. I always delude myself into thinking that it's as platonic for them as it is for me, but, as always, I'm wrong. Maybe I should try to set her up with one of the surfer jocks. Naw, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Speaking of the jocks, they came out next following the two hot girls. It's actually only one hot girl and a significant less good-looking friend who nevertheless tries harder to beautiful than her prettier counterpart. I don't know the girls' names, and experience has taught me I'm better off not knowing them. The presence of all these "gorgeous" people and their trivial discussions drove me to head back inside. Stacy wanted to come with me, but I told her I was going to sleep.

All this is to say that I'm planning my getaway already. It may be more than a month before I get out of here. I'm going to try and spend as much of that time as I can in the ocean.

Sometimes I still yell curses at the night sky in the direction of the ValuSave.