First Stop: Auckland

It seems I’m having a difficult time finding the motivation to sit down in front of a computer and type in these entries. Such online exploits never seemed to be an issue when I spent the better half of my day connected to the internet in one way or another. Who knew blogging was so difficult? Never fear, my loyal fan base (I thought pretending that I have an audience might help motivate me to actually do this), I’ll persevere and bring you the entertaining anecdotes of my life that you yearn for. All Ryan, all the time; that’s how I roll.


Anyway, I touched down in Auckland early Saturday morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after a refreshing flight out of LAX on Thursday night [editor’s note: I’ve been known to use sarcasm on rare occasion, and as I have no idea how to convey such comments in writing I will have to leave it up to the reader to decide when such undertones may be present]. Turns out my 6am arrival time was a blessing in disguise, as I was able to get dropped off at my hostel before the roads were closed in preparation for a festival they threw in honor of my visit to their fine country. Those considerate Kiwis.

Unquestionably, the highlight was a performance from a tribal music group called Sing Sing. I guess I would best describe the performance as tribal beat and dance. The group consists of well over a dozen members from all over Oceania, with strong lyrical influence of the Papuan and Maori (New Zealand’s equivalent of our Native Americans) struggle. They even had a token white guy, as if to say ‘hey man, you took our land and reneged on your promises, but hey, you play that flute pretty well. You’re in!’.


They absolutely rocked the place non-stop for three hours, took a two-minute break to go chew some betel nut or something, and came back for a half-hour encore. They kept the crowd dancing the whole time, even the white folk. It’s ok they weren’t in rhythm, it’s the thought that counts.

I got a bunch of photos of the performance, I’ll post up more after I get through them all.