South Island Adventures

This last weekend Amanda, Kendall, Camille, Sarah, Wes, and I went to the South Island. We took the ferry to Picton spent the night there, then the next day we took the bus to Nelson. Then we were supposed to be able to spend Saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon in Nelson, but because our ferry on Sunday was cancelled we had to catch the first bus out of Nelson on Sunday to get back to Picton so we could catch the earlier ferry back to Wellington.


So with that in mind, we tried to do as much as we could while we were in these two towns. Trouble is, there isnt that much to do in these two towns. When we got to Picton we walked around for awhile then Kendall, Camille, and Amanda went on a wine tour. Meanwhile, Wes, Sarah, and I decided to go to the aquarium. The aquarium is the smallest thing I've ever seen, its just this one room with some moderately large fish tanks. The guy who worked there feed the fish in front of us and explained a few things about them so that was kinda cool. Really the whole reason we went there was to see the blue penguin, who only comes out in the afternoon after the fish have been fed. When the guy walked out of the back room with the penguin, we got really excited cause we thought we were going to be able to pet him or get close to him, but then he put the penguin in a tank to swim around in.

Other than that, we really did nothing else in Picton. We walked around the shops a little bit, explored the beach, and then waited for the girls to get back from there wine tasting.

The next day after we woke up we went to this bakery across the street from out hostel and got some really good sandwiches and doughnuts. Then we walked around aimlessly waiting for out bus, we finally got on the bus at 12:00 and left at 12:15. Then we all got excited again because we were on our way to Nelson, a town that everyone described as "so much fun, and just a really cool place." Well, since we got there after 1PM all the half day tours and adventure stuff had already left and we werent going to be able to do the morning tours because we had to leave really early.

So now we found ourselves again needing something to do. So we walked around town, and followed a map a women at the hotel gave us. We decided to go check out this thing on the map called the Center of New Zealand. It sounded pretty cool, and we all figured it could kill some time. So we get there, and its a football (soccer) field. Now we're all like "wtf" then we wander over to a sign that says Center of New Zealand and its pointing up a hill. Then it translated, Center of New Zealand literally is the center of New Zealand. After we cleared that up we walked up the hill and got some awesome views of the valley and of Nelson.

After we got down we walked around again, found some diner then headed back to the hostel. We attempted to go out to the bars, but none of them were that much fun. It could of been because we got to the first bar around 9:30 and left our last one around 10:45. So maybe were trying to go out a little early, but I think other bars in other cities would have been fun at that time too.

All in all, it was a good trip. At the very least we got out of Wellington and explored a little, and that alone made the trip worth it.

They spent how much at Wal-Mart?

Yesterday I was at work and I had a free second so I checked my email. My dad sent me a note saying that my bank had been calling the house and that I needed to call them. So I woke up early this morning and I called them before I went to work. I found out that my identity was stolen. Yep, someone has been trying to use my debit card while I’ve been in New Zealand.

Thankfully, my bank did not authorize any transactions, but now my debit card and internet banking is shut off. So I have no way to access my money. The bank is mailing a new debit card to my house in Michigan, and hopefully it will be there by this weekend for my sister to pick up.

As for money, my other sister is going to try taking some money out of my checking account then sending it to me via Western Union. Lucky for me I have some good friends with me here. One of them bought me a bus ticket so I can go away with them this weekend and the other said she could give me back the money I gave her yesterday for a plane ticket. I’ll pay her back later when I have my new debit card.

On the brighter side 4 of the girls, my roommate and I are going to the south island this weekend. We’re taking a ferry from Wellington to Picton and spending the night in then going to Nelson. I don’t know how much stuff there is to do in Picton but there is a ton to do in Nelson. You can go hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, and horseback riding. Even in winter! It should be a fun weekend, and I’m really excited to go explore somewhere that’s not Wellington. I really like Wellington, but I’m ready to go see what else is out there.

Well tonight I have to stay up until 2AM so I can call the bank and tell them to let my sister take out money. Don’t really know what I’m going to do…god willing I don’t fall asleep.

The Weekend Cont

Where did I leave off? Oh yea, after BK the night ended and we all crashed. On Saturday one of the girls got the bright idea to go to the zoo. When I think of the zoo, I think of the Brookfield Zoo outside of Chicago. Huge, expensive, stupid gift shops everywhere. The Wellington Zoo was not like that at all, it was really small, they had one café/gift shop and it was pretty cheap too. Since we road the bus there we got 1/2 off our admission. I'm loving public transit more every day. Because this zoo is so small, it really didn’t have much there. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty to see but there was a lot less than the Brookfield Zoo. It was fun to explore more of the town with the gang, and we learned a few things too.

While we were on the bus going back to town, we started brainstorming where we might want to go to get food. Then someone came up with the idea of fish ‘n chips, and we all remembered our coordinator pointing out a little store that has “the best” fist ‘n chips in Wellington. So we took a hike, got our food, and went back to our place to eat. The fries were really nothing special, I’ve had way better, but the fish…Oh…just thinking about it wants me to go get more. It was this HUGE fillet (which they pronounce FILL-ITS) and I know this might sound weird, but it actually had more fish than breading. If you’ve ever had fish ‘n chips in the States you’ve probably noticed how crunching the breading is, and sometimes its too salty, and the fish is just manza-manza. This was not like that at all! The breading to fish ratio was perfect, and the breading is the perfect combo of soft and crunchy with the right amount of salt. I didn’t care about how greasy it was, or the fact that my lips were chapping as I ate it. That was one of my best dinners yet. I only wish I had some malt vinegar to top it off, but I guess that’s not Kiwi enough for this meal.

As we were eating, one of the Amanda was telling us all about this party her co-worker was having that night. It was a mid-winter, summer party, but I couldn't dress for that theme since I didn’t bring any summer clothes. The party wasn’t in Wellington, we had to take a train out to this suburb like town called Lower Hutt. Since Amanda works in Upper Hutt, which I assume is the next town over, I figured Lower Hutt is probably a nice town. Well……its not that nice. Not to say it was the ghetto, but it sure was creepy. We got to the stop probably around 10:30 and we looked around…there’s practically nothing there. There was a platform, some stairs to get to the road and some trees on both sides of the tracks. At this point we’re all looking at Amanda thinking, "really?" So we walk up the stairs to the road and there seems to be some houses and a few streets, but no people or cars. We eventually found the house where the party was and life became a little normal again. Everyone there was pretty cool, but they were probably being like that because we were all Americans. I think they were wondering what the hell we were doing on their side of the world. While at the party we all got the usual questions, where in the states are you from? Where’s that? Do you go to Uni? why did you came here during winter? All in all we ended up having a good time and met some Kiwi’s. A couple of Amanda’s work friends invited us to go to Lake Taupo with them, which would be AWESOME! Especially since they have cars and we wouldn’t need to rent one or take a bus.

Sunday has been pretty chill. A couple of us went to the farmers market this morning and bought some veggies and fruit……and that’s been about it. We still need to plan our trip to Rotoura next weekend, which I am going to make everyone due TONIGHT.

Pictures are up on my facebook, let me know what you think.

The Weekend

I was a little unsure about how this weekend was going to go since the group and I didn't have anything planned. Turns out we all ended up having a good time hanging out in Wellington. Since most of us don't work on Friday, we all got to sleep in. Friday afternoon we decided to treat ourselves to a Kiwi (thats what local NZer's refer to themselves) lunch. We found a meat pie shop and treated ourselves. Now I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. Pie here refers to a meat pie, which is basically a pot pie. Even though it was a $5 lunch, I was really impressed. The crust was warm and flaky, and inside is full of vegetables, cheese, and meat. It was the best breakfast/lunch I've had in a while.

After lunch our group split up into two. Some decided to go shopping while the rest of us took the trolley up the hill to Wellington's Botanical Gardens. We walked through the gardens back down into downtown Welly. The views were priceless, and we got to see all these different types of palm trees and plants that are only local to New Zealand. Some of which are endangered too. Again, the views from the gardens are really amazing and can't be described with words.

Afterwards we all met back up at home and we got ready for a night out. Bar hopping in Wellington turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The first bar we went to we couldn't stay at very long since a few of us pre-gamed a little too hard. Once we dropped off a few party animals, we met some Kiwi's at another bar, and hung out with them for another two bars. To my surprise we then met more Americans from Tennessee and South Carolina. We ended the night ended at Burger King, which is a freaking circus at 3AM. I almost have a hard time here getting past a buzz since hard liquor is so expensive. I just can't force myself to spend $30 on a fifth of booze. Which is good, I'd rather buy a bus ticket with that.

I"ll have to share the rest later, right now my roommate is waiting on me to leave. More stories coming soon.

MEC and Y&R

First week on the job went pretty well. So far I’ve learned a lot about media planning and working in an agency. Media buying definitely has a lot of perks to it. The guys invited me to this party that celebrated the 30th anniversary of this magazine Fashion Quarterly. It was pretty swanky, and it was at this AMAZING house out in the Wellington suburbs. To me this house looked like something out of Beverly Hills.
Apparently media planners get taken out and invited to parties like that pretty often, I guess its all about building those relationships. Steve was telling me today that relationships between media planers and media reps are really different in Wellington than most of the world. The way Steve was making it sound was if you go to Auckland, media planners put a lot of pressure on their media reps to get the deals they want. Where as in Wellington, Steve is actually friends with his media reps, and he hangs out with them all the time. He even plays football (American football) with his TV rep every Saturday. I guess people in Wellington are just more laid back, and they all follow that philosophy, "work to live, don’t live to work." Where as in Auckland, and maybe the U.S., life is a little more cut throat, especially in the ad business.

Right now at work, I’ve got two projects that I’m working on. The first seems pretty easy, all I have to do is research facebook and make a recommendation as to how a client should make their debut on the site. The second is a bit more difficult. I’m working on figuring out how many people in New Zealand watch sports. Specifically I have a huge list of sport teams and brands that I have to track down ratings for and give an estimate in thousands. Then I have give a price per thousand viewers for the each sport. This project wouldn’t be so hard if I was in the States, but being here I’m looking up teams and sports I have never heard of. Like the New Zealand Silver Ferns, which is a net ball team. I have no idea what netball is, or who the Silver Ferns, or if netball exists in the database I’m using. So what I have to do is look up their schedule for last year and go off that.

I’m sure I’ll get these both done by the end of next week, I’m just worried I’m going to look bad while doing it, or turn in a bad report. I’m sure I’ll be able to do it though, it can’t get that much harder. Plus, I could do the facebook one from my apartment on my laptop this weekend.

Speaking of the weekend.....it's here! Thus far the group and I have no travel plans. However, next weekend we might be going to Rotorua! Rotorua is a town a couple hours north of here that is famous for adventure sports and other cool stuff. Should be fun, but hopefully I'll be able to keep myself busy this weekend.

More of the First Day

Alright, I have no idea where to begin. Overall my day went very well. It started with me walking up to the reception desk and me hearing “ADAM” from the office to my left. My boss, Grant, walked up to me and introduced himself and then told me I looked exactly like my facebook photo. Inside I was thinking, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into,” but now it’s just funny. I’m laughing about it right now as I think about it.

So after I got a tour of the office, I sat in on the weekly WIP (Work in Progress) meeting. I learned about their clients and what they have planned for them. From their Grant gave me a quick history of MEC and Y&R. It is easily the smallest agency I have ever been in/heard of. From what I understood a small agency usually encompasses 30-50 people. Here Y&R and MEC combined have a total of 9 people. I guess they are all pretty happy they have me to help them with their work. So the head of the agency is Jason, and right now I don’t really know what he does but he is a cool guy. Then the one account manager is Rowena, but everyone calls her Row. Then my boss is Grant and he is in charge of strategy and media. Under Grant are Steve and Matt who are media planners. Then in the creative department, there is Louise and I can’t remember the other girl’s name. They are both the junior creatives, and the senior creatives are in India. Perks of working at a global agency huh?

After my crash course at the agency, I started to be trained on the software and I learned how to buy TV spots. Matt went over the program with me, and boy did it look hard when he was doing it. Sure enough when I started it on my own it was pretty easy. The only hard part is making sure you stay under budget and buy spots that will reach enough people.

It took me forever to do this because I almost had to teach myself to do it. Matt did a good job of explaining it to me, but it was just one of those things I had to do myself to figure it out.

Besides buying TV spots, I went to all these different client and rep meetings. One was with AdShell at the café below the office. AdShell is an out of home company that sells media to MEC. Then I had a client meeting with Colgate-Palmolive about a direct mail campaign that they are doing with the NZ Post Office. When the guy introduced himself as from the NZ Post, the first thing I thought of was, “why is Colgate using a newspaper to do direct mail?” Cultural differences collide yet again.

that was my whole day in a nutshell, it felt pretty good being there too. Grant asked me what I knew about advertising too, and I gave him my answer and, to my surprise, he was impressed. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t think my answer was that good, but apparently Grant thought that would be my answer when I was done with my 10 weeks. So I guess they think I’m pretty smart. Hopefully I can keep impressing them.

First Day

8:30AM
Today is my first day of work. Right now I have some time to kill so I’m just chillin in my apartment writing this. I am a little nervous, but I think its because I don’t really know what to expect. I mean, I know that its an advertising agency, I know I’ll be helping around with almost everything, but because I havnt interviewed or met anyone yet this feels like walking into an interview.

Well I’ll let ya know how it goees.