I really am getting crap at this blog I do apologise to everybody that’s following this site, lack on internet at my apartment has really contributed to the decline in the updates to this page that an ive been partying every night so between those 2 occurrences I haven’t had a lot of spare time on my hands, I should also mention I haven’t taken a day off since I started so ive worked 40 days exactly as I write this in a row maybe that’s why I got promoted or cause I’m just dam good ay my job.

Ii think the little things in life are always the best feelings in the world last Wednesday I ran into 2 guys from new Zealand which we found out that we had a mutual friend in this German girl I met in whanga about a year an a half ago these buys came on the crawl 4 nights in a row, their last night on Friday was supposed to be a big one but Dan got annihilate by the vodka that was goin round an disappeared which left beau looking for him the whole night an ended up sleeping at the train station to wait for him there if they got separated instead of crashing at my apartment as per the plan, turns out Dan was asleep/passed out in the toilet of the 1^st bar we were at an woke up round 4am with one hell of a headache an no memory,

I also ran into this English dude the same day who I met on the pubcrawl last year who remembered me ahhhhhhh the little things ay.

A bit of a story here, a few nights ago  some guy was shot outside the shooter bar my boss owns ive heard different things but from what I can gather this guy went for a cops gun an they killed him whats crazy is that it happened right after we got the last person in the door of the bar so there was a shot an everybody ran back out to see what happened, the other story I heard was that it was supposed to be a warning shot but the dude got hit in the neck which I don’t believe cause I mean how does a warning shot in the air nail a dude in the neck but yeaaaaah knarly ay

Man I’m trying to cram as much stuff into this post as I can but it’s hard to remember all that crap that’s happened over the last 2 weeks, been in a few fights (whooped their asses too) trying to stay in shape is a bit hard, meeting tonnes of people, if anybody reading this knows people coming to Amsterdam in the next few months let me know an ill hook em up if they need a place to stay an so on, Claire or Kate if your reading this tell Chase, he mentioned heading over my way soon.

Other than that i think ive covered everything thats happened over the last couple of weeks....... i think

i really am getting crap at this blogg thingie from what i understand i havent written anything in about 2 weeks now to be fair i have been busy, what with setting up my SOFI number my bank account moving in to my apartment (which is pretty kick ass) also probably cause i can only use the internet about half an hour a day when i go into the office for the arvo meeting, looking at getting internet for the flat but itll probably be a month cause instead of getting paid weekly im getting paid monthly now so the first month will be a bit tight over dare!!!

Heres something that really grinds my gears, ok my baby has been at my mate elis for the last 5 weeks while i looked for a place to live, finally got it back off him a couple days ago stoked as hell got it back to the apartment took it out of the case took off the towels wrapped around it cut off all the cardboard wrapped around the nose tail and rails, cut off about 3 inches of bubble wrap covering THE WHOLE BOARD  showed the boys my pride an joy, laid it on the bed an watched it fondly when i noticed the edge point of my tail, upon closer inspection i saw that the tail had been fucking SMASHED!!!!  Needless to say i flipped out worse that i have ever done, i mean after all the wrapping an protection i put on it like emirates suggested somehow it still gets damaged and apparently their counter to this was “we don’t have our baggage handlers at every airport so we cant be held responsible for how other baggage dudes handle your bags” assholes, later that night i also found a hole in the left rail aswell so now i have 2 things that need fixing the rail could just do with a repair kit but the tail needs to be re glassed and moulded  and the only ding store is about an hours train outside of town.

So thats a big FUCK YOU to emirates and cheers for putting me off flying with my board to spain an portugual, cause if it got damaged with all that wrapping what the hell will happen when its just covered by a few towels, on the other hand me an my boy vince are talkin about renting a car an cruising down the cost later on in the year so that could be problem solved right there

AMSTERDAM, Visas, SOFI/BSN numbers and Housing

ok so im sitting down chillin before i have to get ready for work when  i though "hey i should write down what ive done to come over here" so if anyone else had the incentive to come to amsterdam to work for a few months they can beat the system like me.

ok first off the visa, alot of places will say you need a visa to work before you come over technically this is true but just so they can charge you about 40x the prive you can pay, what you do (atleast in amsterdam) is get there wait about 4-5 days then go to the IND office in sloterdijk an say like "hey i was traveling through asmterdam i met this dude/did something an got offered a job but i dont have a visa cause i wasnt intending on staying so the guys just told me to come down here..... you need to take your passport, your health insurance, and either a bank statement showing enough funds to buy a ticket home or a return ticket, i just booked a one way flight an told the customs dudes at the airport and at IND the same deal i was gona travel down the west coast an didnt want a return ticket to govern where i had to be to fly home. anyway 43e later an bang i have my visa stamp for 6 months.

ok the next part is tricky, the SOFI number BSN number social security whatever you wanna call it, has a stupid cycleto get one you need to register an address an have id from the landlord and blah blah blah, obviously this is a problem cause 1 housing is fuck hard to find in dam unless you know someone and 2 alot of places wont let you register their place anyway, SO what you do it ring up the tax office an tell them you have a place but the owner is not in the country and as such cannot sign rego or provide id an stuff then what happens is they take your number an call you back in a couple days with an appointment an bang there you go, atleast thats how alot of people say it should work but in actual fact the tax office will only speak to you in dutch as i have found out so unless you get someone to speak dutch on your behalf you have to do what im goin to do, go to the tax offive in sloterdijk (just round the corner from the IND bulding) and talk to them in person with the same story owner not in town , you really need this number cause you have a job lined up but they wont hold it forever yadda yadda yadda" and they should make an appointment between the next 2 days or 2 weeks not really sure how it works yet but ill find out.

Now the third thing is finding a place to live believe it or not this is actually the hardest part of getting your shit together in amsterdam, there are soooooo many scams out there its ridiculous, ive been looking for 2 weeks straight an have had 2 viewings over that time, unless the apartment is insanely expensive in the centruum area a 2-3 bedroom place in that area will be a scam, theyll ask you for a wire transfer an give you some crap along the lines of i live in the U.K/USA on the first year of a five year job contract/doing an internship/parents died an left the place to me, then theyll say something like oh our family lawyer can take care of the viewing and documents, basically the rule here is DO NOT SEND MONEY BY WIRE TRANSFER ! always meet the person first, this is why i stopped looking for apartments and started looking for rooms to rent instead as atleast you can meet the person see their place and if they do screw you hey you know where they live....... on the other hand you can always go round town asking for the manager of the little pizza places takeaway joints restaurants cause usually they own the whole building so they might have a room available you just gotta put yourself out there. or go through a leasing agent but they usually charge commission or have massive security deposits to each their own i guess

so i made this resolution yesterday to learn another language, mainly spanish or itialian largely because of the fact that people native to those languages seem so piss scared when i come up to them on the street to promote to them, most of the time im pretty sure they speak english fine they just wanna be dicks and not listen so what my boy JC does is yell something like your hips are too wide lose some weight, hey assholes or something along those lines at them when they leave its usually a good indicator of whether they understand us or not. on the other hand i think itd just be handy to know another language you never know when it could be of use.

now i think i may have a problem coming home because of the world cup one way flights are more than return, this could be interesting...... when the fuck did flights to new zealand get so expensive right now im looking at about 2200 for a flight home when a flight over cost 1600, and its not cause of the world cup the price is the same next month an in november this is bullshit ahhhhh the joys of travelling. right now the cheapest option is to fly out of rome on emirates for 1000e actually make that 770e on singapore airlines but i gotta spend like 18 hours in transit

ive been pretty crap at this blog this over the last few days, mainly cause im still looking for a place to live which is pissing me off so much cause after i leave my mates who let me stay at theirs out of teh goodness of their hearts ill be back to paying about 120e for 4 days in a hostel which is quite annoying cause thats like 2 days work on good days, the thing thats annoying me is that 1. why do people have to be dicks an try to scam people out of money atleast change the story once in a while, ive seen so many people come back to me with the same story,  aw im living in england i dont want my place to get messy blah blah blah, on the other hand if your actually stupid enough to fall for it you deserve to have your money stolen, 2. i get so far with a place then all of a sudden they just stop emailing me back for no reason, well you can come round for a viewing but i wont give you the address, time an to top it off ill just stop responding to your emails.

apparently the way to go is to ask all the little pizzarias an coffee shops an boutiques an stuff if they have any rooms for rent cause most of the time they own the building their shop is situated on so thats gona be my plan of attack for today, hopefully i find something cause i am getting absolutely nowhere with looking for places on the net.

other than that nothing much else is goin on here, the city i gearing up for queens day which will be a massive celebration on the last weekend of april so the 30th-1st, its so big we're not working that night cause there'll just be to many people on the streets out celebrating this weekend is another reason why i need to step it up a notch to finding a place to live as all hostels are booked, so i might be a it screwed, guess we'll see in about 8 days time

what the fuck just happened

so the pubcrawls been going strong last night really stood out though, first up my main man rory turned 22 which resulted with nir (the owner of the pubcrawl) and the other boys holding rory down an pouring vodka down his throat, t least i think it was vodka...... for then on the night got uuuuuhhhh interesting, at cinema one of the english guys got his pinky jammed in the door of the toilet somehow but instead of jamming it it sliced about 1cm off the end of his pinky, he took it well for a second or so then started freaking out he didnt go nuts just started goin my finger man my fucking finger blood pissed everywhere, dunno what happened to him, i guess he went to hospital...


so. for rorys birthday we went to melkwig which had some dubstep dudes playin, everything was fine till about 4am when rory started to get really fucked up which is strange cause we had the exact same amount to drink except the 3 shots, an he starts fallin over on stage tripping over speakers an generally being drunk, eventually i had to call it so i txt eli to come pick up his hammered flatmate, anyway 5am rolls round everything ends im carrying rory out of the club when some dude rolls up and rocks rory right in the face straight away i grab the dude in a half nelson an pull him off rory but one off his mates comes after me when all of a sudden another fight breaks out for some reason, then everyone converges bouncers, cops, dutch dudes everybody.. while this is happening im checkin on rory who got KNOCKED. THE. FUCK.OUT. he took the punch like a champ though, anyway full credit goes to the man himself eli who saw everything go down an came in guns blazin which was the cause of the other fight that started up fuckin champion bro he got cuffed but got off cause he didnt do anything to provoke the fight or something like that, anyway all 3 of us are in the cop station waitin to give a statement, which was taking fucking ages for some reason, in the end we just left, rory was pissed as fuck, i think he still reckons he got a few punches in before he went down, called it a night end of story

THIS IS HOW WE DO IN THE DAM!!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150154773671965&set=t.1012836130&type=1&theater

Dear god never again!!!!

OK so theres these group of girls on the pubcrawl right the second to last club we're at most of the girls decide to call it a night except 1 who decides to come to dansen bij jansen with us, which i promise her that i will get her home safe, so anyway its 230am an i call it a night due to the fact i havent had a decent sleep in 4 days, (i still havent) an i take this girl with me, what followed was one of the most frustrating nights of my life, thei, girl, was ,crazy, an i dotn mean the hahahaha such an such is crazy i mean there was somethin wrong with her, with out goin into too much detail she though that 1, her friends were inside the club (they werent) 2. she thought we were at the 2nd club of the night (we were at the last) an 3. thought she knew her way back if i had let her go her own way i have no doubt in my mind she wouldve been raped or fallen into a canal or something like that.


so, knowin the general direction of her hostel we set off with her immediately fighting me every step of the way insisting we were goin the wrong direction, which we werent an all the time she was bitching about how she thinks that i think girls cant do anything that she was stupid (she studies medicine) an blah blah blah, so a walk that shouldve taken 15 min ended up takin about 45 mins (cheers for that) so finally she realized where we were an said she knew where we had to go, so being the trusting but not a complete dumbass, that i am let her lead the way but i starting checkin maps n my phone, good thing i did cause she was leading me away from her hostel, to her credit though she got us on the right street, so i dropped her off an finally started to make my way back to my hostel.


ran into a couple of mates who were looking for food an dragged me along (i guess im not supposed to get my 8 hours of sleep go figure) which was a reason to just walk around for another half hour cause every place is closed, however i made the call to check out favorite chicken (like KFC but better) we got there but it was closed aswell they were cleaning up though so we managed to get them to give us all their left over chicken for 20e which was a fucking good deal

the thing about cheap hostels is that you get what you pay for so i cant really complain about coming home around 5am and finding some random dude in my bed cause the hostel double booked the room, doesnt stop me from being a bit pissed off ay i mean you double book the room and im the one who has to change beds? come ooon aside from the fact that the night dude didnt really have any idea what to do untill i told him what to do.

actually while im on the subject just another things thats been bothering me, how is it that people cant seem to walk in a straight line??? fuckin walking down the road trying to get to a store an theres people infront of me that just sway allover the footpath for no apparent reason (i assume theyre not drunk) and its always when your in a hurry ay! like, youll be doing a bit of speed walking to get somewhere quickly and BANG someone crosses your path for no reason other than wanting to see what its like walking on the other side of the footpath,and its happens again and again and again....... God Im tired. its hard work having to party all night.

This is what happened the day before i arrived in amsterdam

You would immediately regret this decision ay.

Almost done

you gotta love pubcrawls ay you literally see everything on them, tonight, a massive break up with some girl goin nuts an my main man steve asking her to leave cause shes making a scene (the man) 2 stag nights (both grooms dressed as chicks) and some dude, apparently coming out to one of the crawl guides. but other than that it was beers in the park and an all round awesome day, i start work on monday night or tuesday somewhere round then so unfortunately im missing out on the commission for the 300 or something large college group gettin on it tonight, but hey ya win some ya lose some.


all thats left now is to find a place to live which is proving a real pain in the ass cause all the places on craigslist (sort of the world wide trademe) are bloody scams i mean seriously why do people have to be dicks like that, i mean ok sure so you fool some dumbass into giving you heaps of money one time, doesnt mean its gona work again , fuuuuuuck it pisses me off


just gotta get my visa and a place to live an then i can start having some fun

BILLY TOOK DOWN SLATER!!!!!! good on ya bro
Friday 8th April: Billy Stairmand (Raglan, NZ) has beaten 10 times world champion Kelly Slater (USA) at the Telstra Drug Aware Pro in Margaret River, Australia.

Stairmand scored 16.50 in response to Kelly Slater's 15.50 points tally, surfing an extremely smart heat and charging the solid offshore waves.

Billy sealed the win with a solid left, where he unleashed two extremely critical backhand re-entries to score a 9.0. Slater had the opportunity to reclaim the lead in the dying minutes on a long right, but came up short scoring an 8.0.

"I knew I had to go big to beat Kelly Slater, just to have a man on man heat with him is a dream. To beat him here is a dream come true".

He is now guaranteed at least 2,400 points and US$5,000 and the result will push him in to the top 50 in the world rankings.

http://www.surf2surf.com/articles/billy-stairmand-beats-kelly-slater-at-telstra-drug-aware-pro

so first night out back in amsterdam, an i made it to 1,30am without succumbing to jet lag, but hey im only human, bit dissappointing though my first pubcrawl back was a total sausage fest so me an a few of the boys went on our own way, bit of heavy news though, turns out that yesterday this irainian asylum seeker walked into the middle of dam square an set himself on fire, yes he did die video footage is on you tube), pretty messed up ay. it also sparked the debate of whether youd jump off an building or set your self on fire if you had to kill yourself,,,,,,

the final flight to dam wasnt too eventful, a hostess dropped my bag out of the compartment
on to this 100 year old indian lady behind me, an the pilot (from what i can gather) had
a crack at landing the plane on 2 wheels, other than that safe and sound an surprisingly not
jetlagged, well i guess ill just have to see how i feel in a couple hours

ok so i arrived in dubai around 5am local time, im pretty stoked that im almost done with all this in transit shit, i may have even got some sleep on the plane, that or i watched the other guys about 4 or 5 times in a row, my favorite line, If you were in the wild, I would attack you, even if you weren't in my food chain. I would go out of my way to attack you. If I were a lion and you were a tuna, I would swim out in the middle of the ocean and freaking eat you and then I'd bang your tuna girlfriend. " ahh good times anyway right now  im lookin good at partyin up tonight in dam with all the boys an girls i havent seen in about 5 months, now i must say (in a redneck southern accent) "yall aint gone belie
this shit" so i was walking past a moblie phone retailer here in dubai terminal 3 an all the phones were pretty shiny so i though oooh i might check these out, they were all gold or silver with price tags of, i shit you not, 35-50,000US hows that for a waste of money, they werent event good phones (in the sense of i,phones, smart phones etc) these things had keypads an pretty small screens, but on the other hand how many people can say they own a soild gold or silver cell phone, another thing i have noticed is that there is an icredibly strong smell of vinegar around here, dunno what to make of that.........

oh yeah an emirates is still a pretty pimped airline they have neon lights in the ceilings runnin the length of the plane all theyre missing is a smoke machine an some beats an theyd have the worlds first sky club.

so currently im waiting for the plane to refuel so we can bust a move to dubai which
im told is insanely huge, like 3 story thousands of people everywhere huge, i figure i got
about a 83% chance of being bomb seached there, i might actually be dissapointed if i dont
get seached ahhhhh thank god for profiling ay hahaha, one thing i have learned through all
my flights you will see heaps of hot girls in the airport but they will never be on your
flight an if they are they will be as far away from you as possible and if your a guy 
9 times out of 10 you will be sitting next to an old couple. i call these 2 phenomenons
the airport effect.

so im about 3 hours into my trip an ive been "randomly bomb searched" already.  
if this keeps up ill break my personal record of 6 bomb searches/drug searches 
for a return flight, and interesting thing happend on the way to oz, the fulla
next to me was having a sleep an when it came time for dinner to come round
the air host dude leaned across me an tapped his shoudler, so rather than look
to his left for the source of the tap as one would do, he looks right out the window all over the place
the host looks at me goes "what the fuck bro" we have a laugh an the dude finally realizes
its dinner time an takes about 5 mins to choose between the chicken or ham. i finally
saw harry potter an the deathly hallows an i gotta say its a bit on the crap side
if some ginge ranga said "you dont have a family your parents are dead" you wouldnt
have some little sissy ball room dance like grappling match, youd knock him the fuck out.
emirates though shiiiiit has to be the flashest airline i have ever flown you can tell they
have the monies to throw around, they even have little star like lights in the ceilings
when the lights are dimmed, choice ay!!

For a kiwi traveling this is one of the essential songs to remind you of home, its also a reminder of the unity we have as a country being a New Zealander will get you out of trouble and also into equally awesome situations, cause no matter where you are in the world kiwis look out for each other. As its says "Don't forget ya roots"

So it occurred to me that as i am obscenely crap at keeping in touch with people while im out of the country i decided to start up this blog to keep people updated on my where-a-bouts , if ive been kidnapped or if i actually die, ok that last one is a bit extreme.... so from now on i don't wanna hear anyone having a bitch about why i haven't kept in touch, by starting up this thing i actually have an excuse now. Mostly i figure ill be updating this with incredibly drunk posts mainly having a bitch about things that quiet frankly piss me off or anything that pops into my head at the time. Ofcourse there will be all the mayhem and crazy storys vids an photos that happen to me along the way, in a city like amsterdam every night is literally a new adventure especially for those one drink wonders who really should stay in mantrol but i digress.....


In 24 hours i will be checkin in for yet another insanely long 30+ hour flight, so i should probably start packing......


coming soon
Ajs totally awesome travel tips an advice
airline hostesses-why arent they hot?
the black book
people who shouldnt drink
and much more........