I can see why this city isn’t on the tourist map. There’s nothing here, really nothing. My 2 hour bus ride from Queenstown was fun though. Shared the bus with only one other passenger who was an old lady called Mrs. Forbes. Max, the bus driver told me when he picked me up in Queenstown that Mrs. Forbes has Alzheimers and she has been taking the bus to Invercargill everyday and it’s always a new trip for her. She’s the bus company’s best customer though and the bus picks her up at her home. If she’s not going to Invercargill she’ll be going to Wanaka. Seems she has been a fixture on this route that anyone who has taken the Wanaka Connexion from Queenstown to Invercargill or Wanaka or from those towns to Queenstown would no doubt have met her on the bus. Max was great, other than meeting new people and driving them from city to city, he is also an accomplished musician with a record to his name. We had a great time chatting so the trip felt really short.

I stayed at the Living Space and rented a car in Invercargill. Called Pegasus first which was recommended by the hotel and got a guy on the line who said “I’m really busy right now, can’t help you, good bye.” I was like, WTF kind of service was that? Shocked I turned to the net and found Rent-A-Dent. Lady there was great, she was so friendly. She picked me up from the hotel and brought me to their office at the airport. The paperwork was fast and I was out of there in less than 5 minutes. She knew I wanted to catch a sunset and it was getting late. When I saw the car, it really had a lot of dents, lol. Who cares, I like the price which was half of what the international rental car companies were charging. I quickly drove south to Bluff and caught a beautiful sunset there. Bluff was another one-street (of stores) town famous for its oysters.  The lady at the hotel earlier recommended I try the Anchorage Restaurant in Bluff for the oysters. Another disappointment – no more oysters even though it was oyster season. I headed back to Invercargill.

Sunset in Bluff

This time, the lady at the hotel recommended a restaurant in the city where I might find Bluff Oysters. A bit north of where we were was a nice little restaurant called Flanagan’s and they serve oysters in 4 different ways. This time, the lady called ahead for me to make sure they have oysters. So I went and had their natural and Kilpatrick oysters (grilled in Worcester sauce and topped with little strips of bacon). They were yummy. Very fresh too. The restaurant felt a bit eerie to me though, some might enjoy the lighting and the romantic mood it’s supposed to give but I had goose bumps when I walked into the place. I was also the only patron and a few times I felt like there were invisible diners around me. I left as soon as I was done.

My timing to Invercargill couldn’t be worse. I checked on the net and found that there will be little to no sunspot activity and thus no Aurora Australis for the duration of my stay. I wasn’t totally disappointed although my main purpose for coming this far was for the Aurora. New Zealand had been great to me so far – perfect weather and all. I guess she knew I wouldn’t be able to see the Aurora so she made everything else better.

The next day

Seashells on the Invercargill Seashore

I had a whole day to burn so I gave myself a project like an Amazing Race activity. The beach was only 15 mins away so I went and picked up some shells. Then I took the shells to a hardware store called E. Hayes & Sons Limited and told the guys there I needed to turn the shells into powder or a form close to it. They were not very creative when it comes to a challenge like this but boy were they helpful. After shaking my head at the hammers, a guy recommended I try farm supplies stores like CRT and RD1 and he pointed them out on a map for me. They don’t do it there unfortunately but the guy at RD1 suggested a stone grinder (Allied Materials) and an oyster wholesaler (Barnes – super cheap oysters too). I went to all of them and spoke to everyone. LOL. None had answers and all were curious to know why which I said was for an art project. I do know how to turn shells into dust but I was bored and wanted someone to talk to and the driving around helped me discover Invercargill and its people a little better. In between all this, I took a break for lunch at the museum and saw that 100 year old Tuatara Lizard Max was telling me about.

By the way, E. Hayes and Sons hardware store is also an old motorbike museum and proudly displays Burt Munro’s two modified motorbikes, a Velocette and an Indian Scout which was driven by him to claim the world speed record in 1967. That record has not been broken till this day.  In 2005, the life of Burt Munro was made into a movie starring Sir Anthony Hopkins called The World’s Fastest Indian.

On my recent trip to New Zealand, one hotel left an incredible impression on me. It was Hotel SO in Christchurch. It was not high class but it was high tech + high touch. I think whoever designed it is brilliant. The rooms are small but it’s so well designed you don’t feel it’s small at all. Mirrors were well placed to make the room feel spacious and comfortable. Then again, I’m speaking from a single occupant’s perspective, two people in one room might be crowded, I don’t know.

Are you a fan of Heroes, House, 24 and can’t wait for the next episode to come on TV the following week? If yes, there’s now a better way that will reduce your pay TV subscriptions and money spent on DVD box sets that you only watch once. These are ringgit-stretching times folks.

The alternative is to watch it on Hulu.com. Hulu.com is free, safe and streams all the latest shows that are airing on US free-to-air channels (US version of NTV7, TV3 etc). You can also go to the network’s website and watch their “catch-up TV” and they make their episodes available online within hours after they are aired. I personally prefer Hulu because you do not need to download the video player from some networks. If you want to download it, it’s fine too. The pro is that, a lot of the shows from the networks are in HD format. If you have an HD monitor, you’ll love it.

Videos on Hulu, unfortunately, are only available to US residents. You can watch it too but you need to go through a proxy or a VPN (virtual private network). Here are the cheapest ways to do it. No hardware is required and it works on both PCs and Macs. You will still need streamyx or any of the local ISPs but don’t worry, the video stream should be pretty smooth through a VPN.

The free way: Hotspot Shield
Hotspot Shield works like Anonymizer(a proxy service). When you activate the proxy, you’re actually surfing through their servers and your IP changes from a Malaysian IP to a US IP. In layman terms, it looks like you’re logged on to the net from the US. You’re still using slow ass streamyx so expect your video stream to be laggy. One way around it is to click on pause and let it buffer to the end then hit unpause and watch.
Pros: Free
Cons: Slow video stream

The paid way: Subscribe to a VPN service
There are two types of VPN service. One charges based on days and the other charges based on bandwidth. BolehVPN who offers packages by the day is my preferred choice with packages starting from as low as RM3 for 3 days to RM100 for 125days. AlwaysVPN is the other service that charges based on bandwidth starting from US$8.50 for 5GB to US$47 for 80GB.
Pros: Very smooth video streaming
Cons: Small fee and configuring the VPN may be a little challenging for the computer phobic (it was easy for me though).

So there you go. Hulu hacked. I’d like to thank a few people who responded to me when I crowdsourced for info on twitter: @andrewkjs and @mikefoong. Special thanks to Reuben Yap also. He’s one of the co-founders of BolehVPN for his assistance. He offered to help me set it up through Teamviewer but I told him I wanted to try doing it myself. I don’t know Reuben until I registered for the service.

In the news today, another company lays off 20% of their workforce next to news of another road accident. Like what’s new, right? It seems almost trendy for companies to layoff people. Reason/s, take your pick – bad investment into a volatile market, cut-throat competition, declining market share, in anticipation of the coming recession, reorganizing for a more effective organization, etc. And the majority being laid off are women because it’s the Malaysian thing to do.

Hmm, I still don’t see Google in the same light as Apple.

When I was a kid, I hoped to grow up to be an astronaut. I blame “Lost in Space” for inspiring unrealistic dreams. As bad as Barbie dolls that says you’re not pretty if you don’t have huge tits and blonde hair down to there. I adjusted that goal in my late teens when the hopeful became hopeless and I went off to business school.

I then wanted to be on TV, if not, I wanted to be paid watching TV. So now that I am paid to watch TV and market TV programs, it seems being on TV might be an achievable goal. I have appeared on TV when a TV crew came to the Agency to interview the team who created that fantastic campaign everyone was talking about. That was thrilling. Now I’d like to be my own director.

Reporting live on Qik.com…