A Busy Morning

It’s a busy morning here at The Cliffs, I thought I’d be one of the first up at 8:30, but I met at least 5 people going about their days already. We welcomed five or six, or possibly even seven new arrivals yesterday, so the house is nearing capacity again. It has that wonderful busy feeling!

Greetings from the Laundry Room

A fairly typical day in my Collective life, hugely subjective but for once trying to capture the full spectrum of daily existence over here (not just computers, bugs and the groupies (Brainstormers & Cockroaches) for ONCE! (NOTE: wanna shout out shorter lines in the future but this should give some idea of what’s life all about out here)

Waking up to wander into the living room where I’m greeted with some gruntings over my dish-duties last night (which are later resolved in a fair & equal way and we all learn a bit about in-house communications!). Breakfast of champions, in my case tea, cheese&tomato sandwiches. Backing off to my “office” at the laundry room with determined intent to get back on top of my emails & TODO items in CS code after a few days of (well-deserved!) chillout & movie-watching when having a flu. Pointing Callum towards our past efforts to get blogs on the site & shouting out to get Bill started with the design team.

As the collective approaches the end, it’s about time I start my personal preparations towards becoming a respectable even if temporary citizen of New Zealand by hitching a ride to town with Bridget, Kristen and Hannah to obtain my tax number (IRD). We go shopping a whopping mount of food to last us all for a whole week (to make sure: we only get the most basic stuff and are very price-concious, and Bridget makes sure we stay that way! . I decide to treat my housemates with some cheap-ass cookies (as I’ve not felt I’ve been a really good housemate lately)

Back at the house I get back to my tech duties: answering some people approaching me on the pages I “own” on the site (ownership simply meaning I’m the one who has worked on that particular page for the most over the past few weeks / months – check it up on the right-down corner of each CS page!), check up on meetings code changes made by our new developer POISONS, fix some things on ambassador’s home page and write up minutes of the Tech Team meeting last week. Bigger code changes shall have to wait until I feel a bit better…

As it is customary for the CSC, work-time and recreation are often interrelated, so at sunset I find myself doing the last bits of yoga session by our certified instructor Joshua (who’s the least Texan Texan I know . Finding my inbox with a well-suited job notification Looking forward to a dinner by Kristen and some chatting with my fellow CSC members.

Anu

A Day of Blogging

It’s been a day of blogging here in Nelson. I was today’s “Status Checker” so my responsibilities included telling everyone 15 minutes before sunset and reminding everyone to update the daily wiki page. I took the opportunity to get everyone hooked up to the CS Collective blog. So as of today, everyone in the house should have an account on this blog, expect lots of juicy content in the next few days…

The View by Night

The bay just after sunset…

My View

This is where I’m working right now, the laptop in the front of the picture is mine…

The View

This really is the view from the corner of our balcony…

I Made It

My flight landed at about 1am, I figured it was a good time to start hitchiking. I made it to the outskirts of Christchurch at about 2:30am, I needed a ride. It’s 6 degrees, I’m wearing almost every piece of clothing I own and I’m still freezing cold. I really needed a ride. I watched the sun rise about seven thirty.

I really, really, really needed a ride. I got a ride at 8:30am, I only waited 6 hours, not too bad.

I forget the guy’s name who picked me up, but we had a great chat about all sorts of things. He took me a slightly different route towards Nelson. Instead of going straight up the coast we turned left and headed cross country over Lewis Pass.

Then the snow started. I wasn’t looking forward to getting out of the nice warm car and back into the cold, cold, cold New Zealand weather…   By the time we got to Springs Junction, where we parted company, the weather had cleared up a bit.

Initially I was pleased, only another 214Kms to go…

The the rain started again, lightly at first… After an hour and a half standing in the pouring rain, I’d had enough. Drivers kept waving at me, by the end I was screaming “Do you see the rain? This is not fun. Give me a lift…” but it was no use. I retreated to the cafe on the corner and ran into Rhianna who was going to Nelson. Score, I had my final lift.

A few hours later I was ready to go to bed. My first hitch hike, 425Kms in a total of about 16 hours. Where are we going tomorrow?

Kirsty Crazy

Week-ends are beautiful. Sometimes the sun decides to shine away, but we get ‘locals’ to drive up and spend a couple of days with us.

A little bit of kiwiness is really refreshing in our American/European based environment : it brings some exoticism to the place. Oh, wait, we are in New-Zealand. Wooops.

This week it’s the company of Kirsten, aka KirstySarah that we enjoy. And it’s been pretty crazy: as soon as she arrived, er, we kept on working, everyone on his laptop Fortunately we experimented Nelson’s night life crazyness later in the evening.

Round and round fromIrish pubs to angry punk student bands we did it all. Pearls of the night: we cannot help spreading couchsurfing love! Steve repressed his need to HUG every punk dancer he met. Why so much violence? Yeah for CouchSurfing. Oh, and Casey started a new language, but he still has pronounciation issues. It’s ’sweet as’, not ’sweet ass’. Oh well.

Leo and Steve met the hottest cop ever. At least they say so. They took a picture, if you’re really nice they might be willing to share it with you. Too bad she didn’t gave them her phone number.

What else… If there’s somewhere you need to be, don’t rely too much on Casey for directions. Google Earth works well though.

We’ve also been yelling a lot in the rain. We should write a new song. Or make a musical. Kirsty’s really into it

It’s the week-end, so as you can see, everything’s really mellow. All on our computers, for a change! No, not entirely true. We’ve been customizing the house a bit. Trying. Making this house a home. We’ll get there soon!

So long, farewell, auf wieder sehen and talk to you tomorrow.

Kirsten and Elsa

work day

And we’ve been working, and working, and working again. All of us sitting at one table, and the worst part of it is that WE ARE GETTING THINGS DONE! Yop, incredible isn’t it?

It’s funny: when we’re chatting, or looking through the wiki’s recent changes, we suddenly realize that we’ve been working on the same elements whereas no words as been uttered. As I said, we’re forming a circle around one single table. No, not the round table, but we’re still going to change the world, and have legends about us – and you.

Talking about legends: we should start breaking them down as soon as they are formed into people’s minds. i.e. Kasper broke the coffee maker and I killed the hummus before it was even made. I’m sure others made bugs too, they’re just keeping them secret. So yes, if we start depriving our participants from coffee and hummus, I don’t know where we’re going anymore.

About legends still: please please please stop thinking (i’m not assuming you do, btw) that because everyone always refers to one and one person only all the time you must do the same. I’m staying with those guys who get users questions all the time. They’re happy to answer them, sure, and they’ll never complain about it. But the sad thing is: they’re so used to spending their entire days in front of their computers that they don’t realize that it’s not a normal thing anymore. (No, of course not, how could I dare make any judgment:) )Plus, I’ve never been so close with my computer as I am now. It’s like making friends with someone. Except it’s a no one. But if it helps you guys make new REAL frinedships I’ll be happy.

As we’ve been hammering you guys lately: this Collective is a doocratie: whoever wants something done gets it done, and the beauty of this place is that when we don’t have the tools to solve problems, someone is always willing to teach us. So that later we can do it ourselves. Amazing, a?

So please do it! Realize your ideas your ideals, don’t hesitate to ask for help when you don’t know something and learn so that you can work later. Welcome to the NZ CSC! Feel free to join us, for real or on line and… check the wiki for news!

I’m here!

Unbelievable!

Just a year ago, CouchSurfing wasn’t that important in my life. I loved the idea of it, talked a lot about it, but didn’t use it much. When I first COuchSurfed, I realized how important this way of travelling was for me, and CS played an increasing role in my life.

I would use CS as a tool to attain my travelling goals. I refuse to be a mere tourist. I want to experience places, to talk with people, to observe new cultures, try to integrate myself in them. CS helped a lot doing that.

And now I am here in Nelson, in front of a milion dollar view, in great company, brainstorming a lot. CS takes a 100% of my days now, and this collective shows me the most important: it’s not about me, it’s not about people and their experiences. We must bring our experiences together to build a strong idea, together. If every one brings a little bit of oneself, then there will be as many openings as there are people. It would be like a tree: the trunk would be the ideal if couchsurfing; the roots would be the technical tools; minerals and water would be people and their experiences and skills; and branches; burgeons, flowers and fruit would be all the projects that bloom and mature.

Together, we’ll make a great tree, and you know what, it will make the world better.