travel bugs

A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holidays. By Tim Roxborogh

Lying about your occupation on departure cards

I should be celebrating. Everybody else seems so ecstatic about the end of departure cards, but I can’t help but feel slightly bittersweet about the whole thing. Like I never really got to say goodbye. Not only that, I never did what I always vowed I’d one day do with the forms: have some fun with the “What is your occupation?” box.

I had fantasies of writing “POPULAR RADIO PERSONALITY” all in block letters, but worried I’d get done for a false declaration. Though at least “popular” is open to interpretation. Perhaps “BATTLING BROADCASTER FROM STRUGGLE STREET” would’ve been more appropriate, though there weren’t enough of the little boxes for the letters. I’d usually just settle for BROADCASTER.

I never knew what the deal was with those boxes anyway. Were we really meant to stick to one letter per box or could we get a little rebellious?

Then there was the question about how long you’d be away from New Zealand. If it was a decent holiday, this was a near-euphoric moment: “I’m away for 19 days!!” The question that often got me was the one about the main purpose of the trip. It would crack me up that the word “main” would be written in bold, as if the person doing the asking had years of exasperation about to bubble over of people not understanding the question. “I said MAIN!” It was so passive-aggressive.

But I’d deliberate over my answer, irrespective of “main” being in bold. Often it was a gut-wrenching debate between ticking the box saying I was “visiting friends / relatives” versus the one saying “holiday / vacation”. Wasn’t it disrespectful to said friends-slashrelatives that visiting them wasn’t considered a holiday? The implication is that catching up with your old high school chums or Aunt Mavis in ‘Straya is more chore than holiday.

Alternatively, what if you were going to a friend’s wedding in the islands and you ticked “holiday / vacation” and the bride and groom found out? The drama! The fallout!

Well, all that stress is now gone, but so too is the realisation the ship has sailed (or the plane has flown) on me handing over a form saying “POPULAR RADIO PERSONALITY”. Just for the laughs it would’ve given me! Dammit! Though it does make me wonder: did anybody else actually follow through on what I for years said I’d do? Like a few weeks back, before jetting off to the States to hang out with Mick and Stevie, did Neil Finn write for occupation, “FLEETWOOD MAC GUITARIST — YEAH YOU KNOW IT!”? I hope so. Do let me know, Neil (or anyone else) — drop me a line at timr@newstalkzb.co.nz.

The constant complaining about Auckland Airport

With Auckland International Airport seemingly in a perpetual state of expansion and refurbishment, it’s not uncommon to hear Kiwis grumbling about how substandard it is and even how much of a bad look it must be for tourists who come here. On the one hand this is good in that it shows we have high expectations for our public buildings, but on the other — and patronising alert flashing loudly here — it may suggest that the complainee hasn’t done a huge amount of travelling. Ouch!

Which, if I clarify that second point, yes, it’s a shame that the airport is not as awesome as Singapore’s or KL’s or Hong Kong’s, but have you touched down in Melbourne lately? One of the most affluent cities in one of the most affluent countries and that airport is a timewarp back to the 1970s. Sure, they’ve got growing pains at Tullamarine too and no doubt one day it will be all fancy, efficient and gleaming. But not right now.

Keep in mind too that until recently LAX was a slowmoving nightmare and queues in Hawaii for check-in sometimes stretched into the carpark! So yes, Auckland International Airport may frustrate as it expands, but that’s hardly a unique problem. And it is getting better.