1983
The move to America in September of that year was pretty huge. Moving to this huge country was pretty scary... earlier on that year we were read "James and the Giant peach" at Linden School in Wellington which featured New york at the end. New York was where we were gonna be staying for the next three years of my life from 1983 to 1986.
However the trip to the states wasn't the only huge thing to happen in my life in that year. I started making these funny movements and that i could not control. This was the start of my battle with tourettes syndrome... my signature health problem that has been with me ever since. It's normally more embarassment than anything else that gets me with this illness, but sometimes it can affect performance.... but not allways adversely... for physicial things i sometimes tend to see my tourettes as an asset as it tends to make me hyperactive... handy for things involving power and energy. For more delicate things though it usually is a laibility rather than an asset. I can sometimes act like a large, muscly and very strong kid and can be crazy and quite kidlike which is strange and even scary coming from a 34 year old male. Tourettes may even be responsible for my neanderthallike appearance... ppl sometimes think i'm on drugs.... i sometime look like i've taken steriods (my twitches may produce enlarged muscles in certain areas like my shoulders, neck, face etc). ppl also think i'm a p user cos of my hyperactivity. anyway this was when this crazy and often fun disorder started in my life hehe.
Anyway en route to New york we visited Hawaii, LA (we stayed there for a week) and then flew to New York. I was aware of snow in New york and because of that i believed NY was a cold place... what a shock i got when i got out of the Limo in New Rochelle on Sep 4th 1983 and greeted with a fan heater wind tippin the mercury at 40C.... later learnt that NY gets much colder and much hotter than Wellington does. That was the warmest it ever got when we were in New York... but it was still common for the temp to top 30C in the summer days. We never really got to see much of Hawaii as we were only in the airport. Hawaii of course has a tropicial climate. In LA i remember it feeling like a vary nice summers day in Wellington... although LA as we are all aware can get very hot and dry and over summer has no rain. New York in contrast has lots of rain over the summer.
America was VASTLY different to NZ back then... scary for a 7 year old thats for sure but the education in NZ was showing through in the americian classes at school.... this huge land of extremes certainly not a world leader in schooling and paled in comparision to NZ... despite giving us 2 hours of homework every night. I remember when coming back to NZ mum was considering getting us tutoring cos she was worried that we would get left behind cos we had a disadvantage being in the americian system for 3 years.
What i did discover was that americians were VERY patriotic and there was a loudspeaker in every class and the principial lead us in a pledge of allegiance and then we sung the national anthem. for the record we never actually became americian citizens... we couldn't vote in the elections (Reagan was in power back then).... Bob Marley hit the nail on the head ... "I'm an alien, i'm a little Alien"...cos thats exactly what we were referred to as lol. So yeah we lived the high life in a 9 bedroom Mansion in a nice suburb of New york but i was missing New Zealand and the simple pleaseures that came with living in that chilled out nation.
By the end of 1983 of course winter had arrived and yeah it got cold... and we had some snow.... yeah winter was great in New York.... snow was fun.
However the trip to the states wasn't the only huge thing to happen in my life in that year. I started making these funny movements and that i could not control. This was the start of my battle with tourettes syndrome... my signature health problem that has been with me ever since. It's normally more embarassment than anything else that gets me with this illness, but sometimes it can affect performance.... but not allways adversely... for physicial things i sometimes tend to see my tourettes as an asset as it tends to make me hyperactive... handy for things involving power and energy. For more delicate things though it usually is a laibility rather than an asset. I can sometimes act like a large, muscly and very strong kid and can be crazy and quite kidlike which is strange and even scary coming from a 34 year old male. Tourettes may even be responsible for my neanderthallike appearance... ppl sometimes think i'm on drugs.... i sometime look like i've taken steriods (my twitches may produce enlarged muscles in certain areas like my shoulders, neck, face etc). ppl also think i'm a p user cos of my hyperactivity. anyway this was when this crazy and often fun disorder started in my life hehe.
Anyway en route to New york we visited Hawaii, LA (we stayed there for a week) and then flew to New York. I was aware of snow in New york and because of that i believed NY was a cold place... what a shock i got when i got out of the Limo in New Rochelle on Sep 4th 1983 and greeted with a fan heater wind tippin the mercury at 40C.... later learnt that NY gets much colder and much hotter than Wellington does. That was the warmest it ever got when we were in New York... but it was still common for the temp to top 30C in the summer days. We never really got to see much of Hawaii as we were only in the airport. Hawaii of course has a tropicial climate. In LA i remember it feeling like a vary nice summers day in Wellington... although LA as we are all aware can get very hot and dry and over summer has no rain. New York in contrast has lots of rain over the summer.
America was VASTLY different to NZ back then... scary for a 7 year old thats for sure but the education in NZ was showing through in the americian classes at school.... this huge land of extremes certainly not a world leader in schooling and paled in comparision to NZ... despite giving us 2 hours of homework every night. I remember when coming back to NZ mum was considering getting us tutoring cos she was worried that we would get left behind cos we had a disadvantage being in the americian system for 3 years.
What i did discover was that americians were VERY patriotic and there was a loudspeaker in every class and the principial lead us in a pledge of allegiance and then we sung the national anthem. for the record we never actually became americian citizens... we couldn't vote in the elections (Reagan was in power back then).... Bob Marley hit the nail on the head ... "I'm an alien, i'm a little Alien"...cos thats exactly what we were referred to as lol. So yeah we lived the high life in a 9 bedroom Mansion in a nice suburb of New york but i was missing New Zealand and the simple pleaseures that came with living in that chilled out nation.
By the end of 1983 of course winter had arrived and yeah it got cold... and we had some snow.... yeah winter was great in New York.... snow was fun.
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