Welcome to Nivin

A little while ago I read an article that urged readers to take an “Internet Sabbatical”. To most people this probably sounds crazy - after all who needs to consciously make a decision about not going on the internet? Well, me.

As most of you know I am professionally required to be constantly connected to the Internet, checking new trends, brand mentions, the latest and greatest, and how I can improve the strategy I have in place for my company. On a professional level this is fine, however as most of you who work in the space know - you don’t get a job like this by nerding out over information only during work hours.

It is an obsession, an addiction. Not necessarily a bad one, but something that has now become second nature. With my iPhone or iPad never more than a meter away from me at all times, it has never been easier to quickly scroll through a few updates while still holding a deep conversation.

Knowing this in the back of my mind, I decided that I would try the idea of an Internet sabbatical for a weekend and see how it went. When I told my girlfriend, Morgan, about the idea she didn’t believe me. I knew I would get this reaction so to show my commitment to the sabbatical I did what in my world is equivalent to an iron-clad contract: I tweeted. Yes, I sent out a tweet saying that I would be taking a 48 hour Internet sabbatical. To most people tweeting this wouldn’t mean a thing - to me it meant that I had no choice but to do it.

After a few beers on Friday I actually forgot about my deal until of course Morgan reminded me about it. At this point I went into slight panic, I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t mentally prepared myself. After another beer, I decided I would just jump in. My last tweet and Facebook status for the next 48 hours was put in place. It was time.

To be perfectly honest with you - it was all fine. There were a few moments when I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check for new emails, only to find it fail on me (I switched all data off on my phone) - but that was mostly out of habit or boredom.

I was expecting myself to be curled up in a fetal position only after a few hours, crying like a crack addict. But it turns out I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was. The upshot however of not staring at a screening was that I actually got out and about and did a few things.

Saturday

For some reason my lovely mother thought it would be a sick joke to book me a dentist appointment on Saturday morning (at 23 years old, this disturbs me). Although rather than fight it I went along, especially since my back tooth was feeling like it needed to be pulled out. Surprisingly (and to my mothers shock) I received a clean bill of health from the totally emotionless dentist. Seriously, she didn’t even get ONE of my jokes. I’m a funny guy.

After calming down from working myself up to step into the death-cave of the dentist office, I decided to help my dad out with some garden work. For those of you who don’t know me, this isn’t normal. I don’t do physical labor. However at 12:30 I found myself on the back of a trailer with gloves on throwing large tree branches into a big bin at the local dump. I so badly wanted to tweet out that I was being a real man, but I couldn’t. No one would have believed me anyway.

After a brief nap on my parents couch post-manly-activities I said my goodbyes and shot off to Newmarket. Morgan had given me a great idea when I asked her what I was supposed to do when I thought of something so genius to share with the world, but couldn’t tweet it: Buy a notebook. I have a bit of a love affair with notebooks, so I went to Gordon Harris and picked up 3 deep red plain paper Moleskine’s and a nice ink pen. With that in my back pocket I was ready for the world.

After a quick coffee and a few genius notes in my new book, I dropped into Qubic in Newmarket - my favorite sneaker store in all of Auckland - to see how the lads were. I always love going to see the Qubic guys, they treat me like a regular (probably because I am) and we always share a good few stories. Over the last few weeks I have been coveting the new Herschel backpacks that were released, I wanted all of them in every color. For some reason I have developed a slight obsession with backpacks recently and have been buying nice ones all over the place.

The Herschel ones were some of the sexiest I have ever seen. I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy another backpack - after all I wear a suit for a job and rarely ever carry anything on the weekends that require a backpack. However Benny at Qubic hooked me up with a good deal so I walked out of that store with my brand new baby. And my swagger at a hundred million.

After my brief shopping stint, I decided to go and visit Morgan as I hadn’t seen her all day. I walked into her house to find both her and Nacho (her little Yorkshire Terrier) sleeping on the couch! To be fair, had I not had to wake up for the dentist so early, I would probably have been doing the same thing.

After doing a whole lot of not much, we decided to head down to Sals pizza for some food. I love pepperoni pizza. While there, we spotted a hilarious child who appeared to be dressed in a sheep-type hat. I have no idea what possessed her mother to dress her like this - but I managed to get an almost perfect picture.

While in Sals our conversation somehow turned to cartoons we loved as kids. After a bit of reminiscing, we decided to make a list of the cartoons that we both really loved from our childhood, and download a few of them next weekend to watch (when I was allowed back on the internet). Luckily, my new handy notebook wasn’t far away. It was in fact, in my new backpack.

We then decided to check out Fu bars 12th Birthday party. Fu bar has played a big part in my life - some of the best gigs of my life have been experienced there, and since they are due to close down soon (more on that later) I thought we should go and pay our respects. The gig was Ok, nothing special. I think we were both a bit tired so after a few drinks and a bit of a dance we called it a night. And just like that, Saturday was a wrap without a Check-in, Facebook status or Tweet in sight.

Sunday

Sunday proved a bit hazy in the morning. For some reason my gums started killing me after my trip to the dentist (I swear those “cleans” they do hurt more than the fucking drill) and I think I had put away one too many Whiskys the night before, but all that aside we decided to take a walk down to Wynyard Quarter, which is the new development in Auckland’s waterfront for the rugby world cup.

Being a total hater of the world cup and believing that it will probably ruin my city for however long it is going to be here, I have to say I was very impressed with what they had done with the waterfront. The whole place looked really good - a nice mixture of artwork and architecture and family areas. That being said there were far too many children there, but hey.

The whole place was packed - we couldn’t get a table at any of the new restaurants and every man and his dog (literally, we counted 28 dogs just there) was out and about.

After walking around for awhile, Morgan and I decided to venture away from the crowds of people and their crazy children for a quiet lunch. We ended up at Industry Zen which in terms of presentation is one of my favorite Japanese spots in Auckland.

By the end of lunch I could barely move. So much food.

By the time we managed to walk home after consuming copious amounts of sushi, neither of us felt like doing a whole lot. So in between listening to some music, watching some horrible weekend television and playing with Nacho and Onyx (my cat) - my weekend was pretty much a wrap. 

Overall, a lot of fun, and 100% Internet free.