Burger King redux

The routine begins.
"One Double Whopper meal. Large size. Plain. Just ketchup," says the boy. Have it your way, their motto goes. So he does.
We mark our progress by Burger Kings. The boy's favourite fast food. We find four in Wellington; three in Auckland. One in Christchurch, Whangarei, Nelson, Napier, Rotorua, and two in Dunedin. Today we're in Invercargill. Home of the World's Fastest Indian, Victorian style port city, and the world's southernmost Burger King.
Without another Whopper from here to the south pole, the boy digs in.
First, more ketchup's added to the burger. Some on the bottom bun, some between the patties. Half the fries are eaten, a sip of Coke. Then work on the burger begins.
He has his way of eating it. Just so. It's got to be just so. In Japan, he wants to take back a burger that has mayo on it. Try explaining that one to a unilingual, minimum-wage worker in a foreign country.
We struggle with language at every outlet. Finally, when we get the order exactly right (the boy learns to say 'I do not want...' in Japanese) we keep the receipt, and just give it to the clerk at the next outlet.  It makes things a lot easier.
He chews through the burger, more or less randomly, making sure not to eat too close to the centre. More fries, Coke to wash it down.
Whereever we go, we make note when we spot the red-and-yellow BK logo. The boy checks Google maps before we arrive at a town, finding where the local Burger King is. Found two in Chang Mai, Thailand. None in Laos, a big disappointment. The only one in Kobe, Japan wasn't on Maps... it was too new. But we spotted it. Found a dozen in Tokyo, one in a shopping complex in Osaka, in the basement floor of the Midtown Mall in Kuala Lumpur, on a side street in Kota Kinabalu, and buried deep underground in Singapore.
We get to know the designs. The 50's Hollywood motif is in a seaside BK in Buson, Korea. The same design on the main shopping drag in New Zealand's capital. Most have generic landscape photos. The cheaper locations have rock and roll stars.
Disaster struck in Australia. The company lost a copyright fight in Australia years ago, and had to rename itself Hungry Jack's. Exact same logo, exact same menu. We try the one near the central train station in Melbourne.
The boy's suspicious. Sure enough, the bun wasn't quite the same.
We didn't go to another Hungry Jacks.
There's a good analogy for understanding autism. If you saw a boulder heading towards you at 80 kilometres an hour, what would you do? Probably jump as far away as you could. But you calmly walk down the sidewalk of a busy highway with cars whipping by at the same speed, inches from you.
Why?
Because you know the car is being driven by someone with a mind. It's under control.
But when you live with autism, the world is just a bunch of boulders heading your way. You don't fundamentally comprehend there's 'mind' behind all the various sensory inputs and social cues coming your way. It can be too much.

"Circle? Good."

So you seek rationality, certainty. You look for something you can give an input, and get the exact input out again.
It allows you to cope. For us, Burger King centres him to the point where we can throw the rest of the scary, unknown, uncertain world at him for a few hours. So we go through the routine. Whopper, ketchup, fries, coke.
The boy has the burger down to the size of a silver dollar, he holds it with both hands. He examines it carefully, nibbles a small bump on one side. "Circle?"  he asks himself.
Not yet. Another bite here, another nibble here. Small imperfections in the mini-burger  eliminated.
"Circle? Good." he concludes, and pops the whole remnant in his mouth, takes a few bites, and swallows.
"Okay, you ready?" I ask. He nods. " Good, let's go."
I'm on a mission. The world's southernmost Starbucks is also in Invercargill. I have to order a coffee there.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Livin' like a Kiwi

"The wind in New Zealand is always in a hurry," the farmer says to us. "It doesn't blow around you, it blows through you."
It's been a cool spring in the south island of New Zealand. The locals grumble a lot, but take it as a given. They're happy when it's sunny and +15.
And so are we. We're living life like the locals, house-sitting a home with doves, parrots, cockateels, chickens, ducks, and dozens of wild birds.
It's cold in the morning. I get up, and stoke the coal-stove. Pick the thin skin of ice on the outdoor bird feeders. Feed the birds. Bring a jacket when we go out for the day.
House-sitting isn't travelling. Not really. Travel is really experience-from-a-distance. No matter how friendly you are to the locals, or if they bring you into their home for a local meal, at the end of the day, you go back to your hotel, or you're on the next boat, or plane. You take some photos, you swap Facebook addresses. You're in it, but you're not of it.
I take out the garbage on garbage day. I wander the aisles at the grocery store, or see what's in the local library. We watch local TV, and start catching the jokes, knowing the politician's names. We worry about the bylaw officer catching us letting the dogs run loose. Complain about dumb government rules. We pick up litter we see laying around. We start using local slang.

Thornley's OK, but Sim, what an asshole.

A few weeks later we're on the north island, caring for some dogs in farm country. We worry about possums getting into the trash. Wonder if we'll encounter a wild pig while we're walking the dogs through a neighbour's fields. We see flowering trees bloom, the grass turn browner day by day.
The neighbour, a dynamic, no-nonsense woman who tends 60 head of dairy cattle, becomes a friend. She has a horse named Pippa. One of the dogs we're taking care of is called Pepper.

We're talking one day about the animals, and there's some confusion wether we're talking about the dog or horse.
"Not Pippa," she says in her Kiwi accent, correcting us. "Pippa."
We now ask each other to pass the 'pippa' at dinnertime.
It's a fun, peaceful time of exploration for us. We travel the same roads, time and again. Get fed up with traffic, and learn when the best times are to avoid it. Find the cheapest store for meat, the most convenient one for a bottle of wine. The guy at the Internet shop shares some freeware with me, helps me clean up my hard drive. He's an ex-network technician, and is more web-savvy than any senior I've met.
The roads get easier to drive on. Right-hand steering, traffic circles, become second nature. We know where to get the cheapest gas, which parks have the best trails.
The guy at the video store recognizes us, lets us rent movies without ID.
We've been here three months. It's starting to feel a bit like home. Like we are Kiwis.
Then sooner than we want, it's time to go. The dogs look mournfully as the car pulls out of the yard. They saw us pack.
They know we won't be back.