Magik | Takapuna
“Hi, I’m Magik, and I’m from Takapuna. I grew up in Hawke’s Bay, stayed out West Auckland in Avondale a lot of my life, and then moved out to the Shore. I’m currently a chef, and I work in Takapuna at an Italian restaurant.
I’m studying CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as a diploma, and there’s a lot of other little side projects that I do, as well, but yeah, that’s me.
Personally, well for me, I don’t like to be too comfortable. Just feels if you’re too comfortable in this world, you’re getting lazy, you need that challenge. You need to keep going. Like I guess you could call myself a stress addict. You’re just thrown into this world. You’ve got a set of rules. You’ve got to live by them, and if you don’t live by them, then you might end up in places you don’t want to be. That’s just the way it is, and you’ve got to adapt because otherwise, you’re going to fall behind.
Becoming a chef, I just got a job doing kitchen-hand and just stuck to it. It’s not really a qualification that I got. It’s more of an experience. I can just walk into a restaurant and tell them that I’ve got this and they can pick up exactly what I’ve got. I don’t need a piece of paper. I worked as a kitchen-hand for six months to eight months, and they saw potential. They basically just said; hey do you want to work as a chef, learn to be a chef? I said, yes. I’ve been there ever since, cheffing. I’ve been to other restaurants as well, but that’s been my main restaurant.
I come from a rough background. I have a lot of history with being homeless in Auckland City, gangs, drugs, alcohol, the lot of it. Just family. Most of it’s a family-orientated environment. I guess bravery is just holding on. There’s a lot I hate to really talk about, but suicide rates, you know, is really, it’s showing a lot. There’s got to be something done about it. But you can see that a lot of it’s just trying to hold on, and just staying alive, you could actually look at that as being brave. I’ve been in situations where you just really didn’t want to be alive, but there’s that little light and you have to just keep going, keep going, keep going. Things are going to get better. Eventually, it does, you know? Sometimes you’ve just got to stand in the rain, and then, boom the sun comes out.”
