Monday, August 24, 2015

Returning to New and Old Things

I enjoyed flying back over the Southern Alps covered in snow. What a lovely view of New Zealand.
What's been happening in the month since I returned from Australia...

In the Neighborhood


Construction finished on the new Pak N Save store next to the old one. The good news is we spotted insulation, so hopefully it was actually used! (Rare sight to see insulation in New Zealand.) We went to the old store on the final weekend -- of course they didn't advertise this the previous week lest people wait for the sale -- and it was almost bare because they had a 20% off everything in the store to try to clear the stock. It definitely worked, and we bought a bunch of extra items in preparation for holiday parties.

On our street, a couple more houses were demolished. No idea if and when these will be replaced.

At Home

Our landlords were nice and got us a new dishwasher without us asking when we mentioned that the spring had broken on our door so it would slam down. They are easily the nicest landlords we've had, and they said they can put off doing earthquake repairs for a few years if we want to stay.

Our car failed its every-6-months Warrant of Fitness (WOF) because two of the rotors were going. Getting new rotors and an oil change set us back a bit, but that's cars for you.

It snowed in August! It wasn't enough to stay for long, but it was fun to see it falling. The heat pump struggled mightily to keep working (again, they are not designed to work in freezing temperatures!) and the electricity bill for that day was almost $20. You can see how people end up with massive energy bills in the winter here. 








Our cat is really happy we are home. He likes impeding work and setting a poor example by lounging on blankets.

Healthwise

I picked up some kind of cold at the last conference, but it wasn't too bad and I was on the mend by the time we got back to New Zealand. Everyone else seemed to be getting sick though with either colds or flus. It is strange being sick in July since that is winter here. D got sick once and now is sick again with something else.

I went to a dental hygienist that a friend recommended and got a cleaning (called a scraping and polishing) for $80. They weren't as good as places in the U.S. and didn't seem to realize that you have the patient wrap their mouth on the suction tube occasionally so the saliva and water don't pool at the back of their throat and cause choking. Just a thought. The cleaning took a half-hour and I was on my way. Possibly couldn't help stopping at the only Wendy's in town that happened to be across the street to get two value Frosties...

We decided to finally buy a parking pass to be able to park on-campus because it was getting too cold to walk all the way from off-campus in the freezing cold and wind tunnel by the library. I have been enjoying this luxury a lot this winter.

Learning

Several dozen of the Arts postgrad students are taking a no-fee 10-week "tutor training course" designed to help us improve our tutoring and teaching skills. Some of us wish that the instructor were actually from the Arts and not the Sciences, but this is whom the university offered. I found it interesting when we were given the children's story Goldilocks for an activity that the story is not universal; then I began wondering what sorts of stories and fairy tales kids learn outside of the Western context and what messages we actually absorb from all of our early reading.

The Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Arts gave a presentation entitled "What if Studying the Arts were the Best Thing for the Economy?" where he, a music guy, lamented having to give these kinds of talks defending the Arts instead of ones celebrating all the great things about them. The good news is that at least in New Zealand, earnings potential and employment rates are pretty much the same for most Arts and STEM graduates after a few years.

I'm learning more about Digital Humanities at the new weekly seminar series on campus. When one presenter asked the audience if they knew what OCR was, and a group of middle-aged lecturers all answered no, it really reminded me why I want to push for basic digital literacy as a requirement for university students everywhere! It’s what runs our world; we should have some say in it. I did some informal polling among some of the postgrads on our floor and none of them knew what OCR was even though they've all benefited from it. I just assumed everyone knew. It stands for Optical Character Recognition and is when the computer converts an image of text into text that can be read by a computer and manipulated in a lot more ways. This happens when items are digitized and then the text becomes keyword-searchable, able to be copied and pasted, etc. If you have a picture of a text (like the page of a book), you might be able to read it, but you can't do much else with it because the information is locked in the image. OCR isn't always perfect -- it's very difficult to do this accurately with handwritten things, old manuscripts, and anything not standardized. The presenter also mentioned scanning images into 300dpi TIFF color files, and though he didn't ask this time, I'm pretty sure a sizable portion of the audience didn't know what he meant.

How I got away with it for this long I don't know, but I finally read Edward Said's Orientalism and it was really good and surprisingly readable and accessible. He wrote it in the 70s but it could almost be written today, so much of what he discussed regarding stereotypes about the Middle East are still used. I'm using his perspective for the journal article I am writing and it is perfect since there are a lot of references to Islamic and Arabic culture and practices in my text. I think Orientalism should be required reading at university level and our education system should actually teach students about non-Western areas of the world in modern times, not just in ancient history where it's "safe".

Public Speaking

I participated in the university's Thesis in Three competition where you boil down your research and why it's important in three minutes. I also convinced several other Arts postgrads to do it and use it for presentation practice. Unfortunately there is a bias toward Linguistics students who win every year (didn't know this going in) so none of us made it into the finals. It was nice learning about other research going on though.

I had the opportunity to help plan for and co-teach a session at the skills center for students with English as a Second Language, and it went well. They are so appreciative of the chance to practice their English with native speakers.

Making Change

After I discovered that I hadn't been invited to be a representative at the postgrad focus group that was set up because of my complaining about the lack of culture last year, I was finally invited and am getting the chance to air my complaints and propose solutions, as well as meet some of the postgrads around campus. On my wishlist is to have a holiday party with hand-mailed invitations (because getting another email is so easy to ignore). We'll see if that happens.

I was also given the opportunity to sit down with the newly-hired International Student Experience Advisor (I think the university is finally realizing there's a problem) and tell her all of my issues with being an international student. She is lovely and really wants to improve things if she can get some resources. (She's also been outside New Zealand so knows how things are supposed to work!)

Some of us went to the New Zealand International Film Festival's screening of She's Beautiful When She's Angry about the birth of the women's movement in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s. It was good, and fun to see older women being interviewed now about their past experiences and then have the scene jump to them back when they were in college and agitating for change. Putting faces and personalities to the big authors (Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, etc.) was cool.

Socially

The Alumni office invited me to go schmooze with alumni and donors at a party and I got a little peak into how the university positions itself to them. I met a couple interesting people and had a long discussion about what's wrong with New Zealand politics. It was great!

There's a new young lady from China in our postgrad room so I'm excited to learn more about her country from a female perspective. She seems really nice and not as shy as other international students. I also met my first person from Kazakhstan, and I'm having to put aside all the stereotypes from the movie Borat which is probably the only encounter most Americans have had with that country's name. It shows you the power of popular culture in shaping our perspectives.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Conference and Dessert

The conference at the University of Queensland went well, and the campus was really nice. One thing I didn't like at the conference dinner was the alternating plates, which apparently is a pretty common thing in Australia. So your meal could have been the chicken or the really rare lamb, and you don't get to choose unless you switch with your neighbor. And then, it was torture for dessert, because one plate was chocolate cake and the other was little meringue things. Um, you don't give one person chocolate without giving it to everyone else. 

Other things that happened during the week:

We couldn't help popping into the university used bookstore and buying four books, one of which had such a great title I couldn't help myself (Xinran's What the Chinese Don't Eat). We had a nice chat with the cashier about peanut butter and chocolate going together -- his family thinks it's gross -- and when we complained about jam and fillings always being in things in Australia (and New Zealand), he said they have a history of convicts, so of course they learned to hide things! It was a fun conversation. I have been impressed by how friendly and courteous the staff are at places in Australia compared to New Zealand.

On the last day of the conference, we went out for dinner with a group of students and conference organizers and got to discuss topics like student loans and healthcare in Australia. It's nice to get multiple perspectives. Then a small group of us went to get ice cream at Gelare and ended up talking for hours which was quite enjoyable. They had Belgian waffles on the menu with all kinds of combinations, but I was stuffed from dinner and couldn't get them. I was already planning on returning though in the few days remaining. As some of us were trying to make a case for some good science fiction books, movies, and TV shows, I discovered that sometimes people who say they don't like sci-fi haven't actually really read or seen much, if any, sci-fi. Or they read one book for a class and don't like it, so they write off the whole genre. 

We did go back to Gelare and got Oreo and Cinnamon Churro waffles. They were pretty much big sugar bombs, but it was the first waffle I had had since leaving the U.S. I resolved to get a waffle iron after returning to New Zealand. We also went to Chocolateria San Churro and got some churros with dark chocolate dipping sauce and a big piece of chocolate caramel cake which was very tasty. I knew it was my last chance to get good dessert!   



daytime downtown Brisbane

nighttime downtown Brisbane


Saturday, August 15, 2015

Downtown Brisbane



We had a day in downtown Brisbane, first visiting the Queensland Museum. I learned about the huge coal and cattle industry in this state of Australia, the golden bikini meter maids in Surfers Paradise (didn't remember seeing any), and some of the dinosaur fossils they’ve found here, including the only known record of a dinosaur stampede. 
how cool are these dinosaur and animal pillows?!
Next we walked across the Victoria Bridge to the Queens Street Mall. It was actually a bit difficult to find where it started, but we eventually did. We met with our host's family and had a drink (red creaming sarsaparilla) at the Red Cross Coffee Shop and then she took us to the City of Brisbane Museum which had some nice photos and paintings of Brisbane back in the day. We got really good gelato at Gelatissimo (macadamia caramel and peanut butter fudge).

City Hall had a beautiful interior room

psychedelic ceiling too!
cool contrast between old and new

Friday, August 14, 2015

Abbey Medieval Festival



We had a fun day at the Abbey Medieval Festival, advertised as the biggest annual medieval festival in Australia. It's a great concept for a museum fundraiser (supporting the Abbey Museum which is about an hour north of Brisbane). We arrived right as it opened so we could see the parade of all the reenactors, and then the rest of the day was spent walking around to the various booths, watching fights and archery tournaments, eating fried bread (cinnamon...mmm), going to the adjacent Abbey Museum (full of artifacts from most major civilizations for some reason), then getting our photos taken in medieval costume. D bought a fleur-de-lis pin for the upcoming conference and I bought a medieval magnet poetry sheet. The weather was quite windy early on, but it let up by the afternoon. It was cool seeing all the people dressed up in a variety of costumes and styles and learn some more about medieval times.



obligatory Magna Carta exhibit - it's the 800th anniversary so Australia & NZ are obsessed



Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Gold Coast and Springbrook Mountain



We drove down to the Gold Coast and went to Springbrook Mountain which was inland a bit. It was covered in rainforests with several waterfall lookouts within easy driving distance from little parking lots, as well as the "Best of All Lookout" at the top with great views of everything. It was a bit freezing when the fog was rolling through, but otherwise not too bad. On the way in, we stopped at the visitor information center and the old man guide told us what sights to see. He was perpetuating the koalas-are-drunk-because-of-eucalyptus-leaves myth, but we didn't correct him. 





 
view of Surfers Paradise from the park

When we had our lunch at a picnic bench, I took some "artistic" photos of my strawberries against the foliage. They must be in season somewhere in Australia because they have been on sale at every grocery store so I haven't been able to resist buying them. 
After the park we headed to the famous Surfers Paradise on the coast. It was like a smaller Vegas or Miami with huge skyscraper hotels lining the beach and lots of shopping and restaurants. We walked along the waterfront where there was a classics car show and then through the mall before driving back to Brisbane.





Sunday, August 9, 2015

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary



Last major animal excursion for the trip: Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane. It's a smaller wildlife center than the other ones we'd been to, but they had shows and demonstrations going every half hour or so which made it feel like there was a lot to do, and we actually ended up spending most of the day there. 

I really enjoyed the wild lorikeet feeding. The staff put solutions of nectar into little containers and we got to hold them up for the birds to land on. They were fierce, loud little creatures and gobbling up the food like a storm. Sometimes something would spook them and they would all fly away together and swoop back around in a loop. 


Next we went by the barn to see the baby chicks and guinea pigs and sheep and goats. They allowed little kids to hold the babies and they were so adorable! The chicks would cheep and the guinea pigs just sat there looking sad and not moving. I didn’t know they could stay so still. Afterward was the sheep dog and shearing presentation. The border collie was super fast and herded the sheep around the obstacles quite well. The other dog was used for rounding them in at the end to the enclosure. And then he could stand on top of the sheep to keep tabs on them. Seeing a sheep get sheared was an interesting experience. Poor sheep. 




We pet some kangaroos and took pictures of the wallabies that didn’t want to be touched. Then was the wildlife encounter with birds and a dingo, the birds of prey show which was fun because there were real, wild birds overhead (called kites) that were scaring the birds in the show, and a koala presentation where we learned some facts about koalas. We had to get the photo holding a koala -- at least the money is going to a good cause. It was heavier than I thought it would be and the smell of eucalyptus was quite strong (the trainer was feeding it leaves to keep it pacified). Finally, we saw the platypus and Tasmanian Devil presentations and checked out the rest of the animals. It started raining just as we were headed to the gift shop.