Earthquake, Pollution, Voting

It’s been a busy time lately, and New Zealand was once again on the international news with the 7.8 earthquake that devastated Kaikoura and also parts of Wellington. It was different from all of the other earthquakes I've felt here so far: over a minute of a gentle rocking, like being on a houseboat rather than in a house. It wasn't scary, although apparently the tsunami risk goes way up if a quake lasts for that long, and the evacuation plan for the coast is, well, not quite formulated very well. People ended up stranded for hours on a narrow peninsula and would have been engulfed if an actual tsunami had gone. Needless to say, residents over there are ticked.

I went to my first hui, which is the Maori term for a meeting, and that was an interesting experience where the topic was a very contentious political issue regarding children. I also went to a talk on freshwater pollution in New Zealand, which was very illuminating. New Zealand bills itself as clean and green but the reality is quite different. 74% of NZ freshwater fish are threatened or in decline and in a few decades there won't be any left. Plus, there is no protection under NZ law for them. 43% of NZ lakes are polluted and have too many nutrients (causing algal blooms). 67% of NZ waterways are polluted and the Canterbury region (which is where Christchurch is) has some of the highest rates worldwide of gastrointestinal disease. They're sobering statistics for sure.

algal bloom from report on freshwater in NZ

In the academic realm, I have gone back and forth on my thoughts on its function in today’s society. In discussions with some professionals outside of academia, I discovered that people outside the ivory tower have a surprisingly low opinion of academics. Their view was that many academics are the people who never left school, have little understanding of the ‘real world’, and couldn’t necessarily be successful having to work with other people in another job. They saw academics as more likely to be dysfunctional, which then explains why things like aspects like discrimination and backward-thinking still proliferate without much consequence. I have to say I’m starting to agree with some of this viewpoint, because of the resistance to change and lack of dialogue about critical issues that I have found this past year. Also, when I was helping tutor a student, I realized that they weren’t relating the book at all to their own life and struggles, and it occurred to me that we’re failing as educators (or the lecture system is failing) if they aren’t connecting what they’re reading and learning to their own life.

As part of this system, I had the opportunity to do several teaching sessions this year and experienced first-hand the issues with the lecture-style of teaching, because it is such a one-way, non-engaging style. It is still quite persuasive though, and allows you to shape others’ opinions. I also have been able to do more public speaking in front of hundreds of people, which I certainly wouldn’t have thought possible a few years ago. Practice definitely helps. I helped organize a conference and a different seminar and in the process found a great TED Talk on how technology distracts us. I keep coming back to it (especially his bit about how checking social media updates is like gambling) so I think it’s a good one.

Other things that have happened were good celebrations of Halloween and Thanksgiving with friends. Funnily, I put out candy on my office hour but the New Zealanders were largely too timid to take it while I was there, but then when I came back most of it was gone. In the U.S., that wouldn’t have lasted a week! At a weekend festival, I tried fried pumpkin for the first time and it was yummy. And finally, I voted via email for the first time and it was very easy, and I hope that in the future electronic voting can become more of a thing, because I think it would increase the percentage of people who actually partake in elections.

 

Dinner Party, Cold Weather, and End of Semester

Home

We had our first dinner party last weekend and it was a success. We made Mexican food since they don't have good Mexican food here: cheese enchiladas, refried beans, rice, and cheese dipping sauce for chips, then pumpkin bundt cake and chocolate-covered pretzels for dessert. Afterward, we played some board games and engaged in some movie debates about The Hobbit movies and upcoming sequels. One of our friends brought her friend who is back home in New Zealand for a brief visit -- he is in a doctoral program at a university on the East Coast so I asked him about how he is liking the U.S. He definitely likes having access to Amazon Prime and affordable shipping.

It is -1 C (30 F) in attic and 9 C (48 F) in house.

With temperatures plummeting, I invested in a thick winter comforter (duvet) that was on sale. It could be a half measure warmer, but it should work for the next couple years. It is a challenge to keep the house warmer than 40-50 F (8-10 C). I do not like being able to see my breath inside. I use the timers on the heat pumps to have both of them turn on an hour and a half before I wake up so the house is more bearable, around 60-64 F (16-18 C). Then it is an ice-box when we return home from school -- I miss having a programmable thermostat and central gas heating!! Power bill is hovering around $10-$12 a day, so easily $300+ a month for electricity, and that is with us not being here most of the time. It is hard to get used to this climate in these conditions.

My umbrella broke in a particularly fierce windy, rainy day, so I will have to get another one. The rain often comes in sideways though, so you still get soaked even with an umbrella or hoodie on. Our cat has been so cold he is sleeping under the bed covers, so I bought a microwavable pet warmer that a friend from the U.S. recommended. We are going to get him a pet bed to put it in. I know, he is quite spoiled.

School

The semester is now over, along with my tutorials. I have learned a lot in a short time about students and learning and having to deal with systems of education that don't always make sense. I accepted that students were not keeping up with the reading and prepared alternative sessions. For one session, we watched a half-hour movie called Flatland: The Movie (with Martin Sheen and Kristen Bell voicing the main characters) based off an early science fiction novel and discussed political systems and how open people really are to new ideas. It was surprisingly enjoyable. Knowing how things work now, I will hopefully be able to prepare better for future tutorials, although every group of students is different.

One of my fellow doctoral students and I gave an essay workshop one evening in the library based on the mistakes we saw on the first round of essays we graded. Since it is difficult to get students to come to anything, we considered it a success to have seven from both of our classes attend. It was partly for selfish reasons, to give us practice presenting and something to put on our resumes. But two of her students recently turned in an assignment and showed marked improvement in their structure and received the best grades out of dozens of their peers (assignment was graded by one of the "hard" grading lecturers). So that made us proud and like our time and energy was worth it.

I have agreed to help peer-review and edit articles for a new campus academic journal coming out online in a few months. Not that I have the time, but it will also help improve my resume...

I sat through over thirty oral presentations by Engineering students to give them a grade on their presentation skills. A lot of them needed work, but there were some really good presenters. I learned a lot about building materials, types of aggregates, lighter concrete with recycled PET plastic, insulation, and 3-D printers on Mars. I have to admit, these students have been showing up my arts students with the amount of eagerness, dedication, and willingness to work they bring to their education. I can't get my students to read a book, but several of these students were coming up to me for feedback and ways to improve. They really cared about how they were doing. My final conclusion is that making things for assessment/a grade is a powerful motivator for today's students.

Finally, I went to an interesting presentation by one of the History students on education reform in post-war Japan and Germany. I had no idea how much effort the U.S. went to in order to try to ensure these countries did not become militarized dictatorships again. It sent educators over there to rewrite textbooks and insert democracy and freedom ideas. And it seems that they were largely successful. It shows the power of education and its "indoctrination" aspects.

fall colors on the walk from our car to school

It's the Target dog! Made me miss Target stores...

This article was in a wellness magazine dropped off in our mailbox. 

They know the cold and damp are bad for our health!!

"Thanksgiving" Week

This week's theme was being aware of being international.

In order to keep my U.S. phone number, I switched it to a prepaid account and have to top it up every three months to keep it active even though I'm not actually using it (haven't turned it on since the first week I arrived). I tried to top it through the T-mobile website and that failed. I tried it again and it failed. I discovered it is free to call toll-free U.S. numbers through my Viber app, so I called the refill number which the online chat rep had advised and tried that way which failed. I called my credit card company to make sure it wasn't on their end. I then called T-mobile's customer service number and after three people and having to go through a credit card verification (which was the reason it was failing), it finally worked. So, the point of sharing this is to advertise the good news that while abroad, if you have internet access, you can call your credit card and other customer service companies for free through their toll-free numbers with the Viber app.

While we missed out on the Black Friday shopping experience, one of the Walmart-like stores here, Warehouse, which has a red logo, had a "Red Friday" 1-day sale on Friday. There were more people there than usual, but Warehouse hadn't quite learned the tactic of placing the deals throughout the store to force you to go through the store and decide to pick up other things. All of the deals were on pallets up at the front. So we grabbed the two folding tables we wanted, checked out, and were out of there in 15 minutes. Not too bad.

That evening, we went to our first Operation Friendship dinner for international students hosted by a local church at one of its member's houses. We also had to bring a wrapped gift for a gift exchange since it was the last one of the year. There was a sizable group - 45 - with international students from all over (Iran, India, Korea, Malaysia, Serbia) and older folks from the church. They encouraged mingling through a meet-as-many-people-as-you-can game. Dinner was a potluck of leftovers from someone's Thanksgiving party and other dishes like casseroles and vegetables. Dessert included chocolate cake and ice cream which I haven't had in a long time. I enjoyed meeting a variety of new people and had a somewhat intense conversation about U.S. immigration policies with a guy from India. He said it was good to get a different perspective than the media's.

This theme has been increasingly apparent as I realize how much we are all at the mercy of what gets reported in the news. I may be quite ignorant of a lot of what's happening in the rest of the world - especially since we aren't subscribing to a newspaper anymore - but most people know or at least think they know what's going on in the U.S. because certain stories make headlines. Yet I find that people's opinions are so often just based on a tiny snippet of information and nowhere near the whole story, or are missing a crucial opposing viewpoint, at least in terms of my perspective as it's my home country. This is good in a way because it forces me to reflect that this happens in reverse when I see media coverage of something happening in another country and think I have it figured out or form an opinion based on one article. It doesn't mean we can really help it, but it can help us keep an open mind when someone challenges our beliefs or opinions.

Saturday was the American Club's annual Thanksgiving party where they supplied the turkeys (super expensive here - $50-$70) and we all were supposed to bring a plate of food to share. I made pumpkin cheesecakes (gluten-free with some yummy hokey-pokey flavor cookies for the crust) in cupcake liners and they turned out great. We met up with the cool British couple and their kids whom we had met at the Halloween party last month. The guy even lent me a couple of his British science fiction books to check out. I let myself indulge a bit and got a big plateful of food and tried several desserts (pumpkin pie with whipped cream, warm berry pie with whipped cream, some kind of meringue-type cake, and a brownie).

notice how plain the picky eater's plate is

As I've been weeding the flower bed along the fence, I found that the massive dandelions were obscuring a bunch of strawberry plants with some ripe strawberries on them. Sweet! I picked a decent handful today before the critters can get to them. Free fruit is always a treat.

Tomorrow begins the last month of the year. December already!

uncovered strawberry plants