Roadtrip: Dunedin

Our week-long trip had enough stuff and photos to spread it out over a couple posts, so this one will be about our first stop, Dunedin.

Dunedin is the second-largest city on the South Island of New Zealand. It is supposed to be about 4.5 hours driving distance south of Christchurch. But...it was raining most of the way so I drove more slowly. I was very glad we got new tires put on before we left. We made it into the city too late to be able to do any of the things only open until 5 (because we got a late start out of Christchurch, having to drive our cat to the cattery on the other side of town), so we headed out to our Airbnb place to stay. It was our first Airbnb experience and it was a lovely home with a big, upgraded bathroom and kitchen. Our hosts were very friendly and their 9-month-old dog was nice, too.

Our host suggested going out to one of the beaches on the peninsula to see some sea lions. We saw two animals, either sea lions or fur seals. We also saw a bird with a long beak poking holes in the sand to find food for its two chicks. It started crying at us when we got too close. Afterward, we drove out to the end of the peninsula which is an albatross and penguin breeding colony. You have to fork over a lot for the tours, so we hung out with the large population of seagulls nearby instead. On our way back to the car, far away from the hoards of gulls we had just been around, one decided to target D and pooped on his head! I tried cleaning it off with a napkin, but it didn't help much and was so gross! After cleaning that up at home, we stayed up late chatting with our hosts about the city, our life so far in NZ, their kids who all live abroad, and eventually NZ and US politics. It seems to be a lot safer to do that here than in the US which is kinda nice.

not the guilty one :)

The next day, since the weather was still bad, we skipped the Larnach Castle and instead went on a Cadbury Factory tour. It was a 75-minute tour through the actual factory and we all had to wear hair nets and take out everything from our pockets and take off jewelry. I couldn't help but inwardly shake my head at the wall display as our energetic host explained the ingredients that make up their milk, dark, and white chocolate. I wish those were everything that was used! It was missing all of the additives and preservatives actually listed on the candy bars. Example: Sugar, Full Cream Milk, Glucose Syrup, Vegetable Fat, Butter, Cocoa Mass, Milk Solids, Cocoa Butter, Food Acid (331), Emulsifiers (Soya Lecithin, 471), Humectant (422), Salt, Flavours. May contain traces of Nuts. Ultimately, the New Zealand brand, Whittaker's, makes much better-tasting chocolate than Cadbury. It doesn't cut corners.

After an obligatory photo stop at the Dunedin Railway Station, the most photographed building in the country, we visited the Toitū Otago Settlers Museum which was a good, big museum (and free). I can't imagine trying to survive here after coming off a long boat journey. What a risk! We had a little time leftover before 5 to do some of the Otago Museum (also free) which is located next to Otago University, the oldest university in NZ. I enjoyed the section on the birth of modern conveniences -- they really are so relatively new in the history of the world.

leopard seal (the bad guy in Penguins of Madagascar)

Otago University's pretty architecture

Next we drove to the steepest public street in the world, Baldwin Street. Several other groups of people were also there, and some even climbed it! A couple enterprising homeowners had little shops run out of their houses on one side of the street with t-shirts and refreshments. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. We learned during the Cadbury tour that every year, 75,000 Jaffa balls (orange and chocolate balls) are released at the top of the street and the first 5 to make it to the bottom are winners. Charities get the proceeds from selling raffle tickets for the numbered balls. It sounded like a great fundraising idea.

The following day the weather cleared up so we got the nice harbor view from our place that I was hoping for. We took the high road on the peninsula with great views of the water. Then we were back on a two-lane highway to our next destination: Queenstown!

A Book A Day

Last week I had several instances of reading a book in a day, which was quite satisfactory. To procrastinate on working on my project proposal (wherein I have to outline everything I'm going to write about and provide a background to the topic), I started reading Ursula Le Guin's The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (1989) and continued the whole day until I finished it. Admittedly, I have not held her in very high esteem after I was let down by her classic The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). It just wasn't the groundbreaking feminist science fiction novel I was expecting, and her use of the male pronoun always bothered me. This book was a collection of 1970s essays as well prologues to her books, with her going back and providing commentary on them from her 1989 perspective. It gave me some good insight into her perspective on both the science fiction field as a whole, and her works as a part of it. I liked a lot of what she had to say about the genre, and she admitted that she later realized what a big deal it was that she used male pronouns and regretted it. So, I am looking forward to rereading that novel (checked it out of the library today) as well as her other ones from the 60s and 70s. They will undoubtedly be important novels to compare to Dune, and I'm hoping I will like them.

The next day, I read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895). Nice, quick science fiction with a tolerable frame narrative. Normally you forget the narrator is telling a story by the time you return to them, but this book is short enough that you don't.

The following day, I started with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845). It is supposed to be the closest to science fiction of his short stories. It was certainly an interesting premise (check it out for free from Project Gutenberg -- love stuff out of copyright!). Then I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), where three young men stumble upon a land populated only by women and girls. I found several similarities to Dune and marveled that she was writing this so far ahead of the "official" start of science fiction, especially with all of the attention to women's issues. It was great to see the men floundering when they were trying to explain how great their civilization was but kept having to avoid or explain away problems like poverty, crime, and diseases. Unfortunately, most of Gilman's critiques about society and gender still ring true today.

So I'm steadily working through my science fiction classics list. I moved it to a spreadsheet so I could sort it by year, and am trying to read in chronological order when possible to see the genre's evolution. Most of the books are available at either the university library or city library system, although some I might have to break down and buy elsewhere. It's difficult not to accumulate a sizable book collection here, especially working in academia, but I keep in mind the trip back home and how much paper weighs.

We watched Pixar's WALL-E movie and I was able to enjoy some of the references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have found that watching movies at different stages in life can render a new response and perspective on them. Maybe it's having more life experiences to compare them with. Just something I've noticed when rewatching movies that I haven't seen in a long time.

We've gone to the first two of the Lazy Sundays free concerts in the park to try to get out and enjoy the summer weather and some live music. Yesterday on our way there I picked up my first found money! A 10-cent piece on the sidewalk. Since they got rid of the penny and nickel, I guess people hold onto their change more carefully.

We took our car in today to get it tuned up ahead of our roadtrip down south. Oil change, new air filter, and new tires (spelled tyres here) since the old ones were almost bald and not very safe to drive on. Also got a wheel alignment and the tech commented on how off it was (it took them an extra half hour to fix). It's probably the first time it's been aligned in a long while. No word back on the check engine light problem, but otherwise it is ready to go. With gas dropping to 1.79/liter ($6.78/gallon) and the weather in the 70s, it's a good time for a summer vacation.