Pavlova Paradise and Chinese Lantern Festival

I've been having several spurts of entrepreneurial activity and thinking and trying to pass it along to others whom it might help, and it really is infectious. I don't think the students who hole up in their rooms or in the library and don't interact much with anyone else quite understand that they are missing out on all kinds of valuable learning experiences. To me, going to university is about so much more than studying and writing papers and passing tests: it is one of the only times you will be in an environment packed with learning opportunities (visiting professors and businesspeople, like-minded and un-like-minded peers) where you have the time and energy to do deep thinking and wrestle out ideas with others, to have people disagree with you and force you to defend yourself or change to adapt to new information. Plodding along is certainly one way of going to college, but such a poor experience and value for your money compared to really taking advantage of so many resources in one place.

On that note, several of us attended a public lecture by Austin Mitchell, who is famous for writing The Half Gallon Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise in 1972, which is a satirical look at New Zealand culture, and then a sequel called Pavlova Paradise Revisited in 2002. It was so heartening to see the lecture theater packed out. I arrived late because of getting off work late and had to sit in the sound booth room at the back crushed with a bunch of other latecomers. Mitchell is British but spent some time in New Zealand as a lecturer in history and sociology. He had a great character and captivated the audience. After discussing some of the disturbing trends since the 1980s deregulation and privatization, he ended by saying that New Zealand should use its small size to its advantage, not to be anti-intellectual but to push for using things like television and documentaries to educate its populace and make positive change. He inspired me to want to read his books, and it was heartening to hear that New Zealand used to be better even if it has declined since the mid 20th century. He challenged academics to get out in the public eye and not just write articles that few will read, which is something I have been thinking a lot about, especially with Digital Humanities' call for open access rather than pay-walled content available only to the privileged. Afterward, there was a hang-out where they gave everyone free pavlova (like an airier angel food cake) and we continued the intellectual discussion with our friends. To me, that evening was the stuff universities should be made of and encouraging. 

At the university's clubs day, I met several American students here on exchange, and it was fun talking about U.S. politics (more commiserating) and explaining some things about New Zealand. I like the immediate sense of camaraderie I can establish with most other American students here. You already have something in common and can launch into almost any topic without hesitation. It makes me feel old hat since I've been here for over a year. I also met a Canadian recently and we got along immediately.

We gave up on trying to mow the lawn ourselves and paid a lawn-mowing guy who left his business card in our mailbox to decimate it and trim around all of the overgrown edges. One of the best uses of $30 I've spent. It was done so fast and saved us a bunch of time and back-breaking work. I can't believe how much time, energy, and money people who have lawns spend to maintain them. When the water supply goes, I hope lawns will too. Xeriscaping is easier for everyone!



The Chinese Lantern Festival in Hagley Park turned out to be way more popular than the organizers anticipated. It was the most crowded event we've been to here, and a later newspaper article said it had 30,000-50,000 people (anticipated 20,000) over the two nights it ran. We met up with our Chinese friends and I suggested some business ideas they might want to look into beyond fighting for the few spots in academia, which excited them. It was hard to see the stage from the way back where we were, but we could hear the drums and the famous Chinese rock band, and then there were fireworks at the end. The lanterns in and around the trees were cool, too.

 

 

 

Rigid Systems

Health

I received a care package from home (yay Chex Mix!), but unfortunately it was intercepted by MedSafe and they confiscated some of the supplements inside because New Zealand's nanny-state health system requires a prescription for them. In the U.S., melatonin is a sleep aid and sold as a supplement. The letter gives you 30 days to get a legitimate prescription from a doctor (and if you have more than a 3-month supply, the doctor has to take anything over 3 months' worth and dole them out to you gradually) or they destroy them. The letter tries to convince you how bad it is to order drugs online because they could be harmful. I really don't like the health care system here. Also just found out that the junky student health insurance they sell us is really only intended as a travel insurance, so that's why it doesn't cover anything. The government discontinued students getting onto the good health insurance in 2011 apparently.

My Presentations

I had my one-year confirmation oral presentation with my supervisors, a moderator from the department, and a friend who wanted to come along. I'm glad she did because then I could complain about it afterward with someone who had been there. It wasn't too bad, but I get frustrated at constantly being told I haven't include this, that, and the other French theorist for some point, and how the paper won't pass if I don't include them. Research has gotten so bogged down in these theory fads; it used to be psychoanalysis, but of course that went out of vogue. Now it's poststructuralism, but that too will pass eventually. It seems to become more about pleasing others than making a good, original contribution to the field that is accessible to not just a minority.

One of my former students invited me to give a lecture to the public downtown for International Parking Day, where people buy a parking spot and protest cities being made for cars instead of people by setting up alternate things in the parking spot (like a living room set or a table with leaflets and hands-on activities). There weren't too many passers-by in the early afternoon, but I still got a chance to practice presenting and time myself on my Digital Humanities presentations. We had some good conversations before and after about education and travel, so it was a nice experience.

Got to meet the cutest white German Shepherd walking by!

 Others' Presentations

There continue to be interesting presentations that fill me up with all kinds of ideas. It's what I am enjoying most about being back in school. One of the Digital Humanities ones was on the shift from product-based capitalism to financial capitalism where people make money off of money and digital things like data. Basically, we're giving away our data for free when we use social media and other apps that harvest our data and sell it to advertisers. It's digital sharecropping and we should be cautious about further enriching the .0001% (Google, Facebook, etc.). Hard to disagree that we're being taken advantage of.

Peter Singer, who helped start the animal rights movement in the 70s, was in town speaking on effective altruism, utilitarianism, and rationalism. He believes that people should give their money away to charities and places where it will make the most impact, so like to African charities that provide very low-cost mosquito nets to combat malaria. He says saving more people is better than saving fewer, even if that means not helping people in your community because the money will make more of a difference to really impoverished people. He specifically called out things like walk-a-thons that require a lot of people's time that might be better spent working and earning money that could then be given away. But some people do things for the psychological benefit and so aren't being as altruistic as they could be. It was an intriguing talk with some good audience questions afterward.

An Emeritus Professor of Political Science gave a lecture on throwing out the political science canon (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) because it limits people's perspectives and the ability to make new connections. He said there is no reason we need to keep reading these men's works as if they are the only way of looking at political issues and motivations. I had to agree with him, more in the context of my own field (see above on my confirmation) where a handful of theorists now dominate the perspective one can take when critically examining literature. But the only reason he can say this is because he's retired and has the freedom to challenge the canon.

Diane Foreman is one of the most successful women in the Asia-Pacific region, and the university's entrepreneurship program invited her to give a talk on her successful business career. I had just read about her in a magazine my friend gave to me so some of the information was repeated, but it was cool to hear about some of her business experiences and how she thinks of herself as a capitalist feminist. She believes in treating her employees well and incentivizing them to do better, which has been missing in a lot of my former workplaces. She also talked about the issue with selling time, a point raised in the magazine article. Kids are encouraged to grow up and enter the professions: doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. But the problem with these pathways is that you can only make money by selling your time. You might bill out at $1,000 an hour, but you aren't making money without billable hours. As a business owner, though, you can make money without having to physically be at your business. You aren't at the mercy of needing others to pay you for your time. She said we should be encouraging kids who have the entrepreneurial spirit to become business owners. I would add that we should be teaching basic business and financial skills to everyone, so even those with Art and Science backgrounds can go into business if they desire. 

The second annual university Feminist Society day conference went well, and I learned some interesting things, including some scary facts about how radicalization is affecting kids and women in the Middle East. There are no easy answers.

 Education

My friend recommended a TV show where several Chinese teachers go to a British school and teach the kids in the "Chinese method" for 3 weeks and see if it is more effective than the British method of teaching. He thought I would be against the Chinese method because it is so rigid and involves 10-12 hours of school per day, but I told him that I had a similarly rigid method of teaching at some points in my education and am all for it. I didn't know how many hours Chinese kids go to school though. He said in junior high and onward, they are constantly at school or at home studying; they have very little free time. Everything is geared toward passing exams to get into a good college. [The BBC documentary was called Are Our Kids Tough Enough? I watched it on YouTube, but it has since been removed for copyright complaints from BBC. It might be available elsewhere.]

Speaking of education, the more I learn about the NCEA high school education system here, the more concerned I am for this country. I had to help a student who is constantly being marked down for his bad grammar and punctuation and said he has a tendency to write long sentences that are incorrect; when I asked him if he knew how sentences work (with a subject and verb and stuff like that), he gave me the saddest face and shook his head and said no, he didn't. Where do you even go with that? It's incredibly difficult to try to explain why something is grammatically incorrect if they don't know the parts of speech and how sentences fit together with punctuation. I learned from the Chinese vs. British show that the UK stopped teaching grammar in the 60s, so I assume that carried over to New Zealand as well. I know some schools still do it, but it's probably only the good ones. I'm hoping the U.S. hasn't given up on grammar; I know they were still teaching it when I went through.

When students here try to apply to PhD programs in the U.S., they are completely intimidated by the GRE tests since they don't have to take anything like the SAT or ACT to get into college. If they don't pass their high school classes here, they can wait until they turn 20 and get in without any requirement. And since there are a lot fewer requirements for what they take in high school, the last time they took a math class might have been junior high! I would venture the rate of doing well on those kinds of tests is not very high; they're hard enough for those of us who've been conditioned to the standardized test system!

Spring is finally coming!

At 1-Year Mark of Living in New Zealand

I've passed the 1-year mark of living in New Zealand. My, how time flies.

I have my confirmation presentation this week. Technically, you are not officially confirmed in your PhD studies until you have passed this oral and written report stage. Since I seem to be the first person in my department to go through the new process, they don't really know what's supposed to happen, so I don't know what to prepare and am not really worried about it. When it comes to New Zealand and international students, it needs us more than we need it!

The Arts Tutor Training class had been interesting the past couple weeks. We learned about issues around assessment and how often it doesn't match learning outcomes. Our teacher recommended "backward engineering" a course, where you look at what you want the students to get out of it by the end and put in content and assessment that will help them get there, rather than just stuffing as much content in as you can. I can see the temptation to try to impart a lot of information, especially if it's a subject you are passionate about, but the reality is you can only get across so much in a semester. Quality over quantity, pretty much. One of my friends missed class so I was filling him in afterward, and he had never considered why traditional essays might not be the best way to measure learning in a class, so I'm glad I was able to bring up something for him to think about. I know I have been pondering this for months since that Teaching Week session on the ineffectiveness of traditional lectures!

I experienced my first bad lecture here with the "What If Computers Could Save Lives" public lecture by the head of the supercomputer at the university. It was frustrating because on a campus that has been continually cutting funding to the Arts, he basically appropriated all kinds of philosophical questions about big data and technology and ended with scaremongering and warning us to be wary of robots taking over. He also used old science fiction (Isaac Asimov and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey) and never once mentioned the term nor gave credit to the fact that Arts people have been discussing these issues for quite some time, and maybe his poorly-researched talk would have benefited from some of their input, or perhaps he should have stuck to what he is an expert in and that actually would have been a lot more interesting than a scare session to a largely aging audience. (His actual research is on analyzing brain pathology using math and computer models.) I don't think it did the university any favors.

The new Digital Humanities seminar series is really interesting. Last one was on the internationally-used program LaBB-CAT (Language, Brain, and Behavior Corpus Analysis Tool) designed by researchers here and how it can analyze and mark up audio files a lot faster than doing it by hand. What used to take a researcher years -- going through audio files and listening for language changes and patterns -- can be done by the program in a day. The current research is on the New Zealand English vowel shift, where the second-generation New Zealand settlers began pronouncing their vowels differently from what they heard from their British/Scottish parents. Fortunately for linguists, a group of people in the 1940s went around the country with a van and a microphone and recorded people talking about their early lives, and some of these people had been born around 1850 and were the first people to learn English here. Many visitors and expats know about the vowel shift, because it is sometimes difficult to understand people even when they are speaking clearly because the vowels are pronounced so differently.

Sample image of LaBB-CAT from the website

I've been continuing to learn a lot about all sorts of topics. I created two websites in WordPress over the weekend and remembered how much time web development takes. It didn't help that years ago Google had converted their old Google Sites to "legacy sites" so I didn't have Super Admin privileges to be able to make some changes on the site I was migrating. And it took a couple hours to figure out why things weren't working, because every time you try to Google something that Google no longer thinks is important, you end up wading through all of their new Help forums that don't answer your question. Thanks Google.

I found an awesome book on world-building in science fiction and fantasy called Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. It includes media beyond books and movies too, like radio and video games, and was so interesting, I ended up reading most of it and finding a ton of good quotes for my research. Lots of Star Wars in there, too, although it came out before Disney took over the franchise so some of the information on the canon is out of date. 

I learned about life in the Chinese countryside and how birthdays aren't usually celebrated in China, which made me sad. I told my Chinese friends that I would make them a cake next year so we can have a Western celebration. They find it interesting that we make such a big deal about them. It's really through these kinds of conversations that you realize how much you think is normal is a product of your culture and what other people have passed on to you. Also, apparently karaoke is really big in China and there's a place here near the university that some students go to, so that might be on the radar for me to visit in the next year. Another friend taught in Japan for a while and was telling us about the strict education system and the high suicide rates there, which I didn't know about.

At home, I got some kind of black scuff marks all over my down jacket which I wear every day, tried to get them out with soap, mostly succeeded, then made the mistake of hanging it out on the clothes line after it had rained, and it got green spots all over it from the moss/plant residue runoff from the roof over the clothes line. These are times I shake my fist at New Zealand. 

Although many things are expensive, I had to take a picture of the price per kg of peppers at the grocery store, because it just doesn't seem to make sense for things like this to have the price per kg -- it makes it look outrageously expensive. Spring is officially here, so once the weather warms up, it will be time to start up our pepper factory again so we don't have to pay so much for the bottled ones.

Tutorials and Popular Art

It is possible I have taken on too many jobs, partly because of the last-minuteness of planning in New Zealand so that I didn't know for sure if I would have the tutoring one which takes the most time until right before classes started, and partly because I have trouble saying no to new opportunities (and more income). I am up to six now, though some of them are just for a short, fixed period of time and others will be in bursts when papers are turned in for grading. This will be a test semester to see how everything goes.

Meanwhile, I survived my first two tutorials! I was nervous but it wasn't too bad and after the hardest part -- starting the class and having everyone look at you for leadership -- it was mostly just prompting discussion through questions. The first group took longer on the questions so I had to rush at the end, but I still had time to give them the recent news article on human head transplants only being two years away and relate it to Frankenstein's relevance today, almost two hundred years after its publication. The second group was in a smaller room actually meant for that kind of small group which does make a difference in the atmosphere, and they were more active. I have so much more appreciation for the prep work that teachers do and the energy it takes to be that person in the room that everyone is expecting to lead them. I think the nervousness will diminish over time as I get more comfortable with the role and the groups feel more comfortable discussing and asking questions. You are so thankful for the contributors because they make the job that much easier. It is a unique position being the one in the room with more knowledge and experience, and I enjoy that power and ability to guide their thinking and questioning into certain directions. Sometimes they make the leap themselves, but other times you have to tease it out. It is odd that it has taken this long to have the opportunity to lead a classroom, after going down a degree path that points that direction in most cases. But I have to say, getting to discuss and write about literature for a living has to be a good gig. Probably why professors rank so highly on the job happiness scale!

I had a meeting with two women executives from the Canterbury Women's Club on the startup of the postgraduate network group. They were eager to hear my ideas, and we settled on a monthly meeting on-campus where a few women would give a brief overview of their research and then a woman speaker in the workforce would share her experience. The idea is to build a network and practice skills like presenting, mingling, and preparing for life after the degree. I hope everything goes well and is successful. If I decide to stay on in New Zealand after completing my degree, networks like this will be useful in finding employment.

My literature class had another good lecture which related some to my project. The lecturer was talking about the importance of studying both "high" art (like James Joyce and Picasso) and "low" or popular art, because just like now, people interacted with and consumed both types. He said, Wouldn't you want to look at what 95% of people were reading or watching? This relates to science fiction because until recently it was not seen as worthy of study in academia. Thanks to a generation of people fighting for it to be recognized, and the acknowledgment that studying popular culture is important too, it is now generally accepted at most schools as an appropriate topic for serious academic study. In my view, what we read and watch has a big role in our socialization, so it absolutely makes sense to critically analyze and engage with the culture we live in (or used to live in).

First Week of School

The first week of school went by quickly. My note-taking job involves sitting in on two classes each week and typing notes out. One is a law class where I will learn about New Zealand's common law system (it is one of the few countries without a written constitution, taking after Britain), and the other is a political science class on international relations. I especially enjoy hearing the U.S. get mentioned as a passing reference rather than being the whole focus of everything!

I attended the first lecture for the class I will be tutoring for, a literature class dealing with themes of science and technology (a science fiction class in disguise, essentially). Having never taken an SF class before, I am very glad to be able to take this one (technically being paid to take it as it's part of my tutoring contract) and both learn a lot and pay attention to the teaching and preparation side of things. The first day focused on the science vs. arts debate and whether or not there is actually a huge difference or if they have more in common than we've been led to believe. Less than one hundred years ago, the arts were considered to be the higher-ranked field of study, if you can believe it. (This is why it's important to learn history, folks!)

One of the co-lecturers for the class is in charge of the Digital Humanities at the school, and I asked him several questions about it since I haven't been exposed to that before. It sounds really interesting -- instead of rejecting all of today's technology and the internet, Digital Humanities seeks to bring these things together with the fields in the humanities. One benefit is to be able to comment and critique in the space where people are at nowadays (online) and likely bring back the funding that has been lost to more "practical" fields. Examples include analyzing the algorithms that Facebook uses to show items on its News Feeds, using a computer to search through and sort all of the digital information (emails, documents) related to a study of a politician's time in office, or scanning copies of old, fragile manuscripts and making them clickable with links to historical information. I told the lecturer about my background in web development and he said it would be a good asset for future job hunting to have some Digital Humanities experience. A few days later, he emailed to tell me that the department has some funding for someone to help update that section of the website if I were interested. Sweet!

I went to a postgrad presentation on whether or not brass instrument players' native language affects their tongue movements and the tones of the music. Very interesting and an under-researched area of music production. I also signed up for a couple clubs at the big Clubs Day; we'll see how that goes. They are mostly geared toward undergrads, but there are quite a few postgrads who join as well. The closest to my area they have is the Linguistics Society, then there's the Science Fiction & Fantasy Society, and the United Nations for Youth which I'm hoping is similar to Model UN in the U.S.

At our second Operation Friendship dinner for international students, I admit that after meeting a young lady from Italy and commenting on her lovely accent, I asked if she knew how to cook Italian food. Of course! she said. Fortunately, she's the one who asked for my email address and wanted to hang out in the future, so I didn't have to admit that I would love to hang out and have some homemade Italian food! Everyone had fun playing the card game "Spoons" which I hadn't played in a long time, and I made it through the whole round without ever missing out on a spoon.

In my last two cooking classes, we made braised pork, butter chicken, and Garam Masala fish; then curry chicken, fried rice, steak, wontons, and dumplings. The class wasn't what I expected, but I have learned some things and hopefully will be able to practice them in the coming weeks and months.

First Week of Work and Beware of Tomato Sauce

 First Week "Working" at School

Although working at home can be great, it can also be a curse and let time blob into expanses where seemingly nothing gets done. The postgrad seminars recommended trying to make a distinction between study and leisure time to let yourself not feel guilty all the time and to help keep the internet surfing at bay. So we went to school every day this week as if it were a regular work week and it seemed to work out pretty well. Once you're at your desk at your computer with all of your books surrounding you, it's harder to ignore the fact that you need to be working. Therefore, I felt very productive this week getting all of my quotes and notes entered in and catching up on a lot of admin things online. My to-do list is now enormous, but at least it's written out and able to be tackled. I also finished my first "old-school" SF book, one of the classics, Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

On Wednesday, a distinguished Cambridge professor, Dr. Anthony Hopkins, gave a lecture on the American Empire and argued that the U.S. did indeed have an empire much like the other European nations and that it is not right that historians, and especially U.S. historians, neglect discussing and analyzing the period 1898 to World War II as a period of American empire. It was a quite interesting argument and certainly shows how what Americans learn about their country is skewed in favor of the "independence and freedom" master narrative. He said that, contrary to the U.S. being extraordinary, it was a colony like other colonies and took about 100 years to shake off its colonial past, and only after that could it really be called independent and able to start amassing territory for itself (like the Philippines and Puerto Rico). Among other things, he also said that it was a mistake to keep referring to an American Empire today, because despite U.S. military might and cultural influence, the U.S. does not know how to effectively use that power globally (via wars, diplomacy, etc.) and it cannot claim to have the same power that, say, the British Empire once had in the world. It was well-argued (though perhaps hard to take it all in) and I wouldn't mind reading his final published book when it comes out.

Food

After the lecture, we went out to dinner with the professor, host lecturer, and several students. It was our first time in a Vietnamese restaurant but ended up being very similar to Chinese food. Everyone else was going to get a set menu for $30 a person, but we said we would prefer to order our own meals so the table got the set menu of $26 a person and D ordered crispy chicken ($8) and I ordered beef fried rice ($12). Our dishes were plenty of food and affordable, although the set menu price would have been the minimum at a typical non-Asian restaurant here. The only reason we can see that restaurant prices are so high is that minimum wage is so much more than we are used to (and probably food costs). Yet Asian restaurants are the most affordable. It is uncomfortable to have to discuss in front of everyone that you don't want to pay $30 for a meal because a) you can't afford it (or even if you could, you would rather spend it on something else) and b) you wouldn't eat most of the things anyway. But you do what you have to do and so we had an enjoyable evening and the professor and I complained about everything wrong with the U.S. and it was so refreshing to discuss politics with an intelligent British person.

I had my first ripe strawberry from my plant (after the actual first one was eaten by something else) and it was good! Can't wait for more. I also bought a bag of golden kiwis from a farmer's market and can't believe I never knew how delicious they are. I also bought green kiwis and they are good but not as good as the golden ones (plus, you can eat the skin of the golden ones). Highly recommend!

Word of warning about tomato sauce here: I bought a can of tomato sauce to use in a recipe, and it turns out that their tomato sauce is almost identical to ketchup. My food tasted way too sweet and we looked it up and found that you have to buy tomato paste instead. Bummer.

Hiking

I know, I know - we haven't been enjoying New Zealand's outdoors like we should. So I insisted we do a hike this weekend and start getting into the routine. We went on the Rapaki Track in the Port Hills for about an hour and a half round-trip. It was all uphill until we turned around, but it's lambing season so we saw lots of sheep and lambs and heard them bleating to one another. Some cows watched us lazily from the other side of the fence.