Luna Park

We stayed in Sydney for another week because of a conference. It's a good city to hang out in, definitely, and easy to get around because of the good public transportation. We saw Star Wars again in IMAX (world's biggest screen, couldn't resist) and went to the Museum of Sydney's Lego exhibit which was cool. We hadn't heard of Luna Park before seeing it recreated in Lego and decided to check it out on a later day. It is an amusement park on the other side of the harbor that has gone through all kinds of struggles and shut downs before being opened again due to popular support. 

We went to an opal shop that had a little museum area with lots of beautiful opals that have been discovered in Australia to redeem the 'free gift' coupon in one of the tourism books in the hotel, and sure enough, they took one look at our age and backpacks and ignored us (besides one offhand comment about our backpacks), even though I was interested in buying something. Loss for them. The guy behind the counter was so clearly not wanting to help us and just pulled out the lapel pins and was done. I find it really frustrating how people judge others -- especially in these kinds of stores -- based on what they look like. That's why we young people like to shop online!! They'll all be out of business likely anyway, so they can go on being rude if they want. I still got something free out of the deal.

 

 

 

Hiking, Hakas, Hail, and Star Wars

We've been to a couple new places around Christchurch recently. I also found out about a project called Christchurch 360 Trail that is working on a kind of hiking/biking trail around the city that goes into different kinds of terrain and can be broken off into chunks. Our walk in Bottle Lake Forest Park turned out to be more rocky than we hoped and is really more suited to biking than walking. Many of the trees are growing to be harvested, so the scenery wasn't that memorable.

Sumner Beach was pretty and the weather was nice.

  

I attended the annual Maori Graduation Celebration (Hui Whakahonore) which is a more intimate affair than the regular graduation (which takes place in a stadium with hundreds of graduates in multiple ceremonies), although Maori graduates also participate in the regular ceremony as well. The smaller setting allows Maori families to perform a haka if they wish when their graduate receives their certificate and pounamu, or greenstone, necklace. I had never seen a haka before, and it was a very unique and emotional experience. They originated as war dances but are now used for special occasions and ceremonies. Some people (mostly men) rhythmically stomped their feet and shouted, while other people sang or spoke to their graduate. You could feel the energy in the room and it was so much more than the mere clapping or whooping that I'm used to!

I have been doing Christmas baking and bringing a taste of American treats here, although I've had to make substitutions because some ingredients aren't available here (no Chex cereal!!). For a country with such a diverse group of people, the suggested Christmas desserts in the newspaper and ads seem limited to a couple items, and they like to put fruit in everything. The British influence is still trying to hold out I guess.

The big event lately has been the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII: The Force Awakens. We went to a midnight showing and being in New Zealand finally meant being ahead of the game -- it showed a day early here so with the time zone difference, we saw it almost two days ahead of everyone in the U.S. It was good and thankfully not the prequels. We did a marathon of the despecialized original trilogy beforehand so the references and nostalgia were nice and fresh. We will be seeing it again this week to catch what we missed the first time! We went to a bookshop that specializes in science fiction because I was looking for another copy of Dune to lend out to people I've been telling about it, and I ended up finding one copy buried underneath several boxes of not-yet-priced books, as well as a set of the Star Wars books (I already have these back home but wanted to re-read) and a dozen other science fiction books, many from the 70s so I can see what was popular at the time. I stumbled upon several Frank Herbert short story collections that I couldn't resist, even though I'm not researching those technically. The most interesting was probably the book subtitled Understanding American History Through Science Fiction which features short stories sorted by various social studies themes and discussion questions for students. 

The weather also unleashed one of the worst storms I have ever seen, with a massive hail storm that brought tons of hail and wind and thunder and lightning. It decimated a lot of our plants in the garden and elsewhere, with the leaves shot through with holes. When it cleared up the first time, I went out and poured warm water on the strawberries to melt some of the ice bath they were sitting in. Then another round of thunder and lightning and rain came later. Crazy weather here!

Queenstown

It was a beautiful, sunny day in Queenstown -- finally! We went on a 10:30am lake cruise (Lake Wakatipu) which was nice and relaxing. We had good views of the town and the mountains and a nice guide. One of the big brags for the lake is that it is 99.9% pure, so he pulled up a bucket and let us all try a glass. Have to say, pretty good. You certainly couldn't do that in the U.S.!  

We went to the underwater observatory which wasn’t much – a bunch of trout, eels, and diving ducks waiting around for someone to feed them. It was included in our lake tour, so that’s the only reason we went. 

Even though the sun was beating down, we took a walk around some of the lake and checked out the botanical gardens with lots of roses in bloom. Then we got Patagonia ice cream and headed back to the hostel to relax and read in the lounge. I really enjoyed that view. Since it was discount Tuesday at the movie theatre, we saw the third Hobbit movie again, but this time in 3-D and high-frame-rate. Not much of New Zealand in that movie, unfortunately -- mostly green screen digital effects.

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.

Jobs, Parties, Movie, and Meds

Jobs

We joined the ranks of the workforce this week, having both been accepted to be notetakers for the disability center on-campus. This is nice because you get to sit through a class in your field and take notes for students who are otherwise unable to take their notes. You get to learn and get paid for it. Not too bad a deal. We had to apply for an IRD (Internal Revenue Department) number at the post office, and it was a surprisingly easy task. The form was two pages long and just required copies of our passport and student ID. The lady processed the forms, gave us a receipt, and said to expect our numbers in the mail in about a week. What won't be so simple is figuring out all the tax stuff, but we'll just have to wait until the end of their year (March 30) to deal with that.

School

There were two holiday parties, one with some of the arts college's departments and the other with a small group of postgrads. Unfortunately, the first party suffered from the typical clique problem where each department's people just sat at their own table and didn't interact or leave room for anyone else. The second party was at a vegetarian restaurant which suffered from the dinner party problem where you may or may not be seated next to interesting people, and you never get the chance to talk to anyone from the other end of the table. Perhaps because the university has a small but growing animal studies research group, we have been encountering a large proportion of people working on animal rights-related topics and bringing them up in conversation. One lady was against the concept of pets and another was a vet who believed all vets should be vegans. I'll admit, hearing these new points of view has made me think more about humans and their relationships with animals than I did before.

With the new year just around the corner, I decided to ask the head of school for a meeting to discuss some of my frustrations at the lack of communication and events for postgrads in my department and others in the arts. This was the professor I met the first week I arrived whom I knew it would be advantageous to have talked with, and I was right. I felt comfortable going to him and we had a great meeting going over my concerns and coming up with solutions. As I suspected, he already knew a lot of what I was saying was happening, but it took someone speaking up about it to put it back as a priority on his huge to-do list to revitalize the school. I'm encouraged that the next few years will see the build-up of a strong postgrad community that supports us and reflects well on the school.

Home

We saw our first movie here, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, which came out ahead of the U.S. release for a change. On this side of town, the movie theater is actually reasonably priced at $10 a ticket, and the theater was very nice with stadium, comfortable plush seating. The weird thing was they have assigned seats - which we didn't realize - and someone came in and made us move because we were in their seats. This system makes sense to give an incentive to buy tickets in advance online so you can get the best seats, but it was ridiculous in the huge theater to have all of us bunched up together in the middle. We moved over one after the movie started to avoid a smelly guy - it's called a buffer seat people!

At the house, we had another visit by insurance inspectors. After about half an hour of walking around and making notes, one of them showed up on the porch wearing a haz-mat suit and told us that we should stay out of the house for the next hour while they collected samples from walls and ceilings. We said we really didn't want to leave for an hour, so they compromised and worked on one side of the house at a time with a door shut. (Hopefully they don't find anything hazardous!) So now there are masking-taped-up patches all over, as well as numbers in Sharpies so they can match photos to rooms. No care taken to make the holes in inconspicuous places - I don't think this would fly in the U.S.

generic aspirin was $2.59 for 20 300mg pills

brand-name naproxen sodium (Aleve) was $14.99 for 12 275mg pills 

We bought a 32" LCD TV at a garage sale for $100 which was a really good deal. Americans just need more than 1 television, I guess. A gift of fruit mince pies was given to us, and though I tried the raisin and apple-filled treats, they are just too sweet and weird tasting for my palate. I think you have to have grown up on them. Having to buy medicine for D since his back went out, I was reminded how expensive medicine is here and how I should have brought more with and wish someone had told me how crazy the prices are for even regular stuff like pain relief. Thankfully there are generic versions of aspirin and ibuprofen, but most other medicines and anything name-brand is at least $1 or more per pill.

Although not many people decorate for Christmas, there is a website where people can put their address if they do put up lights and want others to come see them. We drove about 10 minutes to a suburb with a lot of postings and saw several really nicely decorated houses. A couple even had signs saying come on in and see more, so we stopped at one and had a nice walk around the house full of lights, trees, ornaments, and other decorations. Definitely made me sad we couldn't bring any of our decorations with!