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.

Speaking Up, Cooking Classes, and Denny's

School

The postgraduate room at school where we go to research is quickly filling up with new students. Most of them are History master's students, a couple Art History. The semester starts next week, and even though postgraduates can start at any time, it makes sense that those continuing on from undergraduate and honours would be starting around this time. It should make for a more lively room.

I had a few hours of work last week for the Academic Skills Centre helping facilitate discussions for English-as-a-second-language students. The staff showed the first few minutes of a funny video on the history of the formation of the New Zealand accent (http://youtu.be/bV_UmOvV1vs). I have noticed the different vowel sounds. In the video they say that gradually the short "i" like in milk is turning into a short "u". They exaggerate it for comedic effect, but some people have sounded almost like that here.

I composed a short survey to send to postgrad students as part of my effort to build a better community and ran it by the professor I had the meeting with in December. He sent me back a really nice email saying that thanks to that meeting, he had made postgraduate support one of three strategic priorities for the year and was assigning someone to implement the Year of the Postgrad in 2015. How awesome is that! I figured he was working on things behind the scenes, so it is really nice to know that my speaking out was worthwhile. I also spent some time last week emailing an academic science fiction association in the U.S. about how it really needs to do more to support postgraduates and get with the times in terms of Facebook groups, organizing helpful materials, and attracting the younger generation of scholars. We all know how institutions that can't keep up end up fading away.

Food

I've completed two classes of the four-session cooking class I signed up for through a community center. In the first one, we made Osso Buco (beef stew with red wine and tomatoes) and Pan-fried Tofu. This was my first time having tofu. It wasn't too bad. Kind of a strange texture unlike anything else. The stew was a bit too sweet for my liking, but it was my first time cooking with wine, so I think I'll try experimenting a bit more with that. In the second class, we made fried noodles with bok choy and spring onions and steamed chicken with shitake mushrooms. All the vegetables were new to me, and I am proud to say I tried all of them and even actually liked the mushrooms! They weren't as mushy as the little ones that are normally dumped in food, although they still look weird. The teacher is from Malaysia, so she knows how to make good Asian food with the right sauce combinations.

We finally found a cheaper restaurant option here, and it is good old Denny's, classic American diner. It is celebrating 25 years in New Zealand this year, although the Christchurch one just opened recently. It has the usual items like pancakes, French toast, omelettes, skillets, and sandwiches. No waffles though! They are not as big into waffles here for some reason. We both ordered French Toast and then chocolate peanut butter lava cake with ice cream and whipped cream, and hot fudge cake with ice cream and whipped cream. Needless to say, we were stuffed. No tipping required, and we were on our way. This kind of American dessert contrasts so much with the Chinese dessert of "pumpkin cake" we ordered at a Chinese restaurant that we could only take a bite of: sesame seed-covered pumpkin shells filled with black bean curd. Not what we were expecting to say the least. We wondered how many other people ordered that not knowing what it would be.