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Mon, 28 May 2007
I've been procrastinating about gardening, but we had quite a lot of rain today, which eased off in the evening so I went out to attack the Chinese Elm in the driveway.
Chinese Elm is the most evil weed I think I've ever encountered. It can do a lawn-like coverage of little shoots with pretty little leaves, and pretty little flowers, within months. And yet, as the name might hint, each of those little plants has ambitions to become a tree.
I think my dad had a go at the driveway during the winter, because a lot of the little plantlets were clearly multiple shoots after the original shoot had been chopped off, leaving the root. This was why I'd been waiting for rain, so I had some chance of getting roots out.
I feel confident there's now more Chinese Elm out of the driveway than in it, although casual passers-by might not realise there'd been any attempt to remove it. I also have a charming blister which is obviously where I grip around the root with my right hand. (I'm not ambidextrous, I have a preferred hand for most things, but which hand varies.)
My plan is to get most of the rest of it out, or at least under control and amenable to short bursts of weeding, over the next two weeks. Because I have planted some nasturtiums in the driveway and that's when the shoots are due to appear. Eventually I hope they'll be doing enough ground covering that the Chinese Elm can't win back.
Today is the birthday of Trevor, one of my closest friends. He died almost two years ago, but I don't think I've fully come to terms with it. That's partly because our friendship was largely conducted via email, so it could be rather intermittent. There's a part of my brain that just thinks I haven't heard from him in a while, and I don't know how it might change to understanding I won't hear from him again.
The part of my brain responsible for reminding me that I haven't written to him for a while is much more up to speed with how things are. I know I was a lousy correspondent at times, but it seems I had enough good intentions often enough that they now understand they're not really needed any more.
I've been thinking about having a blog for quite a long time, it just took a lot of coordination between James and myself before I could actually start posting. I'm pretty sure that part of my desire for a blog was related to those good intentions, and not writing email to Trevor anymore.
So far, I think blogging is a slightly better medium for me than email - I can write short posts when I think of something, rather than saving up the energy to get through all the stuff Trevor and I were talking about (we had long emails, that sometimes fragmented into multiple threads, which proceeded to grow in length).
On the positive side, if there's any Trevor out there, I assume he can read my blog more easily than stuff in my head I think I'd enjoy writing an email to Trevor about. On the negative side, I'm not getting any feedback from him.
On the other hand, not everything in my blog would be interesting to Trevor, and he's the type who would have left detailed feedback on my spelling, grammar, and any failure in conveying the important aspects of the subject, for each post. I know I'd also get positive comments when he thought I got something right, and if I had part of the story, and he knew the rest, he'd tell it, in extensive and entertaining detail.
I miss Trevor, and I know his family misses him. And if my blog had existed prior to his death, and had comments enabled, I think all my other blog readers would come to miss him too.
One of the major reasons I've not been writing much recently is that I got married last weekend. Some additional reasons included that I started a new job a month ago, and I came down with some flu/cold-like illness a bit over two weeks ago. So there's been a lot to do, and not all that much energy to do it with.
I think the wedding went okay. We were pushing our luck getting some things done, like me getting my dress finished and James getting the concert program finalised, but we got there. Kirsten, my sister (who is looking for a new place to live) managed to get my necklace finished, Annette-my-very-good-friend made our cake using decorating techniques I don't think she'd ever used before, and Annette-who-lives-next-door got all our flowers done with help from my parents.
I don't think I've seen any wedding advice about how to deal with your parents being stressed-out and wanting to be useful the day before the wedding, but I can now say that sending them next door to help with the flower arranging works just fine. We had my brother and sister staying with us, so my parents and Danish godmother (who hadn't needed much persuading to time her next trip to Australia to coincide with this little affair) had found a serviced apartment to rent, which turned out to be almost as big as our house.
I don't think I make a good bride in the commercial sense, as spending the morning having my hair and stuff done wasn't a specially enjoyable experience, and I think I was meant to feel pampered. So I think I was more stressed than ideal by the time we got to the Con.
Fairly early in our wedding planning we'd run into a bit of a logistical problem: James wanted organ music (and I was fine with that) and I didn't want to get married in a church. Fortunately there is an organ in Brisbane not inside a church, namely inthe Basil Jones Orchestral Hall, and because James was a Con student at this stage of the planning, he was able to vangle a deal.
So the structure of our wedding was basically a concert, interspersed with some legally-required wedding bits. The whole thing must have lasted about 80 minutes, and no-one has complained yet about it being too long. We did manage to fit in Buxtehude and Puccini through to Tom Lehrer and Edward Lear, so there was something for everyone.
I have some favourite comments from guests. One, who was almost two, as she gave birth on Wednesday, reported that the baby really enjoyed "Un bel di, vedremo". Another thought that the Star Wars Main Theme was a whole new experience live, on an organ. We also got a lot of positive buzz about Odin's Meeresritt, by Loewe.
We let the guests go amuse themselves while we had some photos taken, and then we joined them for the reception at a riverside restaurant, with nibbles while the sun went down. That would just about have been enough food but we'd organised a main and dessert as well. We had some minimal speeches, enough for a few toasts, and then we chopped the head off the amazing dragon draped across our wedding cake. Most people headed home shortly afterwards since they needed to get to work the next day. I'd managed to save up a whole day of leave in my new job, and I'm very grateful I was able to take it.
So, it's been another long while since I've let the world hear from me. Rather than try to catch up with everything, I'll just ignore the backlog and jump into recent events.
Last week, we had visitors from Denmark - they are old family friends, who my parents visit every time they go to Denmark, who've finally made the reverse trip.
I skipped work two days and played tour guide. First day, we went up Mt Nebo and Mt Glorious. It was overcast and threatening with rain, so the lookouts were not at their best. But everything turned out rather well - we decided to have lunch at the Maiala cafe up on Mt Glorious waiting for the clouds to clear before doing the rainforest walk, and since they feed the birds there, there was a large number and variety of birds to see. My visitors happen to be a couple of bird fanatics and they were eagerly checking off names in their bird guide.
The actual rainforest walk was as good as always - I don't need that much excuse to take people up there - except for one technical detail I hadn't thought about. The path was very damp, and the leeches were out in force. All three of us were in sandals. We had an exciting time flicking off leeches, and jumping at the slightest odd sensation on our feet. I seem to be, as always, a favourite with bitey things, and had two actual punctures by the end of the afternoon.
The second day, we went to the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary. We've sent past visitors there but I'd never actually been. My conclusion is that it's not a place I need to visit regularly, but it does its job - showing off Australian animals to tourists - extremely well. They have so many koalas I felt slightly overwhelmed (there's the kindergarten, the bachelor bad, the retirement home, several nursing mother enclosures, etc). They also have a large open area with a mob of grey kangaroos and assorted wallabies where you can walk up to and pat them as they feel inclined.
There are also enclosures with smaller quantities of other species: crocodiles, emus, a cassowary, two very handsome dingoes, wombats, goannas, echidnas, and a large number of parrots. On top of that, there are a large number of brush turkeys and water dragons making themselves at home, wandering in and out of enclosures.
I think my favourite bit was the raptor show: they had a kestrel, a barking owl, a barn owl, and a wedge-tailed eagle which have all been trained falconry-style and came in to do a few fly-overs in turn. The barking owl in particular is a cheeky bugger who clearly enjoyed making tourists jump by flying between them.
They also have an island with a pair of injured wedge-tailed eagles - one had his wing shot off and the other probably got her wing injury from a car accident. The exciting news is that they are showing mating behaviour, so now the staff has to find time to build a nest for them. This sounds like a fairly large and heavy undertaking.
It also turns out that two days of speaking Danish is not quite enough to get my brain completely messed up, but if it had been three, I think I'd been talking to James in Danish. I was certainly starting to use Danish grammatical constructions in English (arguing, logically, that the allowable English constructions just didn't convey the meaning I wanted). He was very patient with me.
We spent the rest of our time in Thailand in the far south - Songkla province, based in Hat Yai. This is not a major tourist destination for westerners - the only other white people we saw were in our hotel, I think. On the other hand, apparently there's quite a bit of tourism from Malaysia, which is about an hour's drive to the south.
Historically, the area has been a trading centre, with Chinese and Indian influence as well as Malaysian, and I think there was still quite a lot of Asian business activity.
We were there because I've been supervising a PhD student, Fang, from Prince of Songkla University, and as part of the her scholarship, the overseas supervisor visits her in Thailand. The original plan had been that Fang would sit her thesis defence the week we visited, but that had to be put off, partly because her main (Thai) supervisor has had to take on the extra responsibilities of being head of department.
So we spent some of our time at the University, working on her thesis, and meeting the other students in her lab, and other members of the department. The other days, Fang had arranged visits to various local places, in a hire car with driver. Since there was one spare seat in the car, the other students took turns to come along each day. Dhaeng is bubbly, Pii is earnest and enthusiastic to share knowledge, and Dhao was a bit too shy about her lack of English for me to get a clear impression of her.
We visited a Chinese-style temple with associated caves near the Malaysian border - I can't remember its name, and it's not in our tourist guides. I've been in a few limestone caves in Australia, and it was interesting to compare how natural they're left here, to the way that at this temple, the caves became a setting for buddhist statues, with ornately paved floors and light displays. I did find the overall effect a bit magpie-like - collecting everything pretty and shiny (and covering it with different-coloured mirror tiles) - Thai temples we visited later seemed more coherent aesthetically. The temple itself was an interesting contrast, being uniform grey stone (ornately carved) on the outside, and a riot of blues for sky and water, and red of the dragons on all the pillars holding the roof up.
We also visited Malaysia, in the most technical sense - there's a duty-free shop immediately on the other side of the border. Fang's developed a taste for chocolate and it's much cheaper and more plentiful in Malaysia than Thailand. We bought some Malaysian chocolate, and can confirm that they know what they're doing. I found it interesting that the shop included a variety of men's clothes, but virtually no women's clothing - just some (not very interesting) fabric lengths.
On the cultural side, we visited the Institute for Southern Thai Studies, a historical/cultural museum. The best room was definitely the coconut grater room. That wasn't what I expected when I read the leaflet (prehistory room; bead room; weapons room; pottery room; animal catching devices etc). A coconut grater is basically a low wooden stool, with the grater itself like an oversized spoon with sawtooth edging, embedded via the "handle" in the stool at a convenient angle for the person sitting on it. Anyway, the coconut graters started innocently enough, with decorative carvings. Then there were the ones shaped to look like various animals, and the ones shaped like naked women in various positions, and the "chap" on his knees with a very painful expression on his face, due to the location of the grater.
The institute is on an island in one of the largest lakes in Thailand. That day, we had lunch in a restaurant built out over the lake. There were quite a few houses on stilts further out, and netted-off areas for aquaculture. We then visited some markets, and clearly, I'm backwards, as the clothing and fabric shops had much more interesting stuff up the back, as far as I was concerned. Then we caught the ferry to Songkhla city itself - very much a local service, lots of motorbikes and food vendors, and us again being the most remarkable thing aboard.
We got to the governor's residence (now a museum) just before closing, so we were let in for free. I didn't mind the short visit, as the museum aspects didn't interest me nearly as much as just looking at the residence - a chinese-style house with multiple courtyards, in white and red. James and I agreed that it'd be a lovely place to live if we had a block of land large enough to fit the whole thing.
I'll write up our weekend trip as soon as I have time (I expect teaching to eat most of my time the next few days) but I was all excited this morning.
Last week, we saw our first ever brush turkey in our back yard - I see them down by the river, so it wasn't a big shock, but I'd somehow got the impression there are too many fences around here for them to really be comfortable.
And this morning, I caught Zeki, hanging half off the balcony, looking very keenly at the side garden. I could hear the rustling that had caught his attention.
After half a minute, the cutest little brush turkey emerged, and wandered up into the back garden. James and I got to see it wander around under the mango.
It's a bit under half the height of an adult brush turkey. Its body and tail are glossy black adult feathers, but its head is just starting to take on red colour, and the dangly bit around the neck is dark and there's no trace of yellow.
We hope it stays.
Actually, given how late it was by the time we arrived at our hotel (taking into account that Bangkok time is three hours after Brisbane's), I can't tell you much about our night in Bangkok, so this is about the next morning, before our flight to Hat Yai.
During breakfast, I discovered that everyone with a car in Thailand chooses a neutral colour - this is probably because there are Bangkok taxis in every bright colour imaginable, including several different shades of hot pink and purple, from what I could tell.
The background music in the hotel restaurant included "Like a Virgin" which takes on extra resonances here, and in fact, "One night in Bangkok", which however much I like, makes for really, really lousy background music. I was also a bit surprised it was played - it's not actually a nice song about Bangkok.
We were a bit worried about getting stuck in traffic trying to get to or from an actual sight, and thus missing our flight, so we decided to go for a walk around a largish block of Bangkok instead. It was fascinating - all the little food stalls crammed onto the pavement, the little spirit houses at the corner of each property, particularly businesses, the displays celebrating the king's 60 years on the throne. And the alternation, on our route, between tourist- (and tourist-seeking natives) frequented parts, and areas where it was more about just eking out a living.
I have to admit there's a sense in which I don't get how Bangkok works - to me, to get a city to function, you need a certain amount of money to transport food in, and people need to be doing city-type jobs to justify having so many people so close together and needing to transport everything else in and out. But many areas felt more like a small village, except I have no clue where the raw materials for the street vendors' food comes from, or how they can afford it, or make enough money to keep doing it.
The trip back to the airport was uneventful. I'm not sure what I think of the new airport - it is very, very large, but I'm not convinced it can actually effectively handle the kind of numbers they're talking about. At current levels of traffic, it has a somewhat desolate feel. There's also a lot of raw concrete and exposed wiring, and I can't tell if that's a deliberate stylistic choice or just that the airport isn't fully finished.
On our next turn through, between Hat Yai and Japan, when we had longer to wait, I decided it was practically a post-apocalyptic setting - the airport itself, with its unfinished feel, seemed (almost-)built for a different purpose than what the small groups of people in various places were actually doing. There were an awful lot of handwritten signs, because either someone hadn't figured out that certain information needed to be in certain places, or the signs haven't been put in yet.
The cutest thing about the flight to Hat Yai however was discovering that however keenly the other passengers might line up for boarding, once boarding was announced, the monks got to board first.
[Meantime, today in Brisbane has been quite weird - the world has been a peculiar near-sunset yellow colour all day. Apparently, the cloud cover contains a lot of dust and also some smoke.]
So here's the program for our wedding, modified to take into account what actually happened - in particular the Loewe was taken out of the printed program as we weren't sure we had an accompanist. Many thanks to all our variously talented friends.
Prelude and Fugue BWV532 by J.S. Bach - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
Arrival - Opening from Prelude in Eb, BWV552/1 by J.S. Bach - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
Introduction
O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini - D'Arne Sleeman, Soprano and Mark Leung, Piano
En sourdine by Gabriel Faure - Simon Schmidt, Baritone and Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Piano
Taking the Time by Rod McKuen - James McPherson
When You Say Nothing At All - Mark McPherson, Voice and Guitar
The Monitum
When You Are Old and Grey by Tom Lehrer - Annette Fraser, Voice and Ukulele
The Asking
The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear - Sebastian Tauchmann
Unexpected Song from Song and Dance by Andrew Lloyd Webber - Sarah Keen, Soprano and Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Piano
Odin's Meeresritt, Op.18 by Carl Loewe - Simon Schmidt, Baritone and Mark Leung, Piano
Offertoire sur les grands jeux from Messe pour les couvents by Francois Couperin - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
Vows
Adagio from Concerto in D minor, Opus 9, No.2 for Oboe and Piano by Tomasso Albinoni - Kirsten Jakobsen, Oboe and Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Piano
Excerpt from Captain Correllis Mandolin by Lois de Bernier - Martin Pool
Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, BuxWV137 by Dietrich Buxtehude - Darryn Jensen, Organist
Pronunciation and Kiss
Signing of the Register - Zur Trauung by Franz Liszt - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
Un bel di, vedremo from Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini - D'Arne Sleeman, Soprano and Mark Leung, Piano
Presentation
Star Wars Main Theme by John Williams - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
Finale, Movement No.5, Toccata from Symphony No.5 by Charles-Marie Widor - Gregory Hartay-Szabo, Organist
The Monitum is the legal statement that has been changed recently so it explicitly mentions a man and a woman when it didn't previously. This is why we put the Tom Lehrer (sung by a woman) in right afterwards. I'm working on the assumption that the explicit statement is a sign of last-ditch panic by the old guard before we all just let people marry people, as they please.
Our pigeon nest is still there; in fact there are two relatively large chicks in the nest, and they were being fed nearly all yesterday. James managed to get some photos, and they are cute-ugly: grey dinosaur skin, yellow down like they'd rolled in straw, and feathers that are still long black spines.
They seem to have attracted the attention of the local magpies, because a magpie landed on the railing twice this morning. Of course, the cats were very excited by this - Zeki made a sort of bleating noise I haven't heard from him before. The magpie was sitting in a nearby tree looking very offended at his reception committee.
It seems odd that the pigeons may be in less danger with cats on the balcony to chase off magpies. It's a real three-way battle. Unfortunately, the magpies may win as the cats aren't out on the balcony when we're at work.
All the signs of spring are here now: the pepperina tree is about to start flowering, and we already had a flock of rainbow lorikeets fly in to check it out this morning. The liquidamber tree has just a few very small leaves and flowerbuds coming out. This is the tree we can hear the humming from inside the house when all the bees come for the flowers. So that looks like it will happen within the next few weeks.
Also, I made a bowl of fruit salad: pink grapefruit, navel oranges, strawberries and ginger. It is good.
So, I have this blog, and I used to post regularly, and I haven't recently. Remember me? Well, I do still exist.
Work's been really busy and I expect I'll be busy a while yet, and then maybe everything will settle down.
The pussycats are still gorgeous. The relationship between Zeki and Nemrut is laden with homoerotic subtext. They cuddle up together in the most ridiculous poses. When I laugh at them, Nemrut looks at me with this eyes-half-closed languid look, and Zeki has this strangely intense conflicted look. It's far too easy to construct stories about how Zeki is still coming to terms with his feelings, while Nemrut is completely out of the closet.
When we first got Amber, we had some toilet issues. She doesn't want to pee in the kittylitter. I assumed it was because of the smell of Zeki's urine (it smelt very strong when he first moved in, then abated, then became strong-smelling again when the other two moved in, and I'd say it has now mostly abated again). We tried various cleaning things to deal with that, but it didn't work. For a while, she'd pee in the bathtub next to the kittylitter, and given we don't actually use the bathtub, that worked reasonably well, as long as we remembered to rinse it out.
Then for some reason that stopped being an acceptable place. We went through a rather painful phase where she'd go on the floor in the bathroom or toilet, or occasionally on the tiles in the entry way, or on any clothes left on the floor (we don't do that anymore). We now seem to have come up with an acceptable solution - a plastic tray lined with paper towel, which needs regular replacing.
It's possibly worth mentioning that we never actually saw Amber pee anywhere; she seemed very uncomfortable about the whole thing. I think it's a sign we have the right solution that she's actually prepared to pee in her tray in front of me. And I can now see what the actual problem is, which is that she sits down to pee. I assumed all cats squatted, but she sits, and I can't imagine kittylitter (or cold bathroom floor for that matter) is very nice to sit on.
When I got home from work the other day, the paper towel in the tray was soggy, and she'd pulled the (nearly empty) paper towel roll down on the floor and peed on it, as well. Now we just need to train her to replace the paper in the tray herself...
I've been meaning to review a few things, but I'll make a separate post for that.
The pigeon nest is empty this morning, no eggs, nothing but a few feathers. I'm guessing the eggs were stolen by a predator overnight, because I'm pretty sure there was an adult pigeon on the nest yesterday (so I didn't get to do an inspection).
I made sure the fern got a good watering, as it is starting to suffer a bit - I feel odd about watering it when it is full of pigeon. I suppose other pigeon nests have to deal with rain, but that's much gentler than a watering can pouring it straight down in a few seconds every few days. I may have to get a spray mister, if the pigeons come back.
I'm hearing a lot more flying foxes at night now, and I even saw one in the pepparina the other night. It was very strange to watch, as I wasn't sure what it was at first - a possum upside down? But then I saw the long claws, hanging in a very unpossum-like way. I can report that small flying foxes can climb very quickly and agilely around a tree. It had a wingspan of maybe 50cm, when it flew off. What I consider a large flying fox would have a wingspan of a meter or more.
The jacaranda outside Maths has a few high flowers now. It amuses me that us academics, with offices looking down on the tree, get advance notice relative to the students (the jacaranda flowering is a traditional "time to start studying for final exams" symbol here).
So I feel like I've barely had time to breathe the last few weeks. I've now survived one week of semester, didn't make too many mistakes in my lectures or tute, and I think I'm on track to survive next week at least.
The thing that scares me most is Tuesday, when I have to give two lectures right after each other. I've never had to do that before. I hope my voice holds up. And I expect to spend the rest of Tuesday in an exhausted heap. I never realised that lecturing was a branch of the performing arts until I started doing it.
In the meantime, we've had quite a bit of rain and overcast and it's become positively cold for the time of year. It's been strange, because I clearly have an expectation that the first week of first semester is extremely hot. But it sounds like the heat might be back next week.
I don't think I've had much life outside work, except that I'm doing pretty well with my exercise resolution; I've managed a riverwalk or equivalent distance every day for about two weeks now except last Sunday. That's particularly embarrassing since Sundays were traditionally my "go twice as far" days. See how I go tomorrow.
This is my current favourite "news" site. Space exploration is so cool now you can follow it as it happens, complete with links to technical discussions.
So, we managed to avoid being shot at by Muslim separatists in southern Thailand (we didn't see the remotest sign of them), or inundated by Japanese tsunami. Our cats seem to have missed us, and not torn up the house too much in the meantime.
Quick impressions: I didn't care for Bangkok, I felt too much like a piece of tourist meat, whereas it's great fun being shown around a not very touristy region (Songkla province, very far south) by enthusiastic locals. It was, not surprisingly, hot and humid. I'd say all the food was excellent, generally for bargain prices.
Just about the only other caucasians we saw in the week down there were at our hotel. James in particular attracted a lot of attention with his ginger beard and pink skin (and fondness for hot southern food). It was particularly amusing when schoolkids hanging off tuk-tuks would stare at us (in our car) and when James wanted to photograph them, they'd suddenly get all shy.
Fang (my student and our host) had organised a jam-packed program for us which overall went very well, until about our last day, when James slipped trying to climb the path to the Tone Nga Chang (Elephant tusk waterfall) and tore off a significant chunk of toenail. However, given we got through the hospital emergency section in just over an hour, and the medical bill (for doctor's examination, cleaning of wound by surgical nurse, antibiotics, antiinflamatories and painkillers) came to under $8 Australian, it just became part of the whole experience.
Unfortunately, Thailand had its revenge on James just as we arrived in Japan, and he was sick for about three days. Given his toe, I'm not sure he'd have been able to walk around much anyway. So we had some very quiet days in Scott (James' friend working in Japan)'s apartment near Sendai.
He was well enough again that we could return to the plan - to travel to Tokyo for the long weekend, during which we did a pile of shopping, visited the Ghibli Museum and the fish markets, and so forth. I still can't work out how Tokyo manages to feel simultaneously so very Japanese and like a northern European city at the same time.
I plan to post in more detail over the next few days, but for now, I could use some sleep.
I was going to mention that spring had arrived, but that was about a fortnight ago. As it got really quite hot last weekend, I was wondering if we'd just jumped straight to summer.
It cooled down, but that's because it rained most of this week. We haven't had this much rain for months and months, possibly a year. I expect explosions of green over the next few weeks. Then, this morning, I was swooped, so there is no doubt that winter is well and truly over.
I wasn't entirely sure if the first swoop really was a swoop, or just a magpie coincidentally flying low overhead. I got the impression the magpie wasn't sure either, because I got a second round, and that was an unambiguous, rustling-the-hair swoop. After that, I turned around and walked backwards, so I could continue staring at the magpie until I was out of its territory. It's the same stretch of Mt Ommaney Drive where I was swooped a few years ago, so it's probably the same magpie. I saw plenty of other magpies around, but none of the others looked remotely in the mood for swooping.
I don't know if George Bush is really this hypocritical, or really this clueless, or if someone at the ABC has a fine-tuned sense of irony. Because this ABC news report, which was one of the first things I heard when I woke up this morning, set off my irony detectors in a major way.
US President George W Bush says that he has told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that he has "concerns" about Russia's approach to democracy.Hrm. This must be a later, longer, text version. What I heard at 6am, was shorter, didn't go into Putin's point of view, and also mentioned something like Bush's concerns over presidential influence on the media and courts in Russia. Now I really am wondering if an ABC employee up early had a bit of fun.
After talks in Slovakia, both leaders have stressed their close ties and common ground.
Mr Bush says they shared the goal that neither Iran nor North Korea should have nuclear weapons.
But Mr Bush also says strong countries need to be democratic.
"Democracies always reflect a country's culture and customs and I know that, but they have certain things in common," he said.
"They have rule of law, and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition.
"I was able to share my concerns about Russia's commitment in fulfilling these universal principles."
Mr Putin, who did not mention democratic reforms in his opening statement, says he is "committed to the fundamental principles of democracy" but that Russians would chart their own course.
"Any kind of turn toward totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible due to the conditions of Russian society," he said.
But he says that the principles of democracy should be adequate to the current status of the development of Russia.
He also hinted at Mr Bush's recent public scoldings on decisions that were widely seen as hurting Russian democracy.
"If we talk about whether we have more or whether we have less democracy it is not the right thing to do," said the Russian president.
Mr Putin also suggests that differences between Russia's approach to democracy and the US version are no more significant than differences between the United States and Europe.
"The Netherlands is a monarchy, after all," he said.
"It is certainly a democratic nation, but this is very different from the United States and Russia. There are great differences between Russia and the US as well."
Anyway, President Bush, if you're reading this: I also have "concerns" about you and your government's approach to democracy in the USA.
I spent all of Saturday socialising, to the point where I spent most of Sunday trying to do some Saturday things, and so I'm writing about Saturday now.
My parents arrived in Brisbane on Friday, as part of their annual winter escape from Canberra, which seems to alternate between a route that includes Brisbane, and Denmark. In fact, I got what amounts to a souvenir from my parents' trip to Denmark last year: I'd asked them to look for interesting knitting books, and mentioned that I was particularly keen on Elsebeth Lavold's book. It wasn't available, but apparently my uncle has put some consistent pressure on since, and I now have a copy in the original Swedish.
James has an audition on Wednesday, so he'd arranged with Ming to rehearse his material Saturday morning. My parents and I went for a walk nearby in the meantime, and I now know where the Queensland Cricket Board has its headquarters (including a nice cricket oval), and that there's a Turkish restaurant on Lever St (rather a good one, according to Ming and D'arne). I also managed to get a headache from all the sunshine after the downpour last week.
I think the rehearsal was partly an excuse for Yum Cha, but I'm not complaining. There were the six of us, Sarah (of the Scooter) - she and D'arne both sing in the Opera Chorus, and Michael and Elizabeth, who were some other friends of Ming and D'arne's.
We had a pretty good time, and spent about three hours at Yum Cha - the staff didn't seem impatient with us at all, despite the fact that I counted at least four groups using the table next to ours in the time we were there. I think my personal highlights were the salt-and-pepper cephalopod, the dim-sum-like things with the green stuff and ginger in them, and the coconut jelly.
In the meantime, Ming was squeezing my mum for information: one of the songs his choral group is practicing at the moment is in Danish. He ended up taping her reading out the words for him.
We went home for a few hours, and moved some books downstairs. We needed to burn a few calories before the next social event, and now downstairs is pretty much finished. We seem to have over 15 shelf-meters of books, if anyone's counting.
The evening was the by-now traditional Frank-n-Seb Yule. Frank was bubblier the whole evening than I've seen her at her place, because she has a new kitchen, to her specifications, including the largest oven/range I've ever seen in an ordinary house, certainly bigger than I imagined one could fit in such a tiny kitchen.
There was yummy roast beast, vegies, and so many desserts and types of cookies I almost regret having normal food first. The random-present-under-$10 has been replaced by get-a-present-for-specific-person-under-$10, which seems to work better. I had knitted a black fuzzy scarf with purple stripes for Alys, and it seemed to go down well. I got an aqua-ish summer scarf in a neat box, and James got these curious martini glasses that come with their own ice bowl.
However, I scored a much bigger present. Annette has been helping Alys clean up the house she inherited from her mother (where we got our cats from), and they'd found some knitting books and a small mountain of knitting needles. I'm not sure I'll need all the needles, but I think I can find good homes for them.
Sunday afternoon, we held a "meet Zeki, and check out our renovation mess" party for our Thing friends.
Saturday night, I'd made pebbernoedder dough, and thankfully it was cool enough to bake them Sunday morning. Otherwise, we rushed around trying to do some cleaning, tidying, organising, food shopping and so forth before people started turning up. James wanted to make a third edition of the chocolate and orange gateau, but didn't have time beforehand and so spent a fair amount of the afternoon baking.
Yes, we'd come home from a holiday Saturday afternoon, yes, we are insane, what's your point?
Fortunately, Zeki provided plenty of entertainment, particularly for Alys, who seems rather happy not to have to look after him anymore (Berenice is Alys' mother). Zeki did get rather shy as more people arrived, and he isn't quite ready yet to lie around casually when there are eight people in the room.
We also listened to the silly Tolkien CD Hugh had brought, and played Annette's very silly "Trivial Pursuit crossed with Charades crossed with Boggle crossed with Pictionary and some playdough thrown in for good measure" Cranium game.
I'm not quite sure it's possible to describe the experience of trying to convey "false teeth" to my teammate, Matt, using playdough, with a time limit. The "hum or whistle this tune"-type cards proved us lacking in musical talent, or whatever it is that's required to do that, since James didn't seem to do any better than anyone else. And the cards that required all teams to compete simultaneously (and you were allowed to use clues from other teams) caused general chaos almost every time. I do have to say that the factual question cards need to be made harder for a Thing crowd - "There are eight bits in a byte - true or false" is not going to keep any of us occupied for more than a fraction of a second.
James' cake got very positive feedback, and all in all I certainly had fun, I hope our visitors did too.
Does anyone think wearing something like handicapped label, saying: "Being forced to walk at 3km/hr or less causes me mental and physical distress" when I'm in crowded shopping centres would help me any?
I have nothing against other people sauntering slowly around the shops; I just wish they could do it so those of us whose natural walking speed is twice theirs could also get around at our preferred pace.
The really sad thing is I wasn't even in said shopping centre to get any Christmas shopping done.
More stuff happening around here. The walls are getting finished/plastered downstairs, James is sanding back the stairwell so it can get a neat finish, some of the lights downstairs are down, painting of the ceiling and walls downstairs is getting closer and closer.
We've been doing the downstairs renovations for so long, it feels weird to think that it's pretty much all done now. And it's not quite done, but if I don't start thinking of it as done, I'll not manage it when it is done.
So, that means: the water-damaged bar furniture removed; the porous walls have been sealed; the plumbing and boxing-in of the upstairs plumbing has been fixed; the sink and counterunit in the bar has been replaced; the brick walls have been covered by actual nice walls; new lights all installed; a squillion powerpoints installed; a new projector screen installed; that weird-as empty box destroyed; all the painting done: ceilings, walls, feature wall, bar trim; the windows and windowsills done; the new carpet in; new furniture installed; and new blinds put in (they went in yesterday, and are lovely, and really finish the place off).
Still to happen: we need a few extra bits of Ikea lego to finish our construction. This is not a bad thing at all, as we've been able to experiment a bit and we have something different (and better) than our first plan, and when we get the last bits, some of which we didn't even know about when we began, it'll be fabulousness itself. There's a few holes to patch (the blind installer must've been), and the sliding doors on the storage area in the small room need a bit of finishing. Also, we haven't solved the "where do all the glasses go?" problem yet.
But really, these are all minor fiddly bits in comparison with what we have done. And it's so pretty, and my parents even think it's pretty. It's turned out in a nice minimalist-scandinavian-technogeek-with-a-chilli-red-wall style. And there's a blank wall we could - gasp - hang art on or something.
I've been busy and not in the mood to blog recently, so I thought, now that I don't feel quite so busy, I'd update.
State of the Body: Not getting enough sleep, or exercise. Fortunately, the exercise is at the level where my body keeps reminding me I need more, not past that, when it stops caring, so I think it's manageable. There seems to be a half-flu that doesn't make you actually, objectively sick, but drags on for at least two flus time-wise, which I think I've had or am having. If I was getting enough sleep and exercise, my immune system would be laughing at it.
State of the James: Insanely busy, juggling full-time work, full-time study, and with some kind of delusion that he can also keep doing some of the things he was doing before he had either job or study. He's also got some delightful Nemrut scratches that look like he was attempting to juggle with barbed wire.
State of the House: downstairs is now officially finished. We do still need a few more bits of furniture, but see else-state as to why we can't seem to get to Ikea. Upstairs is progressively less chaotic, so having downstairs finished has made a difference.
State of the Cats: pretty okay, overall. We had some crazy excitement over the balcony, which I attempted to write up, but it was becoming a chapter in a book, and I didn't have the energy to write it all, or figure out how to provide a coherent short summary. The new people across the road have a cat which is curious and hanging around on our property, and it's unsettling our lot a bit.
State of the Social: Also pretty busy. My parents stayed with us for a couple of weeks in early July, and came again this weekend and are driving off towards Sydney tomorrow. The most entertaining aspect of the visit is without a doubt that James got not only my dad, but my mum, hooked on Sudoku. My mother is finally catching up with normal (for my family) behaviour, in retirement. This most recent weekend, we also attended Stephen Thorne's birthday lunch; and the previous weekend, we held a dinner party for Frank'n'Seb, Alys, Jeremy, and Matt. Annette unfortunately was sick.
State of the Job: The teaching aspects hit a peak of commitments in July, and fortunately has settled down for now, although I've got two-three research students this semester, one of whom explicitly asked for quite a bit of guidance (and I think it would be a good idea to provide it, in general). The research aspect then took over, with me basically ceasing to pay attention to anything else by last week, in preparation for a talk yesterday. It went okay, and I can now relax a bit and think about planning the next stage.
State of the Craft: physically, non-existent. Lots of pretty plans in my head, and guilt over UFOs (UnFinished Objects). Now the days are getting longer, it's going to be critical to get a shade for our magical new bedroom window. I see this as an excuse to make lots and lots of 70 * 70 cm works of textile art. Different degrees of light filtering, you see.
I'm looking forward to: seeing James in his first part in an opera (he was part of the cast of thousands in a production of Aida once, so technically it's not his first opera); catching up with some friends who I think I've neglected; turning my messy mass of data into coherent science; spring flowers and early morning sunshine I can run in.
If you remember, I joined the UQ Ally program last year, and it was decided that we should walk in the Brisbane Pride march (in the vicinity of the local PFLAG, since we're a similar organisation). I thought that might be worth a try, so I turned up in King George Square at 10:30 this morning.
It turns out not many other UQ Allies felt the same way, so I found myself carrying the banner with the one other person who hadn't actually organised the exercise. I didn't feel I was needed to boost the numbers of visible glbti in the march, but I certainly felt needed as a heterosexual willing to briefly stand on the other side of the "normal" line.
There were a few "you're all going to burn in hell" placard wavers in King George Square (on the opposite side of four burly police officers), but everyone else along the march was either neutral or positive. I'd like to single out the construction workers along Albert Street who cheered and honked the horn of their little truck.
The march went from King George Square (obviously), across the bridge to Southbank, and then along to Musgrave Park, where the all-day Pride Fair was already under way. We passed by the Queensland Perfoming Arts Complex, where they're having the "Out of the Box" arts festival for 3-8 year olds and made jokes about corrupting the kids; and in front of the exit of the Busway - I was near the end of the parade, and there were about eight busses waiting in the tunnel by then; and for the first time, I actually went past the weird phallic towerthing that is such a feature of the south Brisbane skyline. Unfortunately, it's on a pretty minor street - clearly whoever authorises this march doesn't want the queers causing too much disturbance.
Once our banner had been rolled up, I checked out the fair. It appears that beyond food and drink, rainbow paraphernalia, and health and support services, the most important thing about being queer is pets. At least, that is if I am to judge the relative number of stalls devoted to pet-related things, not to mention the number of dogs (wearing rainbow collars, natch) at the fair.
I got some goodie bags, entered some competitions, signed the odd petition, and got a surprising amount of gratitude from the marriage equality stall for the fact that I was planning to marry an opposite-sex partner and nevertheless think it is grossly unfair that I wouldn't have that choice if my partner was same-sex. I by-passed the standard 'fair fare' and had the noodle salad from "Bitchin Kitchen". I also bought a rainbow cat sticker for Zeki and Nemrut.
By this stage it was 1:30 and I was starting to feel a bit sunstruck, so I decided to head home. Of course my bus was leaving just as I got to the cultural centre, so I popped into the Gallery and managed to vote in the "people's choice" for Design Excellence. Rather than agonise among a lot of interesting stuff, I went straight for the man's formal shirt by Dean Brough where the collar somehow, smoothly, becomes cross-over straps that buttons together at the back waist. So clever!
I eventually got home, and while Zeki and Nemrut don't seem to appreciate the sticker as much as James does, they are now asleep together on top of the goodie bags, which is about as much Pride as I'd expect from them.
Lots of things happened on the renovation front: downstairs was tidied and prepared for the new walls, which Michael (the carpenter who was formerly a bioinformatician) will be installing over the next few weeks; the air conditioning units have been moved around and some are more or less ready for installation, and James and Shane (our next-door neighbour who is a plumber) got the basic plumbing for the new sink set up.
All in all, it looks like lots of stuff will change in the next few weeks.
We also went to a BBQ at Frank'n'Seb's. I especially enjoyed the roast potato salad, and playing with the German candy. And there was chocolate fondue for dessert, and some very cute embarrassed squirming by James when he discovered that a) the forfeit for dropping something into the fondue was kissing the person on your left (this wasn't a problem at first, as I was on his left); b) Mark was on his right; c) Marshmallows are particularly prone to dropping, and Mark likes marshmallows...
On Sunday afternoon, Sarah and Michael and Aidan came for a visit. Aidan still spends a lot of his time asleep, but he's now become quite enthusiastic about that whole breastfeeding thing. Sarah and Michael show the signs of sleep deprivation over several weeks now. It'll be good if the weather could cool down a bit, because doubtless Aidan would sleep more during the night.
Saturday morning, we headed back out to Lake Matheson for more photos. While we got to Reflection Island in good time, it was still somewhat overcast and raining in patches, so we didn't have the nice view of the mountains from Friday. James was determined to try anyway, so I left him at Reflection Island while I wandered around the lake, looking at the plants and general scenery, which fortunately looks just as good in the rain. It was my first good look at the giant flax plants the Maori use for basketwork (I have a book on how to do this, a library offcast for 50c). And a variety of ferns, including treeferns, and a number of plants I just don't recognise, as well as a lot of interesting moss and lichen.
Very conveniently, given the whole "dawn photography" thing, there's a cafe next to the carpark, and the coffee there is good enough James wanted to go in again, and I decided to try their hot chocolate. I didn't think it was quite as good as in Auckland, but the presentation was very impressive, with chocolate swirls on the cream.
Then we continued our drive north. I'm glad we'd decided to stay at Fox Glacier, as the 27Km drive to Franz Josef, the "adjacent" glacier, took over half an hour. I think it's the slowest, twistiest bit of road we were on, apart from the climb between Queenstown and Wanaka, which was over ice and at much higher altitude. Despite their proximity the glaciers sound rather different, coming from different parts of the mountains, and the Fox Glacier having more lengthwise crevasses, whereas they're crosswise at Franz Josef.
There were more lakes to admire, more Paradise Shelducks (I don't know if it was mating season or we were just lucky, but we saw quite a lot of couples), plenty of Pukeko, and increasingly more farming land as we drove towards Hokitika.
Hokitika is all about jade. That is of course why we parked in front of a fudge and icecream shop and began the afternoon's shopping with food. Actually, Hokitika has a variety of jewelry from a variety of materials: paua and pink mussel shell, bone, pearl, and a stone I wasn't previously aware of which was called rubystone by at least one shop. It's found as inclusions in jade, but has both green and red-pink-purple regions. I was turned off by it a bit as it seems the jewelry was only thin slices of the stone, sandwiched between slices of crystal, and then polished to shape.
But we looked at a lot of jade. And found it really hard to make decisions. And when it began raining (I thought fairly heavily, but the shopkeepers assured us it wasn't really raining yet) it made everything messier. We eventually figured out that while one could buy fairly cheap jade, it was worth spending significantly more for a larger, individually designed and carved piece. So James now has a rather large fishhook-style piece of "flower jade" - that is, with white inclusions. Despite the fact that I think jade is very pretty to look at, I don't feel it works with my skin, so I got a necklace with what are probably black pearls (they look purple to me) and one of those cheap, relatively unfinished slices of jade that looks pretty hanging in a window.
The woman who sold us the jade told James something about washing it before leaving NZ. Since the jade was from the Arahura river, which runs into the sea a few K north of Hokitika, James thought that was the most suitable river to wash it in. Unfortunately, it's not a river that's particularly easy to get close to. We parked near the bridge and dodged a construction site, either repairing or widening the bridge, to get out to the actual water.
The next stretch to Greymouth was the least scenic on our tour. I think this is more a measure of just how much scenic driving there is on the West Coast of the South Island, than a judgement of actual ugliness. It was just so ...ordinary... for a while. North of Greymouth, it gets interesting again, with the road winding between hills and the ocean. It was getting dark, so we couldn't see it all properly, but the western sky stayed light, among the clouds, for a surprisingly long time.
It was certainly dark by the time we found our homestay in Punakaiki. Our hosts, Kevin and Peg, helped us get our luggage in and recommended the local pub for dinner. Of course, this did have to be the night of the first game between the Wallabies and the AllBlacks. The entire pub was watching the game on the big screen. We snuck in the back and tried to order the steak in an inconspicuous accent. Actually, I don't think we were in any danger, aside from the fact that NZ won convincingly. The entire pub cheered whenever NZ scored, but they didn't match any of the booing we could hear from the live crowd on the TV.
The most fun of the homestay for me was the next morning, when a weka came wandering into the garage while we were taking our luggage out. It wasn't remotely shy, and for the first time ever, I could take good bird pictures with the wide-angle, rather than zooming in. Kevin explained that they have several regular visitors which is why the garage is kept closed as much as possible. He fed the weka a bit of bread, and it sprinted off - this established that we had just met "Flash Henry".
We didn't really get to take full advantage of our homestay, but my careful planning and the whole reason for driving up to Punakaiki the night before, did pay off. It was high tide at 9am, and we even got the southwesterly, that leads to the most impressive displays at the blowholes at Punakaiki pancake rocks. I'm not sure what it's like visiting the rocks at other times - they are interesting, I guess, but the blowholes make them fun.
Apparently they don't understand how these formations arose - well, there are clearly layers of limestone involved, but layers of limestone in other places don't erode into pancake-stack shapes. It occurs to me that they're the inverse of the Te Anau caves - there there were thicker layers of fast-eroding limestone with thinner layers of sandstone. The pancake rocks must somehow involve very thin layers of something that erodes faster than the main rock.
While we were there, on instruction from Miche, we hugged a nikau palm each. Nikau palms are the southern-most naturally occurring kind of palm, and they have a pretty funky shape to go with that. We also saw another weka, running around the carpark.
I also wanted to see a bit inland - there's a large national park with limestone caves and rainforest - but we only had a little time to go up a gorge. It was reassuring that the rocks in the gorge also have pancake-like striping, and it's not just one little bit of coastline. This was also the first time I met the local sandflies - I don't think I'd been bothered by insects at all up until then, but they don't just disappear for the winter. As with other biting insects, I was very popular with them and had been stung four-five times before James even noticed them. I'm happy it was winter and only my hands and face were exposed.
We then had to head back to Greymouth, to drop off the hire car and catch the afternoon train to Christchurch. Sorting out the hire car return took longer than I expected, but we did make it on to the train before it left. Greymouth itself seemed like a very ordinary little town along some otherwise fabulous and remote coastline.
The train is supposed to be one of the great train journeys, going over Arthur's Pass, and more or less straight across the middle of the South Island. It's certainly scenic and varied, from the western forests through the alpine regions and down to the Canterbury Plains. It does have a bit of a downside, as the major climb from the west to Arthur's Pass is inside a long tunnel. I was a bit nauseous from the diesel fumes, as well as not finding that part very scenic. But from there, the alpine valleys are pretty amazing, the windings and bridges (viaducts) and short tunnels. When we got down to the plain, there was some amazing sunset colour on the clouds behind us, and James disappeared for about an hour to take photographs.
I can't tell you much about Christchurch; it was after dark when we arrived and we went straight to our airport hotel as we had an early flight home. It was very definitely a city in a way that reminded us we'd been far away from that for a week. Our hotel was next to the International Antarctic Centre, and I went for a little wander, puzzled about why Christchurch, and the airport in the particular, would feature this particular attraction (closed of course, it was Sunday evening). It turns out that it's actually an administrative and logistic base for Antarctic expeditions (the "International" encompasses USA and Italy along with NZ), and the attraction was added later.
So that's about that for our travels in NZ.
Michael took part in the shave for a cure. In exchange for sponsoring him, we got hold of the photographic evidence!
The Before Picture
Aidan now has more hair than dad
Identical twin amusement - what really amuses me is that Ian and Michael apparently cross their arms opposite.
We had a big (for us) painting bee yesterday. We didn't get as much done as we'd hoped for, but things are in much better state, I feel.
We got the sealer/undercoat on everywhere that needed it - large and small downstairs walls, assorted ceiling patches, and in the stairwell. We got on both coats of the chilli red feature wall downstairs, and most of the first ceiling coat.
I'm not sure whether the ceiling will actually need two coats, but many of the edges and corners may need three, as there's new trim and we'll need several layers to hide the wood colour.
Still to be done: finish the ceiling (which needs to happen in the next few days, as the masking tape starts leaving marks after that), paint walls and stairwell.
It feels odd to both feel like a lot of progress has been made, and at the same time, we still need to do most of the painting painting.
Stuff I learnt: painting time is not just about the time it takes to get the stuff onto the walls. Vacuuming, protecting fixtures, applying undercoat, arguing over who's doing the cutting in, and whether better tools would make it easier, applying masking tape between ceiling and walls, cleaning brushes and rollers, and making sure the painting staff is properly fed and hydrated: all take time.
Stuff we did right: realised that even though we didn't get everything done, with a bit of work today we have a natural stopping-place for as long as we need, invited friends to help, did it on a Saturday, had fun, served James' cafe level coffee, cleaned up and went for dinner afterwards.
Many thanks to Steve, Elsie, and Ian for their work. Also thanks to Michael, Sarah and Aidan for dropping by and being enthusiastic about progress. I didn't get to talk to them much as I soon found myself responsible for ceiling edges and fiddly bits, but they seemed to improve the mood upstairs enormously.
I hope Annette gets better soon, and not just because we could have used her help. Special Art Prize to Elsie for being responsible for (and persistent enough to finish) the brushwork on the topcoat of the texture paint. Special Mention to Zeki for being Zeki, and not freaking out too much at all the visitors. In fact, he was getting rather cosy with Elsie and Steve by the end of evening.
I'm beginning to understand why Oscars speeches tend to run so long.
We didn't get any more photos of cute pigeon nestlings (and they certain were cute the last few days) because Saturday morning was apparently first flight time. Unfortunately, the cats were on the balcony and we were otherwise occupied, so the first we knew about it was an empty nest, a few patches of blood, and a dead nestling. We have no idea if the other one survived its first flight.
James seems to have been rather distressed about this and blames me for letting the cats out. I think I was out of touch with how rapidly baby birds grow - humans and plants seem to be much slower. I seem to be much more "cycle of nature" about it, and the parents don't seem remotely put out, as they are still hanging out in the tree next to the balcony, and I fully expect them to lay another batch of eggs.
Otherwise, spring is zooming along. The pepperina, as predicted, is now full of bickering lorikeets and miners, more today than yesterday, and given not all the buds have opened yet, I expect the racket to get louder still. Also, I don't know if it's warm enough yet, but in past years we've had the racket extend into the night as flying foxes seem to like pepperina nectar as much as the parrots do.
Also on Friday morning I thought it was worth inspecting the early-flowering Jacaranda on campus, and indeed, it has three clusters of just-opening flowers already. Usually the Jacarandas really get going in October. Also, the few freesias that survived Zeki sitting in their pot are now flowering and perfuming nicely. Once they've died off, I think I'll plant the bulbs in the garden and find something more cat-compatible for the balcony.
Some stuff I noticed while I was in NZ didn't seem to fit in the blow-by-blow tour guide I've written so far.
Overall, I really liked NZ. I think there's quite a bit of cultural overlap with Australia, but there are also significant differences. I think NZ deals with racial and cultural variation better than Oz does on the whole. I really like the fact that in much advertising, the "generic NZer" has dark hair and eyes; far too much Oz advertising still features blue-eyed blondes.
I admire little geek-friendly touches like the fact that their car numberplates use Ø for zero. I'm still not clear whether NZers in general really are crazy adrenalin junkies, or if that's just a specialist interest that has been exploited for tourists, like crocodile-wrestling here.
We seem to have entirely bypassed the whole "Lord of the Rings" thing while we were there and I don't remotely regret it. In terms of my cultural background, Middle-earth is a fantastic version of Europe, where I grew up. And I thought what Peter Jackson presented in the movie looked a lot like I'd imagined. NZ itself is different, more exotic from my perspective. I enjoyed visiting the real NZ better than I would have locations from the movies.
I'm really glad we picked mainly the west coast of the South Island to visit with our limited time. We spent very little time driving anywhere that wasn't scenic. I'm used to having to drive around a lot of ordinary stuff to get to the spectacular bits. In Australia, to get all-scenery-all-the-time, you generally have to head outback, which is a completely different kind of scenery, and a very different kind of remoteness.
That's not to say I don't want to see other parts of NZ, but I do expect the experience will be rather different. It'll probably also be more about people and culture, rather than mainly nature. I'd like to learn more about Maori culture but I didn't feel comfortable with the pitch of the tourist-aimed events we saw advertised. There was one slim booklet on Maori crafts and the symbols used that I pointed out to James as "I'd like something like this, at least three times the size". The fact that we didn't spend any time in large city bookstores was probably a downside of our trip in this respect.
And a sure-fire sign I felt comfortable in NZ: by the end of the week, I was beginning to suspect I was picking up a local accent. That took many months when I was in the US, and only really got going once I made local friends. I also like Maori words, and the fact that everyone is so comfortable using so many of them (again by comparison to Oz). I'm still not clear on how to actually pronounce most of them correctly, but that obviously doesn't bother most NZers. Takahe might be my favourite birds but I don't even know which syllable takes the stress.
I'm not intending to emigrate, but it's really nice knowing the place is there, and so relatively close.
Sarah and Michael and Aidan came around for dinner last night, primarily because Sarah needed some adult company and conversation for a while. But it's always nice to catch up with friends anyway.
James toured Sarah around the renovations downstairs, and we made sausages and mash with grilled capsicum, and coleslaw.
Aidan was generally content, but took a bit of a while to fall asleep. Once he was asleep, he stayed that way - he didn't even wake when Michael took him down to the car to head home.
Zeki was a bit cautious around the visitors, except for one point when Sarah was holding Aidan, and Zeki stretched up, clawing her skirt, so he could investigate this thing she was holding. Sarah jumped; Zeki jumped, and he stayed out of the way for the next half hour or so.
Despite James and I agreeing that we weren't going to buy any more Christmas presents for each other beyond what we got on our recent holiday and various other recent shopping expeditions, I just got an email from James saying that we're now out of wrapping paper.
I have a feeling this belongs in the notorious none of my business category of domestic announcements from James.
I have now replied, asking if by saying we're out of wrapping paper he means: out of the obvious Xmas wrapping paper on the dining room table (from sending presents to my family on Monday); or out of that, plus the Xmas wrapping paper in the spare bedroom, plus the Xmas wrapping paper I last saw floating around the garage or possibly under the stairs, plus the non-Xmas wrapping paper in the dining room?
'Cos if it's the latter, he must have bought me a motorbike or something in that size category.
I got an email from the Maths departmental photocopier today. Admittedly, that's because I sent it to myself. Basically, this snazzy new photocopier lets you, rather than photocopying the document, scan it in and send it to yourself (or a whole bunch of people, if you have the patience to type all the addresses on the touch-sensitive screen) as an email attachment.
The thing that amused me the most about it all, however, is the thought of sending a reply to the photocopier: "No, this quality isn't good enough! I want a nicer copy." Or even a thank-you email. I'm guessing the photocopier won't know how to deal with that.
It must be the right weather or something: both Sarahs bought houses this week. On Wednesday, movie Sarah and her partner Chris finalised a deal on a house in Kenmore, and this morning I found out Sarah and Michael and Aidan will be moving to Redbank Plains soon.
Congratulations to everyone involved.
James and Michael are making really good progress on the new walls downstairs. Stuff is happening and it's really exciting.
Yesterday I took part in the fun: James and I have painted part of the front balcony wall blue, at least the first coat. Eventually the entire front balcony wall will be painted, but for now, we're concentrating on the bit where the new airconditioning will sit.
The soles of my feet still have blue spots on them. At least Zeki is staying well clear (I imagine the smell is warning enough), so we don't have a blue cat.
I declare it officially spring today: it's not so much that it's warm and sunny (it often is, during winter in Brisbane), as that there's also quite a breeze which is not making everything colder, but rather, carrying the scent of jasmine.
I've already noticed in the last week that a lot of things are in bud or already flowering (the azaleas are almost over), and the jacarandas are turning yellow, seeing as the weather is so confusing here many deciduous trees only realise they're supposed to drop their leaves once it's time to gear up for the next lot.
Our pigeons appear to be persisting with nesting on the balcony; I have no clue how to keep the actual fern alive in the meantime, maybe I'll need to mist it daily or something. They're working well as Nemrut-minding, he sits and watches them for hours, and fails to get into other kinds of trouble.
There have also been spontaneous outbreaks of house airing and tidying today, so even we have been infected by spring.
But right now, we're watching a production of Damnation of Faust which looks rather like Belioz in the Matrix. The Devil seems to have been modelled on Laurence Fishburne, only without the sunglasses. There are also copious references to mobile phones, and funky lighting effects, including one very cute bit during a chorus when there are two amplifier-style columns moving up and down, and it's not clear if CH-1 and CH-2 is a reference to channels or choruses.
Because I'd been getting a bit stressed and fretty, James encouraged me to go for a run early Wednesday. I was a bit iffy, because I haven't run in near-freezing temperatures and didn't really have the clothes for it. But I set off to the Queenstown botanic gardens. I quickly discovered that if I'm running when it's still dark, I need street lighting and level surfaces. The lovely lighting around the peninsula the gardens are on ran out, just past the tip, and I was getting dim glimpses of iced-over puddles I did not want to land in. On the positive side, it was dark enough that I got to see far more stars than any other time I was in NZ.
Once it was daylight, we picked up our hire car and drove off to Te Anau. This was quite interesting in its own right - first we drove on the road right between lake Waimaru and the Remarkables range, then we got down to the flatter middle part of southern NZ, which was covered in freezing fog. I can't tell you anything about views in this part of NZ, but I can tell you about every tree and bush being outlined in ice and frost. We were also doing sheep, cow, and deer spotting. Despite NZ's reputation, I think the total cow and deer count for our trip well exceeded the sheep, even if the sheep did win the individual placing.
We emerged from the fog, but the landscape continued to be somewhat more level than I was expecting all the way to Te Anau. It might be the gateway to fjordland, but it's a small quiet town in its own right. The mountains only really start on the far side of the lake.
We first visited the wildlife centre, which being NZ meant all birds. I discovered there are enough weird NZ birds with (to me) weird names that I'm having a bit of trouble keeping track, so I contented myself with the general flavour and maybe learning a few by the end of the trip. The giant pigeons were certainly memorable - if you think of your average pigeon maybe serving one person, one of these could probably feed four-six people. It's amazing they can fly.
Down at the back, relative to how we came in, we got to the Takahe enclosure. They are just fabulous birds, and have now been officially declared my favourite flightless bird, to go with my favourite cartilaginous fish. It's not so much that they look cute: chicken-sized, practically spherical, blue with greenish wings, and red beak and legs. It's the way they move around, or at least the ones at Te Anau did. Their legs are, well, solid, if not actually short and stubby, and they walk around with a goosestepping stompy action, sometimes flapping their pathetic wings a bit, like they totally own the place.
I think it's because I'm used to thinking of birds as graceful and aerodynamic and ready to fly off at the slightest provocation, and takahe are rather the antithesis of that, that they appeal so much. I'm finding that I'm now imagining how dinosaurs moved based on the takahe. We were later told that takahe feed on alpine tussock grass, which is not specially nutritious, so there wasn't much competition before people brought other species to NZ. So the way they walk makes sense, in terms of getting around snow and grass tussocks, and also, they do in fact totally own the place.
We also whipped around to see the control gates for Lake Te Anau (this is apparently the first place in the world where a hydroelectric plant has been set up which is only allowed to operate within strictly-defined limits of the natural lake levels) and the start of the Kepler track. I'd not have minded some more time here, but since the actual Kepler track is one of those 3-4 day great walks, I'll have to plan that for a warmer time of year, plus getting some experience of overnighting walks.
Then it was time for our booked excursion at Te Anau: the glowworm caves. (Hint if you're driving to Te Anau at busier times of year: there's not a lot of suitable parking close to the tour start - we decided that since the 1hour parking was 1/3 full (and mainly with other glowworm tourers as far as I can tell) that it was a fair risk.) The tour starts with a 20-min sail across Lake Te Anau, which was a great way to see more of the scenery.
The glowworm caves can't be accessed other than by boat, and are at the tip of the very Murchinson ranges which is now a restricted-access conservation zone for takahe. Down by the lake, it's rainforest of the moss-covered-everything variety. Other people don't seem to get all that much out of different ecologies, but I'm continuously amazed by how different just rainforests can be.
To get to the glowworms, you walk through the outer caves, which are pretty spectacular themselves - the limestone is layered with a harder, darker sandstone, so you get all kinds of stripe effects and colour changes as you look at a wall from the side or above. There's also a lot of water rushing through in a great hurry. The caves are too young to have actual limestone formations - our guide showed us two soda straws, about 1cm each.
They sneakily reduce the lighting as you walk into the cave, so that by the time you get to the boats and the lights are turned off, you can see glowworms immediately. You then sit silently in the boat (apparently these glowworms don't like strange noise) while the guide follows a wall-mounted rope and takes you around the cave. They're pretty amazing - a bit like stars up close - but I'm glad they were only part of the whole excursion, as I thought the outer caves and rainforest were great too, and a nice sampler of the place.
We saw a few mountains on the way back I hadn't noticed on the way out, but the fog probably had something to do with that. Our last night in Queenstown, due to a hotel voucher, was at the rather-more-upmarket than I'm used to, Sofitel. It was kind of fun to stay in a room with an espresso machine (the sealed-pack system so it wouldn't take someone with James' expertise to operate) and a TV over the bath (there were world cup matches and state of origin while we were there) and a heated bathroom floor. But the lifestyle didn't tempt because it felt too impractical. Most especially for the poor people who had to clean the bathroom (which I guess most people don't care about in a hotel), but just generally, I've concluded that if I'm to have luxe, I want it tempered with common sense.
On Thursday (this is still last week), we finally left Queenstown and drove more-or-less north. I decided we should try the shorter, higher and twistier, road to Wanaka because it sounded interesting. The first part of the road is very twisty and goes over 1000m - there was a lot of ice and slush on the road, and the landscape was small tussocks of grass poking out from the snow. There was a bit of a sense of passing through another world. The rest of the road was pretty straightforward, down a valley, with more mountain scenery on either side.
We didn't visit Wanaka proper, but spent quite a lot of time, considering how much driving we still needed to do, at Puzzling World. I'm a sucker for places about puzzles and illusions, with walk-around-in mazes. But I think the very nicest thing about Puzzling World is that there's a large area with tables with various puzzles set out, that you can just sit and play with for free. And it is great to see people of all ages playing with the puzzles.
Of the paid-for puzzling rooms, the best one was definitely the one that's at a 15-degree angle. It allows for great illusions like balls rolling uphill and people leaning over without falling over. It's quite unsettling to be inside - the longer I spent in there, the less sure I was about how anything would act if dropped. Also kudos to the people responsible for building the room in the first place - it must have driven normal builders nuts.
The maze was apparently the world's first two-story maze. It has a main level with the usual maze walls (wooden) and then various wooden bridge sections that you need to use to actually get anywhere. The aim is to visit each of the four towers in each corner, and then find your way back out. The most dangerous part the day we were there is that it was still cold, and the stairs and bridges had some ice that had to be negotiated carefully.
Then we continued our drive north towards Haast. This is just ridiculously scenic - first you drive along more huge alpine lakes with snowy mountain backdrops. Then you head up and over a much narrower, lusher valley. We stopped to look at several waterfalls, and play with all the water-washed pebbles (NZ rivers seem to mostly sit in much wider, pebbly beds).
By the time we reached Haast, the mountains seemed surprisingly far behind. Everything was sandy and flat and the ocean was a real presence. The trees out on the west coast grow in interesting distorted shapes. We didn't have time to really stop, but had to continue north to Fox Glacier. The road weaves between the coast and more inland, and in most places the mountains are much closer than at Haast. The overall windiness of NZ roads means travelling times are significantly longer than for equivalent distances in Oz.
Fox Glacier the town is small and cute. There's one (well-patronised) general store, the glacier guide shopfront and cafe, and a few other eateries and of course accomodation. On the back roads were some real houses, indicating that we were still pretty close to real NZ. Our motel, despite being by far the cheapest accommodation on our trip, was really nicely appointed, including being the only other place with heated bathroom floor. It also had sink, microwave, plates and cutlery in addition to the fridge.
But our time in Fox Glacier was really all about Friday. Firstly, we wanted to see some of that famous Lake-Matheson-at-dawn action. Unfortunately, we didn't realise that the five-minute drive out there required a follow-up walk of over half an hour to get to the side of the lake where the mountains' reflection can be seen. James set up his camera near a paddock and should have some good photos of the mountains over foggy NZ landscape. In the meantime, I did a bit of scouting around. In retrospect, because the lake wasn't still when we got there and only settled later, we did actually have time to walk around to the photospots. The problem would have been getting back in time, because we had a full-day glacier hike to get to.
We'd booked the all-day walk because our advice was that the half-day walk didn't really get you far enough onto the ice. It was quite a big ask of me, with my issues about heights and also not being fond of cold slippery stuff in general. I have to say I spent a lot of time on that glacier pretty stressed out, and probably not getting as much out of the scenery as other people on the trip, but I'm glad I did it and I am extremely happy with the attention and thoughtfulness of our guide, Graham (who seemed to go by Grayser within the company).
I think I understand why other people don't find the glaciers a big deal - if you're not with a registered guide, you can only walk up to the terminus, and that's cordoned off because it's the most unsafe part (bits being prone to break off and fall at any time). The ice is dirty and covered in rocks. It's hard to see what the glacier is like further up, because of the angles.
With a guide, instead of going through the rather rocky and bare river valley, you climb through the rainforest alongside the valley (another fascinating rainforest, because everything is on such a small scale - I'm not clear if that's because it just hasn't had time to grow, or if being next to such a large heat sink stunts the growth). You emerge, after a chain-assisted climb across a cliff face, well past the terminus of the glacier. The tour includes crampons and instructions on attaching them (in fact they will lend you almost everything - thermals, hats and gloves, bags and boots).
Getting on to the glacier was definitely unsettling. There are chainsawed paths of steps for you to follow, and there is no way I'd have been on that glacier otherwise. But interestingly, by the time we came back down from the all-day walk to the part of the glacier covered on the half-day walks, that area seemed much tamer and not as exotic - there's a lot of rocks and gravel in places, and the ice topology is generally less extreme. So even I managed to adapt pretty well.
The most fabulous thing about being on the glacier for me is how blue the ice is, and the wavy texture of the ice caused by suncups. (Our guide made sure we were quite the glacier terminology experts by the end of the day). Standing in a crevasse twice as tall as yourself, surrounded by frozen blueness is quite something. The other fascinating, although more stressful, aspect is the thing I called ice topology. Walking on a glacier is somewhat like walking in very mountainous terrain, except all the mountains are much, much smaller and also steeper. I got the same sense of "artistic essence of ..." that I do about Zen rock gardens' representation of ocean and islands. The fact that more or less everything was cold and blue was just a bonus.
The walk itself went up the glacier, from relatively close to the terminus, to the lower parts of the lower icefall. (An icefall, for those who, like me, didn't know, is just like a waterfall, only slower and colder.) It's hard to convey, because it's a part of the glacier you can barely see from the bottom, and yet the glacier continues up at least twice as far (the icefall is an "elbow" in Fox Glacier) before the névé, or "snow lake" which is what is collecting all the snow that becomes the glacier. Anyway, we got up far enough to, as I mentioned, be able to see far more complicated, twisted ice shapes, and caves and tunnels. And the ice is bluer, and there are almost no rocks or gravel.
Then it was time to get back down. I'd been really worried about this, because that's where I really slow down (I can climb up much steeper things than I can get down from easily). I got a lot of special attention from Graham, and had to ask how to negotiate my feet down particular crevasses (a common trick is footsteps on each side of the lower part of a crevasse, but since you're coming down the stairs on one side, there's a point of switching technique that I often found confusing). It also took a lot of effort to walk with the correct technique - feet shoulder-width apart and stomping, almost putting all your bodyweight into each step to make sure the crampons grip. I am wondering a bit if at least part of my balance issues is that my natural preference is to walk with my footprints in a single line.
I don't think I mentioned that cloud had been pulling in all day and it rained lightly on our way down, but apart from putting up my hood, the rain didn't make much difference. Getting down wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared, but since we got back from the tour significantly later than the advertised time, I'm wondering how much that was me, and how much Graham's enthusiasm about getting us up as far as possible.
By the time we got back to our motel, I think I just crashed. I wasn't even particularly hungry, so we ate some of the nibbles we'd taken all the way up with us, and fell asleep.
So, last Monday, we found ourselves at Auckland airport trying to get to Queenstown. Our immediate impression was that the airport was really badly designed, but this could just have been because a lot of flights had been cancelled due to fog, and there were large numbers of people hanging around to find out if they could get on another flight, or if any flights were going anywhere. They were only checking in one flight when we arrived, and they opened three more about half an hour later, one of which was ours, lucky us.
So we went from crammed and disorganised around the check-in area to crammed and disorganised at the departure gate. I did notice there was no actual plane near the departure gate and I was wondering how the approaching, much-delayed boarding time could possibly be right, when we were told to all go to a different boarding gate, about as distant from the one we were at as possible.
At least there was a plane, and we got to Queenstown. Queenstown is a very strange place. It's very touristy and commercialised, which I usually find really annoying, but Queenstown is so extreme, it tipped over for me and became a new, quite charming thing. My idea is that Queenstown is not actually in New Zealand. Instead, it is part of the World-Wide Tourist Theme Park, which also claims parts of the Great Barrier Reef, Oahu, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, etc - basically anywhere the tourists don't just outnumber the locals, but you can't actually find the locals. This is confirmed by the fact that nearly everyone we interacted with in Queenstown itself was from somewhere else. We wanted a Queenstown bingo card so we could cross off the Irish, Dutch, French, Germans, Canadians, Brazilians and Argentinians who were serving us dinner or selling stuff.
The Queenstown part of the World-Wide Tourist Theme Park is where you find a large selection of really big, scary rides. James is quite into that kind of thing, me not so much. In fact I've got this theory that what people are into is not actually the adrenalin rush, but the following endorphin rush, and I think I don't get endorphins that way. By the end of the afternoon, we had a fair idea of what I was willing to do and what James would have to do alone, and also hot chocolate and icecream from Patagonia Chocolates. Now, they are good at chocolate, but the brandysnap icecream was even better, and is possibly not legal to sell to under-18s.
We woke up to a picturesque dusting of snow on all the hills and mountains that create such a stunning setting for Queenstown, and headed off for our combo-pack. Unfortunately, due to the weather, our combo wasn't happening, and it took a pretty amazing amount of time for the (Irish) girl behind the desk to explain this to us and help us sort out alternative arrangements.
Eventually we were on the bus to the Shotover Jet. Jetboating is essentially a horizontal rollercoaster, including 360 degree spins. We'd picked the Shotover Jet because it's the one that does the prettiest part of the Shotover Gorge. The other jetboats go out on the lake and up wider gorges. I think it was fun, but I've decided that whizzing around at 80kph in near-freezing temperatures, and trying to admire the scenic beauty of the canyon at the same time, is just too much processor-switching for me, and I'll try to take them separately in future.
I did notice that nearly everyone working for Shotover Jet were actual New Zealanders. I guess this is work that can't afford a high turn-over, or maybe we were just far enough from the WWTTP effect of Queenstown itself.
We'd hoped to get back to Queenstown in time to go on the noon sailing of the Earnshaw, but failed. This is a paddlesteamer, which is shockingly sedate and old-fashioned by Queenstown standards. We went and relaxed a bit in the hotel room instead, and at least I needed the break, after trying to explain to James that really, me managing not to throw up all over the Shotover Jet was actually an achivement, even if it had been a bit tame for him.
In the afternoon, we set off for James' big thrill - the Canyon Swing. This is not quite bungy jumping, but possibly better. Instead of jumping off a cliff with a stretchy rope tied around your ankles, you jump off a cliff with a non-stretchy rope attached to a full body harness, and the other end suspended midway above a gorge (or canyon I guess). This means that at a certain point, instead of falling down along the cliff, you start swinging across the gorge. The falling part is clearly pretty scary the first time - James made a noise which I guess was a scream. It certainly wasn't one I'd heard from him before or knew he could make. But he liked it so much he went another two times and by the third time, it was more giggling than screaming.
Now I've seen it, I'm totally cool with it in principle and would like to try, if only there were intermediate sizes between your typical playground swing and the Canyon Swing itself. I tried taking photos of James from the observation platform, but he's this tiny red speck way off in the distance. James had the small camera that can do video strapped to his hand, and that seems to work better, apart from the windrush totally overwhelming the audio, and the apparent difficulty of showing how fast everything is going past.
We finished the afternoon with the gondola (cablecar) that goes up to the lookout above Queenstown. It was getting really cold by then and we were snowed on while trying to photograph the surrounding mountains and lake. We had to give up as the light dropped, and I was worried James' fingers were going to follow suit.
Well, we're getting there with the cats, Amber certainly has made herself at home, and Nemrut is gradually getting less skittish.
So we could turn back to our downstairs renovations - the carpet people are starting to wonder when we actually want the carpet installed, because we ordered it quite a while ago.
Fortunately, this is a long weekend, so we did some housecleaning on Saturday (oddly enough, there's a lot of white fur to sweep up) and Annette came around Sunday to help us finish the painting that needs to be done before the carpet can be put in.
It was lovely to see Annette, and having a third person around seems to reduce the patches of stress between James and me when we go into "read my mind", "no, you read my mind" mode.
She also helped us get the first coat of paint on everything, and as it turns out is great at cutting-in. So even though she had to go home before we got to the second coat, at least the first coat got done properly.
James and I did manage to get the second coat on, but not without incident. Amber got curious, and started wandering around in the little room while we were still painting it. James, in his attempts to shoo her out, managed to scare her so much she ran up the recently-painted wall under the windowsill and onto the windowsill.
The paint was still wet enough that once we got her out, I could cover all the traces of her progress up the wall with fresh paint, but there are four little grooves in the windowsill now. And she has paint in her pawfur, along her side, in her tail. I thought she was too much of a prim-and-proper miss to live with that.
When I went for a run on Sunday morning, I discovered that someone had decorated the deer sign furthest from us with a red nose and skinny tinsel like reins. I completely lost my running rhythm laughing. Maybe deer road signs get decorated all the time, but they're pretty unusual here, and I've never seen a kangaroo sign done up as Rudolph.
I made pebbernødder and Christmas cake when I got home. So that's done now. I might do a bit more baking - we certainly have more than enough alcohol-soaked sultanas and apricots - but the important stuff is done. I also made banana muffins, because James hadn't eaten his bananas, and he took them into work and they were devoured, although he seems to have done a significant fraction of the devouring himself.
I seem to have done something stupid to my achilles tendon on my run, I was limping all yesterday, so I'm seeing the physio today. James is going in for knee surgery on Thursday, so we're quite the sports injury household at the moment.