Planning for Christmas

Just lately I have been too busy to write. Why? Well I have been writing. I’m into the second semester of a creative writing course and decided to double my workload to get finished early. So all this time I haven’t been writing a blog post I have been writing things for my course.

I’m not quite ready for sharing any of my works but I will do, one day.

Dunedin winter has been quite kind so far, just a few days of snow or hard frost. There was a long two weeks of rain, grey skies and general damp. It reminded me of London. Now we are back to blue skies and it doesn’t seem so bad.

Officially I can’t complain about the cold anymore. This isn’t just because I chose to leave the semi-tropical Auckland to move here. There is another reason. It’s not cool to complain about cold if you want to go to the coldest place on the planet - Antarctica. Its even less cool to complain when you find out you are actually going to go there.

Yep - I’m going to Antarctica. (Fingers crossed/subject to a medical and a heap of other paperwork..)

I will be going as part of a summer school course - Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies (GCAS).  This is 14 weeks of intensive learning including a field trip 'to the Ice'.   I am one of 16 lucky people doing this course.  Right now I'm still in the slightly too excited to think straight stage.

As part of my preparations I am contemplating switching to diet of ice-cream. There are still a few hoops to jump through like the medical and the small matter of paying the course fees but right now I am on track for a very white Christmas.

RIP - Bruce the Preying Mantis

The Dunedin winter has claimed its first victim in our home.....


Bruce was a South African Preying Mantis, non native to NZ. He adopted us in Auckland when he was just a nymph, taking up residence on bathroom shelf. His favoured spot was on the dental floss pot in front of the mirror. (Pictured below)

He joined us for the road trip South, riding shotgun with Pete in the VW. In his first months here he continued to grow and developed his flying skills. As is natural for a Mantis he mostly enjoyed soaking up the afternoon sun and hunting flies.



Dunedin climate was always going to be a challenge for Bruce, with winter slowly draining heat from everything Bruce required special care. In the last few weeks he has had the prime spot near the fire in the evening and a hot water bottle at night.

Bruce passed away peacefully last Wednesday morning. He was cremated ‘Viking Style’ on a burning raft after dusk that evening.

The Last Word

We didn't make it to the finals of the 48hour film competition.....thats OK we had fun making the movie. Thanks to youtube anyone can see it.....

The Last Word

So grab a handful of popcorn and get comfy for 6 minutes and 43 seconds of mystery.

The early bird...

...... catches the snow. Winter has reinforced its arrival here in the south, we've had a light dusting of snow overnight. In response I have put my thermals on under my jeans and lit the fire before breakfast.

Somehow the effect of snow outside encouraged me to get out of bed early. I still have an attitude of childhood excitement, the desire to build even the smallest of snowmen. My second thought was more adult, the thought of slippery roads and the inconvenience of extended journey times. Thankfully I don’t need to go anywhere in particular until tomorrow so the car can keep its white toupee for now.



Even with the fire going, the kitchen thermometer tells me its about 8C in here, Sitting down typing doesn’t generate much heat so the thermals are needed along with a hat scarf and gloves.



The sun is working its way up and over the hills so by lunchtime all trace will be gone and I can go back to being just cold without the magic of snow.

Lion Dance

The middle toe on my right foot is frozen again, this time it was from watching the Chinese Lion Dance at the reopening of the Sew Hoi building. I had already been there once this morning for a Tai Chi session. After four weeks instruction, assuming I could recall the moves I now have at least 5 different ways to defend myself from slow motion attackers. More to the point I have a series of moves assigned as homework which like all homework gets chewed by my imaginary dog.



The dancing lions ate cabbage so it doesn’t seem unreasonable for a dog to have a taste for homework?

What happened to the weekend.....

I think I may have finally recovered from last weekend. For want of something better to do I took up the offer of joining pete’s team for the V48hr film competition www.48hours.co.nz/2008/. Starting friday night we had 48hours to write, film and edit a short film. I was invited to help with the writing and story ideas.

7pm Friday we get word that our story must include the following elements - a brush, a character called Kerry Post who is a perfectionist and our genre was Mystery. All teams have the same elements but the genre varies - probably to make it more interesting for the judges who have to watch all 600 films at the end of the day.

After some brainstorming and a very democratic voting process the story outline was chosen - a murder mystery. With my extensive training from watching a combination of CSI and Midsommer Murders I was happy to spend the rest of the night working in the story team.

Sleep deprivation means timelines for the weekend are a bit hazy, some time around 3am Saturday morning I went home to sleep, at about 8 am Saturday I returned to mission control to help out and see wider reaction to the story draft. Over the course of the day we filmed and I spent a lot of time writing and re-writing dialogue. Somehow our house and garden became a film set and the words Action! and Cut! were repeated numerous times. In the thick of it all the guy from Telecom turned up to fix our broadband.

While I managed to stay out of the limelight, Pete took a starring role, he played a detective. Late on Saturday night Pete and I made it home for some food and a couple of hours sleep. By 3am we were back at work setting up a re-shoot.

As Sunday progressed tiredness and technical problems made the team dynamics really interesting. Tired, passionate people under huge time pressures are not always fun to be around. Once the key story elements had been saved from the editing I retired to the background, resurfacing 20 minutes before the deadline for the final dash across town to hand in our tape.

For the next week our final film is under wraps - a condition of the competition. As soon as it comes out on general release (aka YOUTUBE) I’ll post a link.

Expanding my presence on the web

An idea that came as a glancing blow and now its too late. I have joined up to all manner of things. If you know where to look today you can find me in a fair few places.

For most this is my first appearance. Since I’ve only just arrived there is still some work to do, profiles and the like to set up. I’ll get around to it, right after I get around to unpacking my real things at home.

Overnight I reconnected with old friends and found a new window to ones I already speak to. I have learnt that Facebook is hungry for my time and attention, it consumed half a day before I regained controls of myself. I don’t quite know what I have done as my profile is still bare and I haven’t even written on a wall. I don’t know what to say and I wonder about who may be watching.

Some friends are glad to finally see me there, it will, no doubt relieve them of guilt from not contacting me directly, and likewise my guilt is also lifted. What interests me most is the ex-friend(s) who through mutual acquaintance feel it is suddenly reasonable to request a statement of our friendship. Yes, I know them but back in the real world debts remain unpaid and trust still broken. When they have had so long and so many means of repairing our friendship but done nothing what makes them think facebook is the way to begin? They have requested to add me to their network of friends, another chalk mark for them but their invites only remind me of what has been lost.

just testing some stuff

testing testing....

And again....

Last Wednesday we moved again. Not such a dramatic shift as last time, this time we have just gathered up most of our belongings and moved them to the house next door. To add a bit of fun to the occasion we actually swapped house with our neighbor (who doubles as our landlord). Mostly it worked out, my mattress made the trip between the houses a couple of times as over keen helpers got confused about who owned it.

I had to take a back seat for the whole affair as I am nursing an injured foot and have been for almost 8 weeks (My excuse for not blogging). The cause of my pain remains a mystery, a stress fracture is the most likely cause but unlike a normal fracture these stress ones hide from X-rays so detection is by the much more exciting sounding bone scan.

This involves an injection of what I was assured was a tiny amount of radioactive tracer and then a series of scans by an impressive looking machine about 3 hours later. The end result should be a fuzzy picture of the bones in my foot with extra fuzziness at any broken parts. The extra fuzziness is actually showing healing which feels to me like a more positive picture than the traditional X-ray.

A call from the doctor’s surgery summoning me for an appointment this week means the results are in. I can hardly wait as I still hold the naive belief that once we know what’s wrong with my foot there will be some treatment to fix it. That is, something other than resting which is getting a little dull.

However today is not a day for lamenting, once again it’s my birthday, with all the fuss last week it took me by surprise, I thought I had another week before having to face up to being a little bit older without gaining any wisdom. I’ve had the bonus of collecting mail from 3 letterboxes, old house, new house and the PO Box we have in town. So far my card/present count is even with Pete who has another week before his birthday. Come on people, late cards still count in this competition - email me and I’ll send you my address!

Getting here.

The journey from Auckland to Dunedin can be done quite quickly by plane, ours was a little slower. When Pete and I first talked of coming here I had a few fleeting thoughts of cycling all the way down, taking a holiday and giving myself the opportunity to transition from being an Aucklander to life on the Mainland. However with two cars and two people’s collective stuff Pete and I had no choice but to drive. Even after contracting professional removers to take the big things, our bits and bobs still filled both cars to the brim. It was a squeeze to fit my friend from the UK, Roz, and her reasonably sized bag. I felt a little guilty as she made space for herself in the passenger seat, I had encouraged her not to borrow a car for her road trip as traveling together we could save on fuel and ferry costs.

The journey south was great, our first stop was in Taupo, we were all part of a relay team competing in a running/walking race around the lake. With a bit of last moment shuffling both Roz and Pete had challenging running sections to focus their minds, I was left seeking motivation for speed walking 10KM in the dark around a section of the Lake. It was an odd but good start to the journey - we didn't win the competition, but across the team everyone met or bettered their expected times and collectively we finished over an hour faster than the previous year. 

From there the journey was more conventional over the next 3 days, we had drinks and dinner in Cuba St, Wellington, took an early ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton, enjoyed a successful morning Whale watching in Kaikoura and and indulged in afternoon of cake and coffee in Christchurch. When we reached Geraldine, Pete continued south on highway 1 to start Uni while Roz and I went to play in Queenstown. Our plan was to spend 5 days and 4 nights hiking along the Routeburn and Greenstone tracks. We were joined by Daisy, a friend of a friend, soon to be a new friend of ours.

Tramping the Routeburn was a very rewarding version of exercise.  We carried in a bottle of beer each to drink on the first evening which was delicious once it had been cooled in a stream along with our boot weary feet.  Although I had only walked for a couple of hours I felt I had earned the drink. We then carried the empty bottles for the rest of the trip as a penance.  The second day we were rewarded with perfect weather, from the top of Key Summit we could see snow capped peaks and as far as the sea on the West coast.  

[ Daisy on Key Summit, and the view to the sea]

Day three was more of a mixture, the rain had arrived overnight and brought with it some bad feeling.  When we got up to make breakfast we found some other hut guests had taken our cutlery - eating porridge with a single fork and spoon between 3 was sharing beyond our level of friendship.  Thankfully the hut warden was able to supply us with replacements from a his collection of abandoned silverware.  

When we reached Howden Hut, our lunch time stop, we had been walking for 3 hours in the rain. Our appetites for chocolate had increased considerably and at the same time our enthusiasm for a further 2 days walking had diminished.  The forecast of more rain, a severe weather warning and Daisy’s suggestion that there were many more fun things to do in and around Queenstown than walk in the rain really clinched it. We had a feast of a lunch selecting the best parts of our provisions for the next few days and then took the path to the Divide, a car park and bus shelter. By early evening we were back in Queenstown enjoying a good steak and a bottle of wine.

In the remaining time we only got rained on dashing from a restaurant to the cinema in Arrowtown , Roz did get soaked on her bungy jump into the Kawerau river, Daisy and I helped her recovery by wine tasting and later visited Arrowtown. Roz and I found time and energy for a 5 hour hike up Ben Lomond. From the summit we could see rain-clouds over the end of the Greenstone track eliminating any doubts about our change of plan.

All too soon it was Tuesday morning and time to move on, but we had an appointment, Roz was speaking at the Queenstown Primary School about her ocean rowing, Daisy and I were required as support crew. I can understand Roz wanting us there, I wouldn’t want to stand up in front of a room filled with ten year olds and talk about myself, even if I had done something as remarkable and attention grabbing as rowing across an ocean. I made myself useful by getting Roz iced coffee and video-ing the talk while Daisy, a recently qualified primary school teacher, gave Roz tips on how to get and keep the kids attention. I did a terrible job with the video camera, but Roz with Daisy’s guidance was brilliant, captivating a tough audience for well over the planned 25 minutes.  

After another medicinal coffee it was time to pack the car up and hit the road. The final leg of my holiday was afternoon tea with Sophie in Alexandra, some how both Daisy and Sophie squeezed into the passenger seat of the car for the short journey to the cafe.  Cake and coffee almost pushed us over capacity as Daisy struggled to contort herself back into the car for the return to Sophie's office. Finally, I dropped Daisy off and at 4 in the afternoon, several hours behind schedule I was alone in the car driving across Central Otago, on my way to my new home, Dunedin.

Here now.

I’m in Dunedin, likened to Edinburgh in Scotland, its at the cold end of New Zealand. I know very little about Edinburgh so I won’t make any further comparisons. As of about half an hour ago I have been here for a week.

It has been difficult to assess the town’s merits as a new home since I am still suffering from the shock of moving from semi-tropical Auckland to this Southern outpost. In this week since I arrived it has been too cold to get out of bed one morning followed by scorching hot sun the following afternoon.  Even as I am writing this I am watching a rather unpleasant looking cloud front advance towards us, closing out today's perfectly blue sky.  

Although the weather is significant, the landscape of Dunedin has left an even stronger initial impression.  The hills are large and steep, rising in every direction.  We are renting a house just over the top of the highest ridge that forms the city bowl.  Walking to and from town is character building and removes the need for a formal fitness program.

When not out of breath from the hills, or trying to balance clothing to match the constantly shifting temperature, my focus has been on finding my feet in this new town and on contemplation of beginning my search for employment to fund fuel for winter heating.

I’m here because of Pete. He is my now well established boyfriend. He has come to Dunedin to do a masters degree in wildlife film making, and I have followed.

During my time in the abyss (ref. previous blog entry) I met Pete. We worked together and quickly found we connected on many levels. His desire to try something different has been a constant reminder to me that I didn’t come this far around the world to live in a huge city and spend most of my days in a tower block.

While I negotiated the maze of immigration red tape I had no choice but to work, however I was very lucky to have a fantastic boss and interesting projects to keep me distracted. In December I finally was granted NZ residency meaning I could now stay in the country without being tied to a corporate sponsor for my visa. A week or so later Pete was offered a place on this course.

Since that day we have been focused on getting us and our possessions here.

(Photo: Me and Pete on a weekend escape from the Abyss)

Cheers!

I have returned from the abyss, thats where I have been for almost a year. In an abyss so deep and dark that my wireless internet wouldn’t reach there. Thats why I haven’t written anything for so long.

Get yourself a drink and lets raise a glass to new era of my blog.

Cheers.