Hello all!

I am currently recovering from the last week of classes. Things were pretty crazy assignment-wise, and on Monday I had to give a talk for the members of the psychology lab I worked with this year. I have to admit that all these talks have been good for me. I really wasn't too nervous about actually giving the talk this time, just about the content.

I've still got two Spanish exams, and then I will be done with my Bachelors! My plan is to go back for an Honors year next year (kind of like the first year of a Masters). I'll take classes in psychology and Spanish and do a year-long project in psyc. At this point, I'm deciding between working with a professor who measures brain activation and response to emotional stimuli and working with another professor who studies children's abilities as eyewitnesses as well as how they develop healthy mechanisms for processing emotions. I'm leaning in the latter direction, because I've recently decided that I might want to work with kids in some capacity in the long term.

I'll be staying in Wellington for most of the southern summer, measuring electrical signals in the brain (ERP, for those who care) and looking at how they relate to certain kinds of decision-making. However, I will be coming back to Ohio for 3 weeks at Christmas!

Recent highlights included visiting the tulips at the Botanic Garden. They were absolutely amazing. There were brilliant color combinations and everything was just beautiful. They're all gone now, but I suppose their ephemeral nature is part of the charm. There are still lots of flowers springing up along the hills around my house.

A couple of my flatmates and I took part in a flash mob on Friday, meaning that we all trooped into a food court, froze in position for 5 minutes, and then went our separate ways. We managed to confuse large numbers of people, which was the goal. I love the concept of flash mobs and the fact that their whole aim is pretty much to show people something that they are not expecting.

I also went to an interesting talk a few weeks back about the banning of cluster bombs. Cluster bombs are problematic because many of the bomblets fail to explode on impact, meaning that they often kill civilians after a conflict has ended. New Zealand was instrumental in getting a recent cluster-bombs ban signed into effect. (Unsurprisingly, the US didn't sign it, but quite a few other major players did.) The talk was given by a NZ government negotiator and a representative of a Non-profit that was involved in the fight. It was very inspiring, because it is an example of a time when a small country, as well as private organizations, actually were able to accomplish significant change.

One more movie plug to send you off with: go see Ponyo if you get the chance. It is a delightful animated movie very loosely based on the story of The Little Mermaid. It's probably aimed at kids, but was very enjoyable for my friends and me (which may or may not tell you anything). It's from the creator of Spirited Away and other well-knowns anime movies, but I'd recommend it even if you don't really like anime. It's just very whimsical and fun.

Take care, everybody!

Greetings all,

Well it's been an exciting few weeks! I've just come back from a trip to Palmerston North where I did a presentation at the New Zealand Psychological Society conference. This conference talk thing has been terrifying my fellow undergraduates and me for months now, so it is wonderful to have it finally over with. We had a pretty good time at the conference, although neither the city nor most of the sessions I went to were particularly exciting. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, nothing too controversial happened. My professor is fairly outspoken and has in the past gotten into clashes at this type of thing. She does research on how easy it is to create false memories, and her conclusions are not well-liked by those who believe that memories (of child sexual abuse, for example) can be repressed and subsequently recovered.

We had a great deal of fun hearing tales from my professor and the PhD students about the adventures of various big-names in psychology. Palmerston North also boasts the best playground I have ever seen in my life. Two of the guys from the lab and I chanced upon it as we were out exploring the city. It went on and on and had a giant hamster wheel, trampolines, and a sort of big zip line that you could sit on and fly down. It was amazing! I'm pretty sure it could not exist in America because of the potential for lawsuits.

Anyway, overall we had a lot of fun, and it was good to get out of Wellington for a while and see a bit more of New Zealand. There were lambs gamboling in the fields as we drove along, and it was all very picturesque.

Despite my best intentions, I have not been doing as much fencing as I planned this year. However, my flatmate's boyfriend recently brought most of the flat along to the Medieval Club's fighting practice, which was quite an experience. They basically just hit each other with blunted rapiers and sticks and things, without any of the rules that sport fencing has. I found it difficult to adjust to both the lack of rules and the new style they tried to teach me. Needless to say I was trounced repeatedly (I had some serious bruises to explain the next day at university), but it was lots of fun!

On the classes front, the most exciting thing lately has been a visit by an Iranian woman to the Political Islam class that I have been sitting in on. She was absolutely fascinating. She did a great job of explaining Iran's political system, and convinced me, at least, that there is much more potential for real change there than I would have thought. She also had great stories about jumping from roof to roof while fleeing the morality police and dancing with her head scarf wrapped around her arm so she could put it on immediately if necessary.

Finally, another movie plug. I highly recommend District 9 for those who like Sci-Fi. It was very unpredictable and kept me riveted the entire time. It was gross in parts and there is a lot of death, but it's a great story very well done.

Classes, movies, and books

Hello all! Well I'm back at uni and have been very busy with classes, experiment-running, and meetings. I'm taking Neuropsychology, Psychology, Crime and Law, Spanish language, and Spanish literature. So far all of my classes are going pretty well. Spanish language is particularly fun as the teacher is very enthusiastic. Psyc, Crime and Law is also fascinating because the professor in charge has a lot of experience working with violent criminals and really knows her stuff. We've been talking about factors that contribute to crime as well as what kinds of programs and sentences reduce reoffending by released criminals. The overriding message so far has been that more punitive approaches do not work, as far as reducing reoffending goes. (Of course, that's not to say that such punishments don't serve other useful purposes, but in terms of turning criminals away from crime, the evidence suggests that they're not the way to go.)

I had a pretty good break and did a bit of hiking. I'll put some photos below. Since school started again, my main source of entertainment has come from the New Zealand International Film Festival. The festival happens once a year and there are always tons of really interesting-sounding movies on. This year I've actually managed to make it to several, mostly because my flatmate works at one of the cinemas involved and has inside info on ticket availability and things. The highlights so far have been Dead Snow, a Norwegian movie about Nazi zombies, and Examined Life, which basically involved several big-name philosophers being given free rein for ten minutes each. I highly recommend the Nazi zombies, if you're into that kind of thing. It was very gross in spots, but also very funny. The philosophy was appropriately thought-provoking and occasionally bemusing.

As my final topic for the day, a book plug! I want to recommend Lipstick Jihad, by Azadeh Moaveni, for anybody who's been following the recent goings-on in Iran. It's an autobiographical account of an Iranian-American woman who goes back to Iran in the 90's after growing up in the States. It really made the country come alive for me and certainly makes me read the news regarding the political unrest differently than I would have otherwise. Among other things, she describes how Iranians spend huge amounts of time and energy getting around the restrictions placed on them. One caveat, though: a major focus of the book is on the author's search for identity. Undoubtedly, this is very important, but sometimes it seemed (for me, but then maybe I'm just cold-hearted!) that she was spending a few more pages on soul-searching than were strictly necessary. Still, a great book that anybody interested in Iran should read!



This is from a small lake which is part of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, a large area that they try to keep free from predators in order to protect native animals (mostly birds). This valley is basically across the street from my flat, but I had no idea it was there until recently!

Here is the view from a road near my flat.

The windmills along the way during one of my hikes. There was barely any wind that day (very unusually for Wellington), so they were moving barely at all. Seeing them rising from the hills was a little bit creepy.

Looking out towards west coast of the bottom of the North island.

As usual, I'm late in posting. Sorry! I can only say that I've been either working flat out or collapsed for most of the last month or so.

One highlight since I last wrote was a panel discussion on human rights that I went to. The topic was whether there are such things as universal human rights or not. Now, the panel was lacking a committed cultural relativist so there was no one there saying that all such concepts are cultural constructions and that there's no such thing as objective right and wrong or anything like that. However, there was much good discussion and lots of arguments against cultural relativism. This was helpful because I always find myself arguing against relativism, and it was nice to get some backup.

My semester has just ended, so there was a lot going on at university lately. The most exciting things was a mini "conference" that I had to take part in along with all the other students working on doing research with my psychology professor. We all had to give 20 minute presentations on our research and then take questions. It was terrifying but fun. We got to use a nice conference room at the university and various bigwigs came by to give us words of encouragement. Afterwords, we all went out for a really nice dinner at the house of a woman who owns a restaurant in town. The woman is very Italian and also very New-Agey, so she hugged us all upon entry, gave us various heavily accented speeches about eating only fresh foods, and corrected my posture while I attempted to grate cheese for her. In about 2 months, we are all going to present again at the New Zealand Psychological Society annual conference, which is going to be much more terrifying, but a good experience.

I thought I would leave you with a few cultural tidbits:

First of all, what I had long suspcted has recently been confirmed by my flatmates: New Zealanders do not rinse their plates before drying them. So if you're drying, they hand you a plate covered in soap suds and bits of food and you're just supposed to smear it all off with the towel. This supposedly has something to do with most houses only having one kitchen sink, but personally I'm not buying that and still just think it's kind of gross. I'm trying to adjust. Other foreigners I have talked to here have noted the same thing, so it's not just me.

Also, my belief in the superiority of American desserts has been vindicated once again, as the "American-style" Brownies I made went over exceedingly well with people here. (What they know as brownies tend to be kind of dry, or at best very chewy and tough.) The parts of the world I've lived in so far just doesn't understand the concept of decadence in desserts. I'm obviously not planning my destinations very well.

Our lounge, or living room.

Standing in the same place as above. This is part of the same room.

Our kitchen. Note the steam issuing from the kitchen sink. In our house, you can perpetually see your breath, and everything steams because it is very COLD!

The view from our balcony.

Psychology stuff and general update

Hello everyone,

Things are good here! We had a two-week break beginning with Good Friday and running through Anzac day (Memorial Day), which was the 25th of April. I did not do anything special over the break as I had a huge project to get done and also managed to get sick halfway through. Easter was fun though, as we had a spirited Easter egg hunt in my flat. In New Zealand, hunting for real eggs does not seem to be the done thing. Instead, you hunt for chocolate eggs, often Cadbury Cream eggs of one variety or another.

The big project I was working on over the break involved gathering materials for the psychology experiment I am helping to set up. We are looking at how the difficulty of pronouncing foreign names affects the judgments people make about those names. The basic idea is that if things are easier to process (in this case, simpler names) we often assume that they are more positive, less risky, more familiar, etc. (Thus if you show somebody fake names of additives in food, they will assume that difficult-to-pronounce additives are more harmful.) These shortcuts are not always helpful, and they can influence us without our noticing it.

So anyway, the search for foreign names accounted for most of my break. As long as I'm talking about psych, here's a probably more interesting demonstration having to do with human attention. If click on the following link, you will find a video of some people tossing a ball around. (Some of you may have seen this before.) Your job is to count the number of passes between the team in white. http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php If the link doesn't work, you may need to copy and paste the address. I will put the answer below, so if you want to try the demonstration, do so before you read on.

I've been trying to go to events put on at university more often this year. Today there was a great speaking event which featured three people talking about gender and development. All of the speakers were very interesting, but my favorite was an MP and former government minister who spoke about her work within the New Zealand government trying to make their international aid programs more effective. One of the nice things about living in a small country is that you tend to be able to get national figures to come and talk to you.

So, have you played the counting game with the video yet? How many passes did you count? Did you notice anything strange? Did you see the gorilla? Over half the people who watch this video don't see him. (If you did see him, congratulations on being observant! It's better to do this in a group so you can laugh at everyone else.) The video is meant to show how selective our attention can be. Something can be right in front of us without our seeing it. I think this is pretty cool, but here's an even better example done on the campus of Harvard. Do you think you'd notice if the person you were talking to changed into another person? People think they will, but quite often don't! (You don't have to participate in this one, just watch.) http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/10.php

I shall leave you with that.

P.S. Sorry, Mom, maybe I'll take some photos of the flat for next time. Grampa, I heartily enjoyed your comments, and periodically suffer from the same epistemological quandaries.

first month back

Well I am back in Wellington and have been very busy! My trip here was not particularly fun as I was just getting over being sick (I cringe to think of the disease vectors). Also my flights were delayed at every turn, such that I ended up literally walking off one plane and on to the next several times. Then when I arrived in Wellington, it transpired that my bags were still in LA.

However, I made it and made it to my new flat where I am living with two people I knew from previous years and one I didn't know. I spent much of the first week back moving things up lots of stairs and into the house. I'm living in a suburb just outside the city called Karori. It's a very green and hilly area. It's actually a little bit like Hong Kong, in that there are hillsides covered in concrete to stop them collapsing, and as you walk along you can see evidence of microlandslides. In any case, it's really pretty around here. I took some photos on the way to and from the grocery store which are below. My house is up the side of a hill surrounded by trees in which live tui, native birds with little white balls at their necks that make fairly melodious noises. It's all rather idyllic really.

My classes are going well so far. I'm taking cell biology, a psychology class on memory, and a philosophy/international relations/politics class on ethics and international affairs. Memory is fun. If I remember next time, I will give you some links so you can see and/or participate in some cool psyc demos.

Ethics is fascinating and sobering. We've been spending a lot of time so far talking about how much of an obligation inhabitants of rich countries have to inhabitants of poor countries and why such an obligation does or does not exist. I came across an idea I quite liked in one of my readings for the class today. The author was making the point that almost everyone, if asked how much he or she should be doing to help the global poor, says "more than I am now." According to the author, we all know we should be doing more, but are constantly distracted by our own needs and wants and those of the people close to us. A virtuous person, then, is simply one who is able to keep his or her attention where it belongs, which in this case is on the millions of people who desperately need our help right now. All issues of the efficacy of international aid aside, I like this idea of virtue as simply paying attention to the right things.

I'm also working with one of my psychology professors in a "class" where I help with some of her lab's research. I'll let you know more about that once my project gets underway. Due to my expressing an Idea, I have been taken off the experiment I started out with (which had to do with how the presence of photos affected people's judgments of whether celebrities are alive or dead) and am now tasked with designing a new one. I'm really enjoying working in the lab and getting the chance to actually design an experiment.

Anyway, I shall have to end there as I have readings coming out of my ears.

Until next time.

On the way from my house to the grocery store.

Looking back towards my flat. You can't see it from here, but if you were to
follow the road on the left of the photo towards the center and take a left,
rounding the hill, you would basically be beneath the house.

The commercial hub of Karori!

The British Isles

Hello again, everyone! I've had a lovely summer break here in wintery Ohio and have enjoyed catching up with friends and relatives. I'm heading back to Wellington in just a few days, but I thought I'd let you know how my trip to the Emerald Isle and environs went. For those who don't know, I just got back from spending a fortnight in Ireland and Scotland. Two of my best friends from Hong Kong are living in Dublin. It was great to see Caoimhe (Irish, pronounced Queeva) and Attiya as well as some other friends.

I spent a good deal of time wandering the streets of Dublin and quite liked the city. It's not too big, but is bustling and full of nice streets and old picturesque buildings. We made the requisite trip to the Guinness museum, though I was personally not too impressed, perhaps because I cannot see any earthly reason anyone would voluntarily drink Guinness.

After a few days in Dublin, we flew to Glasgow, Scotland and made our way in the dark to Edinburgh. Now Dublin is nice, but Edinburgh is gorgeous. It is chock full of beautiful old buildings and picturesque streets. (Prompting Caoimhe to remark that it must never have been bombed, though this turns out to have been untrue.) In the center is a castle, parts of which date from the 1300s and earlier. It looks great from the outside, though it is too kept up and restored for my taste.

We also quite accidentally bumped into David Hume's grave, which made me quite happy. (David Hume was an 18th-century philosopher who has a special place in my heart because I once had to do a project on him. He argued, among other things, that just because your senses tell you there is a physical reality, you can't really know for sure. It might be all in your mind. He's my kind of philosopher.) We stuck around Edinburgh for the day and had deep-fried Mars bars, which were heavenly. In Scotland, any fish-and-chips shop will sell you such delicacies, and many advertise that they will deep-fry anything you bring in. (It's no wonder Scotland's traditional diet is considered to be among the unhealthiest in the world.)

That evening, we took a bus to St. Andrews where another Hong Kong friend of ours goes to university. Now, personally I was not too excited about the prospect of visiting this town because I associate it mostly with golf, and a Scottish friend told us repeatedly (and in rather more colorful language) that it was in the middle of nowhere. It is certainly small, but had some beautiful medieval ruins, including a great castle. The castle was made even cooler by the fact that they recently discovered a mine once dug by a besieging force as well as a counter-mine dug by the castle defenders to stop the invaders. You can now walk through them and see where the two connected.

Anyway, after exploring St. Andrews for a few days, we headed back to Dublin. We saw a bit more of the city, and Monday night Caoimhe took me to a pub which was perhaps the highlight of the whole trip. It was full of mostly Irish people (though there were some tourists such as myself) of all pub-going ages. There were old men drinking Guinness and chatting, and there were people our age out for drinks. Eventually, a three-person group started playing and singing traditional Irish ballads and drinking songs, and the whole room sang along with them with great gusto to what I gather were the better-known ones. It was a great atmosphere. I even got to sing along when they did songs I knew (like the Molly Malone song- "In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty . . ."). At the end of the night when last orders had been called for by the bar, everybody sang the Irish national anthem (which is sung in Irish of course, since an English anthem would be ironic at best). It made me want to be Irish.

The last day I explored Glendalough, a beautiful valley in the Wicklow mountains with monastic ruins. The ruins were alright, but the natural beauty was probably the highlight.

Anyway, it was a great trip!

A street in Dublin

A street in Edinburgh

The Governor's residence in Edinburgh

A deep-fried Mars bar

Yasmin and Caoimhe walking along the perimeter of cathedral ruins in St. Andrews. Yasmin is attired in traditional St. Andrews University robes. These are still worn occasionally during exams and the like, and anyone wearing them can get into the castle for free.

A view of the cathedral ruins from the pier. (Attiya is sitting on the pier.)

The castle ruins

Glendalough from above