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

Oz

Well I've been holding off from doing this post partly due to laziness and partly due to my hope that one of the people I was traveling with would post some photos (my camera didn't make it onto the plane). However, I'm rapidly forgetting what went on over there across the ditch, so I think I'd better just go for it.

Wednesday, the day after Jake and Robin left for home, I got on a plane too, and headed for Melbourne, Australia. I got to fly business class, which was an experience. I felt rather out of place in my jeans and t-shirt among all the suits. Anyway, I got in to Melbourne after the 3-hour flight, and was met by my friends Lachlan and Maša (both of whom I know from Hong Kong). I should explain at this point that the reason I went to Melbourne was to attend a birthday/all-around celebration for Lachlan and his family.

I spent four full days in Melbourne. I quite liked what I saw of the city. One highlight was going to the aquarium, where there were some very sizable sharks and some amazing jellyfish. We also went to see Wicked, which I would recommend highly. It's a great show, even though I felt the story could have been more convincing. I think it was about the second night of the preview shows (before it officially opened), so there was a lot of excitement around town, random areas bathed in green light, and that kind of thing.

On a different evening, we went to see an Australian Football match. Australian football bears very little resemblance to American football or soccer (or rugby or any other sport I've ever seen for that matter). It was pretty easy to follow, though, and quite entertaining to watch. It was also not nearly as violent as I would have expected. Personally, my favorite part was when they played cheesy recorded fight/theme songs at the beginning.

The other kind of exciting thing we did was go to a wildlife park (basically a glorified zoo, but bigger and many of the animals got to roam). We saw kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, echidnas (I liked the echidnas), etc. We also saw platypus, which are very cool little animals up close. They can sense tiny electric disturbances with their bills, allowing them to pick up on brain waves from crayfish and such.

I am now back in Wellington, of course, and am currently on break again. Hmm, Olympics-wise, New Zealand is fiercely proud of their medalists. They may not have many, but they're way up there on a per capita basis. Most of their realistic medal chances seemed to be decided on a single night, which I watched. Again the most amusing part for me came at the beginning when a fatherly sportscaster gave a little speech about how we mustn't get too excited now, because there are lots of good athletes competing. So if it doesn't turn out like we hope, let's not beat ourselves up about it, alright? Alright.

Finally, I shall leave you with some psychology fun fun times. Your job is to look at the two faces below and decide which one looks happier to you. There is no right answer, (and the fact that the writing is flipped on one of them is not important). When you have picked a face, read on.


Face A

















Face B


















Echidna. Not part of the psychology experiment.


















The two faces are exact mirror images of each other, yet most people say B is happier. This is because the right side of your brain is better at perceiving emotions (and faces for that matter). The right side of your brain is also the side that first receives information from the left side of visual space. Therefore, the emotional information from the left side of the face (as you look at it) predominates your interpretation of that face's emotional state. It's amazing! Some people get brain injuries that prevent them from being able to perceive emotion properly, and others end up unable to recognize faces at all, although they can "see" perfectly well and have no memory problems.

Adventures Part 1B: On the Road with Jake and Robin

After arriving back in Wellington from the South Island, we decided to take the following day off to do laundry and rest up, before heading north to Taupo and Rotorua. This was what we in the industry like to call a BAD MOVE.

Things started out fine enough the next day. Then it started to snow. It took about 10 hours to do what should have been a 4-hour drive as a result of accidents, road closures, and dead stops. We got out and had a sludge fight at one point. This is not normal weather for the central North Island. In fact both the locals and the evening news were heartily impressed. There wasn't actually that much snow, but given the small, winding roads and the fact that snowplows are few and far between, it was more than enough to almost paralyze the middle of the island. We kept having to go farther and farther out of our way. On the plus side, we did get to see some nice scenery, and there were a few places where it went from being completely snow-covered to ridiculously green and back again over the course of a few kilometers.

We did finally make it up to Taupo, a town on the shores of Lake Taupo that the snow had not even touched. We did very little that night beyond trying to watch some rugby on tv (and being mystified. None of us understand rugby.) The next day we headed up to Rotorua, which is an area with lots of geothermal activity. There were some nice mudpots and steam vents and that kind of thing, though it's got nothing on Yellowstone. Rather than Old Faithful, they've got a "geyser" that erupts if (and, as far as I know, only if) they put soap (actually, biodegradable soap substitute) in it. Jake dubbed it a fauxser. (There is a good story about how a bunch of guys from a prison camp in the area accidentally discovered it while washing their clothes, though.)

We also did some nice walks in the area. My favorite was through a geothermal area just outside Taupo called the "Craters of the Moon." It's this field that's full of big, collapsed steaming craters. It had kind of a surreal feeling to it.

There's a lot more to see in the North Island, but we didn't have enough time to do any more, so we headed back to Wellington the day before Jake and Robin flew back out again. That about wraps up our New Zealand travels. The South Island was much more memorable than the North, but then we didn't really do the North justice.

Next time: Emily braves the land of DEATH (otherwise known as Australia).

The photos below are all Jake's.

A cop got stuck on this uphill stretch and stopped us all here for about 40 minutes to let the snow melt.
















10 Minutes from the snow, it was beautiful.
















Robin by a steaming crater.





















A "Crater of the Moon."

Adventures Part 1A: On the road with Jake and Robin

So Robin, Jake, and I were supposed to do a joint post while they were over here, but we were tired from traveling and ended up watching Dr. Who episodes in my room instead. Anyway, here goes.

Basically, they arrived and hung out in Wellington for a few days as we waited for my last exam to be over. (Wellington, by the way, experienced several days of solidly bad weather (wind, driving rain, hail) starting from their arrival.) However, we had a nice enough time, and saw the big museum and went up the hill overlooking the city and that kind of thing.

As soon as my last exam had ended, we headed for the ferry and started off for the South Island. It's about a three hour ferry ride across the Cook Strait, and the last bit of the crossing winds through some gorgeous sounds (flooded valleys). We took the train down the coast from Picton to Christchurch on the east coast, then took the other (rather more scenic) train through the Southern Alps to Greymouth on the west coast. From there we rented a car and drove south via several national parks. Eventually, we headed east again to Dunedin and then drove back up the east coast to Picton and the ferry.

There were very few cars on the roads, which was good because virtually all the highways are 2-lane roads, and most of them wind around coasts and mountains and pass over 1-lane bridges quite regularly.

The scenery was amazing. I knew it was going to be pretty down there, but it was really ridiculously gorgeous everywhere we went, and the drives from place to place were generally just as nice as the destinations. In fact it was rather anguishing that daylight only lasted about 10 hours. We had to do some driving in the dark, knowing full well that there were mountains and lakes and valleys on all sides. The west coast and south-west of the island are most dramatic, but the whole things is pretty in different ways. Anyway, along the way we hiked, went sky-diving, hiked on a glacier, cruised through a fiord, rode a jet-boat through a canyon, and saw various wildlife.

The sky-diving I enjoyed mostly for the scenery. I cannot imagine a more beautiful place to do it. The actual falling was not as exciting as I expected, but the gliding over the mountains was very nice.

Wildlife spotted included dolphins, seals, various notable birds (New Zealand, having no native land mammals, has many interesting flightless and flighted birds), and, thank goodness, penguins. We had to cheat a little bit for the penguins. We went to a penguin colony near Dunedin that people are working to conserve. They've dug trenches in the beach so that you can hide in them and watch the penguins going out or coming in from their day's hunting. It was rather a surreal experience running through the trenches chasing our weathered penguin-guide woman to the next likely spot. Anyway, the penguins were appropriately cute and amusing.

I also enjoyed seeing black swans, and there was the call of one bird that may haunt me for the rest of my life. I think it was a bird, anyway. It sounded like gentle bells jingling in many tones. Frankly, it sounded magical. (Jake and Robin are not quite as enamored of the memory as I am, though they were pretty darn impressed at the time, no matter what they tell you.)

And on that note, I will end this for today. Look out for Part 1B: The North Island or Emily, Jake, and Robin Drive into a Blizzard and Part 2: Oz.

Below is a sampling of Jake's and my photos.



pretty penguin preening party

















I think this is Milford Sound, the most famous of the fiords. However it may just be somewhere random within Fiordland.





This is the gorgeous little campsite in Fiordland where we stopped and heard the amazing bird call.















Black swans!!!








































Franz Josef Glacier

Hello,

Well k.d. lang was wonderful. (I'm sorry, Grampa. I know you'll be devastated, but I was unable to get an autograph. Next time.) Cats was less than wonderful. It really didn't work for me. For those who haven't seen it, there is basically no story, half the words they use turn out to be made-up names, and basically nothing makes sense. Luckily both my flatmates knew all about the show and were able to explain these things to me during the intermission, so I stopped trying to understand during the second half. They did make a really neat pretend train at one point from the set pieces, though.

Strangers have been asking me a lot lately whether I'm Canadian. Now I am living with a Canadian, so it is possible that I'm picking up the accent to some degree. My theory, though, is that everyone's just being careful because they've learned that many Canadians over here seem to get very touchy about being assumed to be Americans.

The big news here over the last week has been that the Government officially apologized to New Zealand's Vietnam War veterans for the official reception they received on returning from Vietnam (which was apparently just as ungrateful and hostile as that they received from New Zealand society in general). They had an official homecoming ceremony for the veterans and their families this week. I understand about 3500 New Zealanders served in the war. 37 died.

For those who don't know, Jake and Robin are coming to visit at the end of June, and we're going to travel New Zealand. When next I write I should have plenty of tales to tell of our travels.

until then

Holidays

Hello again,

It is currently our mid-semester break -two weeks without classes. However, I have been busy. I've started working at Borders, which I'm quite enjoying. Working in a bookstore has been pretty much the height of my ambitions as far as part-time jobs go. Before Borders, I briefly worked in a grocery store deli. My main job there seemed to be putting dozens of raw chickens on racks and into the oven, and I am glad to be done with that. I think if I ate meat before that experience I might not now.

Anyway, apart from training at Borders and doing school work, I've gone on a couple of beautiful hikes. I did one in the hills northwest of town and another today with my flatmate Theresa from town south to the sea. The one today was really nice. We weren't quite clear on how to get to the beginning of the hike so we spent about an hour following a creek bed more or less straight up a hill in the hope of eventually getting to somewhere useful. Thankfully, our scrabbling through the forest did eventually bring us to where we wanted to be (pictures below.) There is pretty much nothing that can kill you in the New Zealand bush (unlike Australia, the land of death) and it's hard to get lost since you're never far from the sea, so wandering the forest in the general direction you want tends to be a feasible option.

My classes have all been going pretty well. I'm really enjoying Brain and Behavior, as I'm constantly fascinated by all the things our brains are constantly doing.

Coming up, I'm going to go see K.D. Lang in concert on the 5th, which I'm quite excited about, and also going to see Cats with my flatmates at the end of May. I'm less excited about Cats, as it's never been high on my list of musicals I want to see and I'm prejudiced against Andrew Lloyd Webber, but hopefully it will be fun.

Hike #1

The top of this mushroom was about the size of my hand.












One of those "shall I / shan't I?" kind of fences.


































Hills and the South Island in the background.














The Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship based in New Zealand. This ship is named for the original which was sabotaged and sunk by operatives of the French government in 1985 when it was part of protests against and monitoring of French nuclear testing.




Hike #2

This is what we were rewarded with after blundering through the woods.








We came round a hill and what should we see but ostriches! It was kind of surreal. Later on one of them did a very strange sort of flapping, neck rolling thing at us. We kept our distance.








Theresa and the hills.