Restless Peregrine

On time and place

2011-12-12T14:50:00.001+09:00

If sometimes it seems that time passes much too quickly, disappearing into an abyss of 'then' within which it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to all of those millions of seconds, minutes, hours, days, there are other times that are so impossibly rich and full that those same seconds, minutes, hours, days no longer seem relevant. Time out of time.

This morning was bright and grey and rainy. Gray as far as the eye could see, fat drops splattering in random intervals, but the landscape suffused with light rather than dull as rainy days usually are. It was beautiful. A few hours later the sky was a patchwork of clear and cloud. A few hours after that it was nothing but blue and properly hot for the first time since I returned to Dunedin a week ago. I gave up my pretense of work and went for a walk in the gardens.

I feel eternally blessed to have New Zealand's oldest botanical gardens literally across the street from my home here. And for all the dozens of hours I have spent wandering its grounds (with varying levels of intensity and purpose), it's amazing to me how often I am still surprised by it. Not only by the constant shifting of the trees and plants from day to day and season to season, nor by the movement of wild (and not so wild!) birds and other creatures, but by entire sections of garden that somehow in all of my meanderings I have never before managed to find. For example, the mediterranean garden that I stumbled upon today, up on the hill almost perfectly in the center of everything, symmetrical stone terrace surrounded by candy-scented bushes in soft shades of silvery green, punctuated by perfectly pruned cypresses like exclamation marks at each corner. One striking bush had needles like an evergreen but tiny blue clusters of flowers that looked and smelled suspiciously like sweet peas, one of my favourite plants in gardens in Canada.  Inhaling their sweet fragrance took me back to all of the many bouquets of sweet peas I've had over the years, tucked into Kerr jars on kitchen tables in all of the places I ever lived before leaving the country. Delightful!

The mediterranean garden is just down the path from the Australian garden that I used to like jogging through at daybreak (back when I did things like jog at daybreak).  In the frosty air, the eucalyptus oil cleared my lungs and made it easier to breathe. In today's humidity, the scent was only evident when I rubbed a leaf between my fingers, and rather than clearing my lungs it reminded me of a distant afternoon lost in a thick fog (literal, not figurative!) in the southwestern Chinese countryside in which I happened to pass through a large grove of eucalyptus trees. With so few visual cues to focus on, the smell was powerful. And comforting. Amidst all the unknown around me, buried in the mist, eucalyptus was something I knew. Not long after the path cleared and I found myself right at the edge of the very place I had been trying all along to find, and I've barely thought of it since. Until today.  Canadian kitchen tables and walks through the Chinese countryside all in the span of a few footsteps in the garden. Time out of time.

One of my old flatmates, a wonderful Botswanan woman who has since returned to her African home, never, ever, ever walked in the garden. Such a loss! The trees frightened her. Day or night, rain or shine, she was convinced the place was unsafe and did everything she could to avoid it. Since it is the trees that make me feel most at home in this part of town, I always found this hard to understand.  Trees make me feel grounded, less distracted, calm. I guess this is what happens when you grow up (essentially) in the forest, versus when you grow up on the plains like she did. Different people, different sense of place.

I taught a food course in Changwon this semester, in which we looked at different international issues through the lens of specific parts of the food system. In a survey of my students, only two out of around 60 had ever grown anything on their own. Not a garden. Not a flower. Not so much as a bean seed in a plastic cup. So I shouldn't have been surprised that they were totally disconnected from the land (as I think of it).  One group, preparing an assigned class presentation on the documentary 'Dirt!' called me repeatedly looking for help in making a connection between their film and food. 'Well, food comes from dirt,' I tried the first time, 'you know, it grows in the ground.' The second time I tried 'plants need dirt to live and a lot of food either IS plants or EATS plants. Which grow in the ground. Which is made of dirt.' The third time I knew I had a real problem. It wasn't a language problem, it was a conceptual problem. Having grown up in cement high rises, homes, schools, offices, entertainment, it was hard for them to grasp the connection between land and life.  Different people, different sense of place.

I hope I never lose my sense of awe in green and growing things, my ability to step outside of time among them and calm my chaotic mind, to feel that with days like these life is full indeed!

A grateful thought and a thankful heart

2011-08-28T06:07:00.004+09:00

I started Ramadan alone, and expected to end it the same way.

For the first 11 days, my morning routine was wake (cursing the hour), listen for my flatmate to come up the stairs after his breakfast (sometimes beginning my meal in my room, if I'd thought ahead enough to have food waiting on my dresser), go down to the kitchen to finish up hurriedly while leaning against the cold kitchen counter, return to my room tired and vaguely grumpy about my inability to return to sleep. The practice of shifting negative thoughts into positive ones (what in my mind I think of as the gratitude project) that I was exercising throughout the rest of the day hadn't yet penetrated the earliest hours.

For the next 11 days (good symmetry there), my morning routine benefited greatly from the shared company of the same flatmate I'd previously been avoiding in the morning. In fact, it was during that period that the mornings really did become routine. The hour still felt awfully early, but somehow not rushing through my food made the whole process of getting up much easier, and knowing I wouldn't be alone in the kitchen was good incentive to stop grumbling to myself and just get on with it. Which opened up space in my mind for other things - like the gratitude project I'd had such good success with later in the day. Instead of thinking 'Seriously? I'm going to get up and go EAT something at this hour???' I'd try to roll out of bed thinking 'Thank you that I have a warm bed to sleep in and something good to eat this morning.'

That was also the period that I learned a lot in the mornings, from conversations with my flatmate. For the rest of the day we wouldn't say too much about Ramadan or how it was unfolding for each of us, but in the morning we would talk about it more. Sharing some of the experience of Ramadan with someone who had done it before was invaluable to my ultimate ability to see the whole month through. For example, instead of trying to eat a more-or-less normal breakfast as I had been doing before, I learned to eat dinner in the morning - no more toast and peanut butter and fruit and boiled egg for me (which left me hungry by early afternoon), instead rice and rich meaty stew and yogurt and a banana (which saw me through most of the day).

We talked about other things too, often laughing together, which makes any day a whole lot better right from the start. Those conversations helped put me in a good frame of mine for the introduction of other things into the morning routine. Instead of coming back to my room and going straight back to bed (a futile exercise to that point in any case), I'd take a few minutes first to actually say out loud all the things I was thankful for (what at that Buddhist meditation retreat I went to they called 'loving kindness meditation'). The first few days I did this, my list was abysmally short and vague. But the longer I practiced it, the longer my list got, and the more specific. I started looking forward to this time. And, probably since it helped calm my mind again, it actually helped me begin to be able to sleep again afterwards (which went miles to improving my general outlook and productivity the rest of the day).

For the last 6 days, I've been on my own in the mornings again. My flatmate's gone to another country, leaving me the only one in the house still observing the fast. My morning routine hasn't changed much, it's just gotten quieter, more introspective. This isn't a bad thing. I had a trigger point massage the other day, the kind where the therapist figures out which spots hurt the most, and then uses a wooden tool to dig in and make them hurt even more...ouch! As she was getting going she explained to me that she likes her clients to be 'wholly present in the moment,' to really experience the sensations as they arise and then to picture each muscle opening up around the pain. Essentially, she wanted me to visualize the relaxation of each muscle around the massage tool, and thus to actually physically cause the muscle to relax. The sooner I could unclench the muscle, the faster the pain went away, allowing her to deal with some of the pesky little knots hiding underneath the clenching, keeping me from moving freely. This was a fair analogy of the fasting part of Ramadan in my mind. The more I came to embrace the physical discomfort as just one necessary part of the total experience, the more I opened myself up to other, deeper aspects that weren't even in my awareness at the beginning of the month. And which do, in different ways, help me to move more freely in the world.

This morning I went down to the dark kitchen at 5am, as usual, repeating my thankfulness mantra somewhat more forcefully than other days. Tired. Missing the shared mornings with my flatmate. Wondering what I would put together to eat. He told me before he left that it would get harder the closer I got to the end, and he was right. Especially considering this is my last day in Dunedin for quite some time, maintaining my commitment to see Ramadan through (rather than, say, going for my favourite french toast brunch with friends), is taking more willpower than I expected. Also, I am getting low on food, having finished up the last of my stews a couple of mornings ago and now just working through the miserable little leftover bits of this and that ingredient that I didn't know what to do with earlier.

But rather than opening the kitchen door to a cold room, I found the space toasty warm. Nice. At first thinking that someone had just forgotten to turn off the heater before bed last night, I opened up the fridge to find a little care package of my favourite meaty Chinese dumplings (laboriously handmade yesterday by another flatmate) waiting for me with an encouraging note attached. They weren't there late last night, which means that sometime between midnight and 5am she came down to the kitchen, turned on the heater for me, and left me freshly steamed buns to eat. Though the others in the house remained tucked up warm in their beds as I had my breakfast, I was nonetheless not alone. And that is the essence of a grateful thought and a thankful heart.

Practically Speaking

2011-08-22T11:03:00.004+09:00

3 weeks into Ramadan, and I can officially remove every pair of pants I own without undoing any of their buttons. I don't think I've lost much weight, but apparently just enough to change the way things fit. Hmm. Probably should have anticipated this, but didn't. Which brings me to a few observations on the practical side of fasting.

I just met another international student for the first time, at the request of the international office on campus. She's from the same general section of planet as me (the west part of North America), we have quite a lot in common, she's having a bit of trouble settling into town and the international advisers thought we'd get along. And so we did! Except that throughout a significant potion of our 90 minute conversation, over (her) coffee, I was thinking about how I was having trouble really focusing on what she was saying. And how hungry the smell of her coffee and biscotti were making me. Lesson: it gets progressively harder to think about anything other than feeding myself throughout the day - better to plan meetings early!

A certain level of normal activity is fine, but in addition to becoming a space cadet each afternoon, my body also doesn't have the same get-up-and-go that it's used to. I still walk quite a bit, work, play on the wheel in the pottery studio, go out with friends. But no matter how much I'd like to, swimming + fasting is not a particularly good idea. I only tried it once, which is probably not a fair sample, but...wow. It's easy to forget how much water our bodies lose while exercising in water until trying to do it without the benefit of a handy water bottle (and snacks!) waiting at the pool edge. I tried to time my swim to be as near the end of the day's fasting as possible (the pool isn't open in the evening), but that just meant that the whole getting out, getting dry, getting home, getting fed routine was WAY more effort than is probably healthy for a person. Ditto other strenuous workouts (or too much time on my feet in general). A good part of Ramadan turns out to be learning to balance energy and output, which means prioritizing the things that really need to be done and letting some of the other things wait a month. All in all, not a bad lesson to learn, especially for someone like me who tends towards perpetual (but not always purposeful) motion.

Dehydration/rehydration is another thing. This hasn't been the issue that I expected when I started fasting, ie. feeling parched all the time. It's certainly not an issue here like it must be anywhere not blessed with a steady temperature of about 10C and relatively short days. Imagine fasting in northern Canada right now, where an hour before daylight is something like 2:30am and sundown isn't until after 11pm. Or in Iran, which has long days AND high temperatures. Or in Korea, which has high temperatures AND ridiculous humidity. And yes, I'm pretty sure that there are people faithfully observing Ramadan in all of those places right now. And I am truly humbled by their dedication. For me however, it's not the slightly hollow, achy feeling in my stomach or the slightly bitter tackiness in my mouth that's the problem (I got used to both of those things fairly early on, though have often lamented not being able to swallow a breath freshener during the day!), but rather figuring out how to spread out my liquid intake over the hours available so that I don't have to pee every 15 minutes while trying to get to sleep. Which is really annoying and really disruptive of normal sleeping patterns. Which is next on my list.

Sleeping. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not all that good at falling asleep again after waking up early for pre-dawn breakfast. Also, being aware that I need to get up earlier than usual often wakes me up during the night...oh no...I've slept through my alarm...reach for watch...hmph, only 2:48am, 54 minutes since the last time I looked...drift back to fitful sleep. And I'm a person who needs sleep. A lot of sleep. I function best on between 8 and 10 hours a night usually. So functioning on 5 or 6 hours of not-that-great sleep has had a much bigger impact than the actual going without food or drink. Though I think that I may actually be getting used to this new schedule now...3 mornings in a row I've managed to get back to dreamland before getting on with my day!

Stomach noises are something else. Also, the timing of cooking so that food is ready to eat at the appropriate hour without requiring too much contact time with it before I can eat it. And I wouldn't recommend baking during the daytime, unless you're awfully confident with your recipe, because it's hard to keep fingers out of bowls to check on the progress of things. I ruined two batches of icing in a row yesterday because I didn't sample it to check out how it was coming along. The cake however, I am pleased to report, turned out just fine!

I have plenty of observations on the less mundane side of the experience as well, but at the moment (45 minutes until sundown, roughly), I'm having trouble focusing on anything at all other than the incremental movement of the sun in the sky, and how eager I am for dinner tonight. Clearly those are observations for a more lucid time of day!

So, So Grateful

2011-08-18T05:29:00.003+09:00

Exactly a week ago, I attended a four-hour writing workshop hosted by the university. Copious amounts of food and beverages were served. I sat at a table with three other people who drank and drank and drank throughout all of our activities (each cup of coffee perched so tantalizingly close to my nose on our tiny workspace) and ate and ate and ate throughout all of our (working) breaks. Torture! Inside my head I was railing against the inconsiderateness of all these (unknowing) people, and against my own inability to consume. And then something snapped. Something good. A ferocious little voice inside my head said 'No one is stopping you, go ahead and eat!' At which point, ridiculous as this probably sounds, I finally understood that fasting was MY CHOICE. And that it was important to me.

The next morning, I met my flatmate in the kitchen.

My rationale in not telling anyone here what I was doing was sound at first. I didn't want anyone to feel uncomfortable, or to think that I was trying to take something away from their own experience of Ramadan by essentially tailgating on their holiest month. I'd managed to time my breakfasts throughout the first 11 days of the month so that no one was in the kitchen by the time I got there. But by doing that, a relatively significant part of my experience of Ramadan became about not letting my flatmate know what I was doing each morning. And at the point that it stopped being an experiment for me, starting every day worrying about someone else in that way seemed like a poor use of my brain.

When I told him that the reason he was in the kitchen so early was the same reason I was in the kitchen so early he didn't get it at all. Once it clicked, I watched a succession of emotions play across his face, surprise and bemusement chief among them. These gave way variously over the next 24 hours to ridicule, admiration, hostility, and, eventually, something approaching solidarity. When we sat down to talk about it one afternoon, he told me that even though Ramadan is something so many people do together, it is by nature an individual experience. Of course this is true of everything in life, though perhaps the conditions of Ramadan, the cycles of fasting and prayer, of deprivation and abundance, of introspection and acknowledgement, heighten the paradox. In any case, paradox aside, having someone else to share my early morning meal with each day, as well as other reflections, has infinitely deepened my experience. Gratitude and prayer come a whole lot more easily to me when I'm not busy sneaking around a big house in the dark!

On the second day of the fast I wrote 'I prefer to think of it as an experiment in self-control and empathy, as well as a chance to share, even superficially, a faith experience of a significant portion of the world's population.' What I have learned so far is that it is impossible to share someone else's faith experience first hand. Also, it is impossible to remain at arm's length from your own. At some point (perhaps with the rearing up of that little voice in my head) Ramadan stopped being an experiment for me (which implied something I was outside of, watching from a distance), and started being...something else. Something deeply personal. Something both bigger and smaller than I first imagined. And for that I am so, so grateful.

On Hunger and Gratitude

2011-08-08T07:59:00.002+09:00

A week into my Ramadan experience, at 11 o'clock on a working Monday morning, I'm hungry. And thirsty. And tired. But mostly hungry. This has very little to do with Ramadan and very much to do with the 3 days of travel I returned from last night. Travel exempts you from fasting, meaning I ate normally Friday through Sunday. And it's amazing how quickly your body adapts to changes in consumption habits. When I began this experiment last Monday I was HUNGRY all day. Tuesday I was only hungry in the last couple of hours before I could eat again. Wednesday and Thursday I didn't even think about food all day. But here it is Monday again, with 3 days of food under my belt (quite literally, I think, in the case of the enormous plate of battered, deep fried, local muscles I ate for dinner on Stewart Island Saturday), and I'm back to being HUNGRY again. Sigh. They weren't kidding over at the Toronto Islamic Society (where I went for guidance on what to do and not to do this month, via their website) when they said that Ramadan is an exercise in self-control and patience. Must be time to focus on all the things I'm grateful for today, rather than on all the things I'm not eating or drinking...

#1: I didn't lose my wallet this weekend.
#2: I survived 2 bumpy flights in a very small plane, and even almost enjoyed myself in the air.
#3: I managed to drive for hours and hours and hours (in snow and rain no less!) on the opposite side of the road than I'm used to, without once going into the wrong lane.
#4: I visited what has to be one of the most beautiful islands on earth.
#5: I completed 2 substantial hikes, in the mud, without totally killing my back.
#6: I didn't have to walk back to town in a hail storm.
#7: I had a fabulous travelling buddy who made all of the above endlessly more enjoyable!
#8: I have the health and freedom to choose to eat or not eat, whenever I want.
#9: I have family who, upon hearing that I was observing Ramadan this year, never once asked 'why?' and instead offered only encouragement and support.

I'm not going to elaborate on all of these right now...spreading them out a little will give me something to think about later on when it's normally time for lunch. Or afternoon tea. Or...right, back to the gratitude! For now, I think the happy story of #1 deserves to be shared!

I had my wallet all weekend, tramping through the incredible muck of Stewart Island. I had it at the airport terminal, where I paid for parking our rental car over the weekend. I didn't have it 15 minutes later, at the gas station where we stopped on our way out of town. Uh oh. I went through the car. Leanne went through the car. No wallet anywhere. We turned the car around and headed back to the airport. We pulled into the parking lot we'd left half an hour before in the pouring rain, as the sun was setting. No wallet in the parking space we'd vacated, or anywhere around it. We both got out of the car, started walking towards the terminal down different rows. Half way to the terminal I started to seriously panic - my passport (with both my New Zealand visa and my Korean visa inside), all of my ID, my credit cards, bank cards, driver's license, everything is in that wallet. Along with a couple of hundred dollars in cash since we'd been told there were no bank machines on Stewart Island (there weren't, but all the shops took debit cards). Just before crossing the last stretch before the terminal, Leanne let out a happy yelp and started jumping up and down. My very black wallet had landed on the only yellow patch of paint laid down in the entire parking lot, and was still there waiting for us with absolutely everything inside. What's more, even though the outside was soaking wet from the rain, inside, everything was bone dry. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And on that note, I ought to get back to #10: I have work I love to do, which keeps me more than happily busy. More on #s 2 through 9 sometime soon!

Ramadan, For Beginners

2011-08-02T12:16:00.002+09:00

What business does a Christian girl from the Canadian prairies have attempting to observe Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting? Probably none. And yet, here I am in New Zealand, doing just that. From an hour or so before the sun rises to sometime shortly after sundown, for the next 28 days (give or take a few days for travel and menstruation, both of which temporarily exempt me from fasting), I will not be eating or drinking anything. Not even water.

In light of the fact that Ramadan is not only (or even mostly) about deprivation, while I'm at it I'm going to try to be more mindful of other people, and of God, and of myself. Decreased food consumption, increased mindfulness - a kind of package deal. There are myriad lessons that abstaining from food (and other things!) during the month is supposed to teach a person - not the least of which is patience, something which I surely could (always!) use a refresher on. Ditto perseverance. It's supposed to help clear your mind (what PhD student doesn't need that?!), give you greater empathy for the poor (hunger and thirst suck, so let's help those who don't get to change that condition once the sun sets), erase divisions (everyone, regardless of social status, gender, or nationality observes the fast together), and promote sincerity (no one can really tell if you're following your fast or not, so it's all up to you). It's also an acknowledgement of the gifts of Allah in the world, and regardless of whether or not you are a particular believer, it seems to me a good idea to stop every now and again and really be thankful for how bountiful the world we live in is.

To be clear, I'm not converting to Islam (not that there would be anything wrong with that if I did). I prefer to think of it as an experiment in self-control and empathy, as well as a chance to share, even superficially, a faith experience of a significant portion of the world's population. This is not wholly unlike the two weeks I spent in silence at a Buddhist meditation retreat in Thailand a few years ago. Different deprivations, similar aims. I wish I could say that I went to that retreat out of a pure and sincere devotion to spiritual development, but actually I went because a friend bet me that I couldn't keep my mouth shut for so long (he was wrong). Similarly, I wish I could say that I am embarking on this journey with a pure and sincere devotion to spiritual development, but really it's as much curiosity as anything. I'm curious about this foundational experience that so many people around the world share, and also curious about whether or not I can actually get through a whole month without eating or drinking (two things which are very dear to my heart, especially here in hyper-social Dunedin) during daylight hours. Also, to be perfectly honest, I'm a practical sort of person and figured that if I'm ever going to have a serious go at observing an entire month of fasting, it ought to be here in the middle of a New Zealand winter when the temperature throughout the relatively short daylight hours is neither too hot nor too cold. If there were ever going to be ideal conditions for an experiment such as this, these are them.

Now, disclaimer aside, I do think that more will come of this month than the satisfaction of my curiosity. Though I hated pretty much every single minute of my 2-weeks of silence, and swore that I would never do anything so ridiculous (for me - understand that I am not calling the practice itself ridiculous...) again, it turns out in the end that I actually learned an awful lot at that retreat. Things that I still practice, or think about, today. There is no question in my mind now that I actually learned some important lessons sitting there under the palm trees with the monks, such that I look back on the whole experience almost fondly and have even considered going back. I could not have imagined, even in the middle of that experience, what would come of what I learned. Likewise, I have no idea what will come of what I undertake this month. But I firmly believe that when people step out in faith (even in misguided or selfish faith), we do not step out alone. God (whatever god you conceive) meets us. The world meets us. We meet our (better) selves.

And now, with the sun just beginning to dip below the hills that ring my horizon, it is time to start thinking about breaking my fast for the (second) day. One of the best aspects of Ramadan, in my estimation, is the social one of families and friends coming together at the end of the day, to eat together and share in their gratitude and abundance. Not knowing how my (very dear) Muslim friends here would take to someone like me essentially tagging along for the ride during their holiest month, I haven't told anyone what I'm doing. Which makes the whole breaking fast thing somewhat anti-climatic. Instead, I'm telling you. And hoping that whoever you may be, fasting or not, you will take a moment to join with me in gratitude and celebration for the abundance that is the world that we live in. Let's eat!

Wellington

2011-07-12T07:22:00.001+09:00

Wellington waterfront, New Zealand, July 1, 2011.

greenly spirits

2011-06-29T11:05:00.001+09:00

Sanggyesa, South Korea, November 2, 2010

an ee cummings kind of day!

2011-06-29T08:35:00.003+09:00

there is a particular kind of day, all blue sky and bright sun and verdant green, that always makes me want to yell my favourite ee cummings poem out to the world. the kind of day that makes me happy to be alive, and sort of wonderous that so much beauty exists and that i live in it. awesome!

(imagine me shouting this out, as i dance along the leith under otago's own leaping greenly spirits of trees...)

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake
and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Climb Thomas, Climb!

2011-06-24T05:28:00.002+09:00

A good friend of mine has a 5 year old grandson who is in hospital in Edmonton battling an e-coli infection. He is literally in the fight of his life. So whatever you believe, please take a moment today to think of him and his family. Along with the rest of the people who love him, my prayer today is 'Climb Thomas, Climb!'

Dad, King of the Universe!

2011-06-17T16:45:00.000+09:00

In honor of Father's Day this weekend (or earlier, if you
happen to be in other parts of the world than Canada), a
tribute to the coolest Dad in the universe...mine!
Christmas morning in Grande Prairie, AB, Canada, 2010.

Cross-country skiing at the Wapiti Nordic
Ski Trails in GP, Christmas week 2010.

Snowshoeing along Bear Creek in GP,
Christmas week 2010.

Relaxing on the hot rock wall in Hell's Valley,
Beitou, Taipei, Taiwan, February 2010.
I love you Dad!

Staying Informed

2011-06-16T11:16:00.000+09:00

Reading the newspaper in a Beijing park. Beijing, China,
May 6, 2011.

Another kind of home

2011-05-03T20:15:00.000+09:00

The last time I was in China, in 2009, rather than wandering
around the countryside on my own (as I had done in the past)
I stayed with my friend Timothy's family and meandered
my way across the country with them over a period of about
5 weeks. During that period, they became my family too.

Younger sister, Chongchong (standing, below), observed
one afternoon while we were discussing my travels, 'You must
have many families in many places.' Being a friendly sort of
person, easily at home in different places, I agreed with her.
But she wasn't finished yet. Musing on what it must be like
to constantly get close to people only to leave them behind,
she added, 'So you have lost many things then, but gained
many also.'

There is a Chinese proverb that says 'Every family has its
own hard book to read.' This coming and going from people
that I love is a recurring theme in the book of my family,
stretched as it is around the globe. But for all the things I've
lost in this semi-perpetual movement, here are just a few
pictures of the many more that I've gained. I can't wait until
tomorrow when I get to see (some of) them again!!

My Chinese family - Mom (Auntie to me), Chongchong (standing),
Zhenzhen (in the middle), and Timothy. Timothy and I met
at a conference in the Philippines in 2008, and have been
fast friends ever since.

Paternal grandmother, in her home in the village. She's not
so sure about the camera, but trust me, she's usually smiling!

Maternal grandfather. If my dad were Chinese and about
30 years older, he would be this guy.

Maternal grandmother. Her and grandfather above run a
little everything shop out of their home in the village. So
much fun to look through!
Rural Shandong, China, February 2009.

Happy 8th Anniversary!

2011-05-03T16:48:00.000+09:00

When I first moved to Korea, I thought that deok (sticky
rice cakes) were completely disgusting. The texture was
unlike anything I'd ever had before (ooey, gooey, ghastly),
and I didn't think they tasted like much of anything to make
up for that unpleasantness. Now however (and for many
years now), I ADORE deok. I love how simultaneously
silky soft and chewy they are, how the various fillings
contrast with the outside in taste and texture, and the sheer
enormous variety that exists. I appreciate the artistry
that goes into each piece, and the creative combinations
unique to each particular vendor. And I love that although
sweet, they are not TOO sweet, so their ricey heft doesn't
sit too heavily in your stomach. But not all deok are created
equal. The cake in the picture is from my FAVOURITE
'deok jip' (rice cake house), on the other side of the city from
my home. It's run by a young couple who make everything
themselves, and run the shop, and make the deliveries. Each
of the 8 layers was made of a different kind of deok, all
individually wrapped for freshness, so as you peeled things off
the top you exposed something new underneath. Wonderful!
Changwon, South Korea, April 30, 2011.

Offerings

2011-05-02T17:40:00.000+09:00

A week before Buddha's Birthday (my favourite holiday in
Korea!), a few temple offerings to whet the appetite. In
addition to the standard variety of little Buddha figurines,
this collection also features a little girl in a traditional Korean
dress, called a hanbok - such great rainbow sleeves!
Kilsangsa, Changwon, South Korea, April 2011.

Look me in the eye and say that!

2011-05-02T17:35:00.000+09:00

A couple of residents of the Busan Aquarium, South Korea,
April 29, 2011.

Foreigner? Absolutely!

2011-04-06T15:56:00.006+09:00

I've been living in the same city in Korea for almost eight years - longer than I've been in one place other than my hometown ever, in my whole life. And even my hometown is a record that I'm closing in on - I was there for just 10 years before heading off to university. Which is to say that I consider this place home, as much as any place ever has been. This city and this country - I am a local here.

Except that I'm not. No matter how local I feel, I will always be a foreigner here.

Woman at lunch: 'Wow! You eat Korean food very well!' Me: 'I love Korean food.' Her: 'You know what that is?' Me, taking a little more of a very common side dish: 'Yes, I have been here for a long time.' Her: 'But most Foreigners don't eat Korean food well!' Me: 'I think you don't go out with many foreigners. Most of the people I know like Korean food very much.' Pause, eating. Her: 'Wow! You even eat that?! Do you know what that is?' Me: 'You've got to stop being shocked every time I put something in my mouth. Really, I like Korean food. I've been eating it for a long time.' Her: 'But you are a foreigner! Foreigners don't like Korean food.' And so on, and so on.

Not too much surprises me in Changwon anymore. I know how the city, the first planned one in the country, came to be imagined and then built. I know where the good restaurants are - the ones that only locals know about. I know which days the traditional markets are in which locations. I know how to get from here to there and from there to here and how to give other people directions to all those places. I work, pay taxes, even vote (if I want to). Changwon is not a curiosity, it's where I live. It's my home.

But the other day, walking from home to a store on the other side of town, I went through the road-side stalls of one of the traditional markets. These markets are held every 5 (or so) days, on dates that end in a particular number (for example, the market downtown that I usually frequent is held every 4, 9, 14, 19, 24 and 29 of the month). This market is on 1s and 6s, in an older residential neighbourhood and has a grittier feel than 'mine'. As I was getting near the end, after the usual noodle makers and flower sellers, fruit vendors and snack stalls, I happened past a woman portioning out an animal carcass with a big cleaver at a folding card table. As you would expect, all of the hair had already been removed and the body was clean and smooth, the head already severed, lying to one side. At first I thought it was a pig - a very common sight in markets - but then it occurred to me that for a pig it was very, very small. I took a closer look, just as the woman began hacking off a back leg for a waiting customer, and saw that the animal was a dog. Whoa, foreigner again.

Now, the fact that Koreans sometimes eat dog meat is well known. In fact, I have eaten it myself on more than one occasion. Done well, the soup is rich and flavourful, and very, very expensive. This is not the family pet we're talking about. They're dogs bred specifically for eating, much as we breed pigs or chickens to eat. The soup is considered a kind of food-medicine, particularly good for men. It used to be much more common than it is now - a lot of my students (the first generation raised with pet dogs at home and unable or unwilling to make the distinction between them) have never had it, and finding dog-soup restaurants has become more and more difficult, even during my time in Korea. Which is why I was especially taken aback by the dog in the market.

Professor in passenger seat, driving back from departmental outing on an island a couple of hours away: "How do you drive in Korea?" Me: " What do you mean?" Him: "How do you know where to go?" Me: "I've lived here for a long time." Him: "But you are a foreigner." Me: "The signs are in English and Korean." Him: "But you are a foreigner." And so on, and so on.

Stopping at a roadside rest area for breakfast, same drive. Him, taking my arm: "Come, let's take a shit together." Me: "Excuse me??" Him, pulling me to an empty table behind the counter: "A shit, let's take a shit." Me, mentally: "Oh, SEAT! He wants us to take a SEAT together." Yup, still a foreigner. No matter how long I stay.

Climbing the mountain behind my house this morning, I came across a super shiny, black worm with a distinct hammer-shaped head. Something I had never seen before, despite climbing that particular trail possibly hundreds of times in the last 8 years. At home, after finding an exact photo with my first google search for 'hammerhead worm', I learned that it's a species common to this part of Asia. And that it's the only kind of worm that exclusively eats other worms, by (seriously disgusting!) dissolving them. Usually they're nocturnal, which I guess is why I've never come across one before, but there's no shortage of them around. They can survive blistering heat and freezing cold (both of which we have in abundance throughout the year), and if you try to kill them by squashing them or cutting them up (I don't want to know how people discovered this) each separate piece just becomes its own little worm. Wow. Now that's something awesome to discover in your own backyard!

Strange new (common) worm, oh right, I'm a foreigner! Instead of thinking of it as an insult, I'm just going to remind myself that being foreign is also another way of saying, 'living in a perpetual state of newness, astonishment and awe.' And who could complain about that?

Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got snails in my tummy!

2011-03-31T16:06:00.002+09:00

Step 1 for enjoying an ultra-fresh
seasfood feast: visit the local fish
market.

Step 2: take your purchases to someone who
has a clue how to prepare it. Preferably someone
with a very sharp knife.

Step 3: sit next to someone who likes the things
that you don't, so everything will get eaten. For
example, I'll eat the sliced penis fish (in Korean,
either 'Dog's balls fish' or 'Dog's worm fish',
bottom center) if YOU eat the slimy spiny sea
cucumber (bottom left).
Geoje City, South Korea, March 19, 2011.

Falling!

2011-03-31T15:59:00.002+09:00

The mascot of the Korean national park service
is a pair of accident-prone Moon Bears (so-called
because of the white crest on its chest...also
known as Asiatic Black Bears). These two
delightful creatures can be seen variously being
struck by lightening, drowning, drawing on national
monuments... you name it, they've done it! But
what is it that they shouldn't be doing on this
particular sign, you ask?

In Korean, the sign is more specific...it says
'Falling danger'. I guess whoever translated it
wanted to keep it more to the point. You can
see this same tendency to abbreviate in earlier
postings...my favourite being 'Watch Crash!'

To be fair though, it IS a long way down.
Geoje Dongbaek Island, South Korea, March 19, 2011.

Panda Food

2011-03-31T15:49:00.001+09:00

Okay, so there are no pandas in Korea.
But with as much bamboo around as
there is, perhaps there ought to be?
Geoje Dongbaek Island, South Korea,
March 19, 2011.

Happy Nowruz!

2011-03-22T18:10:00.003+09:00

Yesterday was Persian New Year - Happy Nowruz! I hope that the year 1390 is good to us all!

Among other places, Persian New Year is celebrated in Iran. How embarassing is it that a few months ago, I, who am an International Relations professor and not generally a completely dumb person, didn't know that most Iranians are Persian. Or that the main language of Iran is Persian. Or that Persian and Farsi are the same thing. I'm not sure I'd actually considered WHAT the people of Iran might be called (other than Iranian), because truth be told, I'd never thought much about Iran at all. I was quite content for my knowledge of that part of the world to be limited to what I 'learned' from the 1991 movie 'Not Without My Daughter' (whose uncritical reception into my brain I am blaming on my youth when I watched it), and what the ongoing procession of news stories about Iran say in the media I most commonly watch (the NY times, CBC, BBC, NZHerald).

I guess a person can't be interested in EVERYwhere ALL the time. It's reasonable to think that each of us has a sort of awareness radius that is tuned to certain places and certain people at certain times, depending on our experience. So it's not my general lack of knowledge of things Persian that troubles me. It's how easily I allowed what knowledge I had to be bounded by those extremely limited sources listed above. How I never, not for even one story that I read about crazy Iran and its crazy leader, stopped to ask the question 'What's so crazy about them?' or to look a little deeper than the paper in my hands.

And I should know better than to generalize people that way. When I first came to Korea, my best friend was (is) a man who had lived and travelled throughout Asia for several years. I would go visit him, thumb through his masses of photos, and he would ask me where I thought a particular picture was taken. I learned pretty quickly to always answer China. Even though I had never imagined that one country could contain even a fraction of the magnificence and diversity that I saw in the various prints. How had I never known this before, I wondered, that China is such an incredible country? How had I never ached to go there and discover it for myself? The first vacation I got I took a boat to China, and have been fully enamored ever since.

The news I read about China is pretty much never right. MY China, and the China in newspapers, don't have a whole lot in common. This is something I've come to expect, and to make adjustments for when adding to the big China file in my brain. Which is not to say that China doesn't have any problems - of course it does! Just that it pays to try to keep the big picture in mind when considering what I read.

And don't even get me started on Korea! I live in a very modern and cozy two-bedroom apartment on a quiet residential street in a city whose standard of living is easily the highest of any I have ever lived in. I went to the doctor this afternoon, a doctor who completed his residency at Harvard, in a state-of-the-art private hospital that would turn any of the Canadian or American or Kiwi doctors I know green with envy. And it cost me $5 for the medicine I was prescribed. Afterwards I got a tall Chai from an upscale coffee chain to soothe my throat and browsed a selection of multi-lingual books that I might have wanted to read in bed later, before taking a luxury taxi home (for $3.50). There is nowhere in town I wouldn't walk in, alone, at any time of the day or night. And my grad school colleagues back in Canada (IR majors all) once had an earnest discussion about whether I was living in a more dangerous country or whether that 'honour' fell to our classmate busy starting an NGO for refugee children in a camp in Palestine that was mortared at least once a day. This is what happens when you take the news too seriously. You forget that places are real, and that people everywhere are just people, like you. Both more and less than any 60 second news story you could ever read about them.

Somehow, however, these revelations about one part of the world never managed to penetrate that part of my brain responsible for thinking about other parts of the world. And this is a problem because I teach about the world for a living.

One of my flatmates in New Zealand, where I study when I'm not at work in Korea, is from Iran. He seemed nice enough right from the beginning, but my first inkling that things were probably not as I had imagined them in his home country came the morning he was telling me about this Canadian TV show that ALL his friends used to watch back home. This REALLY popular show in Iran, called 'Due South'. You could have knocked me over with a feather that entire day...of all the shows he might have mentioned, the cheesy mid-90s comedy/drama about a ridiculously polite mountie in Chicago was definitely not the one I was expecting. We had fun trying to remember all the characters names together (though really, who cares to name anyone except that beautiful dog Diefenbaker?), and laughing at the absurdity of that shared connection. It turned out to be the first of many connections.

Aside from TV shows, our family lives also have much in common. And our childhoods. The paths of our educations. Even our cats look alike. His family is Muslim, mine is Christian, and I had no idea whatseoever that that would make as little difference as it does to what we think, and dream and do. He shows me pictures of Iran with the same enthusiasm that my friend in Korea used to show me pictures of China, before I'd become as enthralled with it as he is. And I feel that same sense of absolute wonder imagining all the possibilities there. Iran is a place that's going to be as important to me in its own way as China already is, and probably for the same reason - because it has opened my mind and made my world infinitely bigger.

Now that I'm paying attention, I hear a lot of different people make a lot of different comments about Iran on a pretty regular basis. People who, like me, should know better. That China is the great economic and imperial worry of North America and Iran the religious is pretty accepted rhetoric. Which makes it pretty okay in a lot of different circumstances to make disparaging comments about, based on very little actual knowledge. Now that the face of Iran has shrunk for me, from a featureless mass (that I wasn't afraid of, exactly, but certainly wasn't rushing out to get to know better) to a single real individual, I find these comments hurtful. And want to do what I can to help other people think beyond them as well.

I gave a presentation about Iran in my classes the other day, as an example for my students about looking beyond the news when talking about places. I started with a slide show of pictures from various places in Iran, and asked everyone what country they thought I would be talking about. Knowing my history, the first guesses were predictably Canada and New Zealand. When they saw a photo of the capital in winter, the majority decided that it was in fact Bern, Switzerland. The sense of wonder on their faces when they discovered that the snowy city was Tehran and that it is smack in the middle of the imagined desert of the middle east gave me a glimpse of the wonder I feel every time I learn something new about Iran. 4 distinct seasons were the beginning for me too. Followed by fields of fragrant roses. Pistachio farms. The birthplace of Shiraz and polo. Some of the world's best caviar. A consolidated history going back almost 5000 years! Comparing some of that history of Iran with some of the history of Korea made it very easy for my students to contextualize what I was saying, and, they told me, made the place seem real to them for the first time. And who knows how many more worlds will open up from there?

Snow Day

2011-03-10T15:22:00.000+09:00

I have recently returned to wintery Korea
from a couple of months in southern hemisphere
summer. To celebrate my return to the cold,
here are a few snow shots to get me inspired
to enjoy the season. First, snowshoeing in
Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada, December 2010.

Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada, December 2010.

Leandra and Meko, enjoying a ride. Grande Prairie, AB,
Canada, December 24, 2010.

Bugged

2011-03-08T19:31:00.000+09:00

Cicada's in New Zealand are so adorably small! Definitely
not worth the trouble to barbecue, as when I was in
Zoucheng in 2009! Dunedin, New Zealand, February, 2011.

Snares Island Penguins

2011-03-03T14:10:00.000+09:00

These are the two Snares Island Penguins currently in the
penguin hospital on the peninsula. The one on the rock is
a healthy male brought in during his seasonal moult by an
over-zealous tourist. Peeking out from behind him is the
little female we rescued from the beach on Saturday night.
From this angle you can see how the bones on her chest
still stick out, though her shiny new feathers are doing a lot
to mask how underwight she was.

This is the female taking a walk. When we picked her up
this whole side of her body had almost no feathers.

Here she is smiling for the camera (I like to imagine). She
still has some fattening up to do, as well as a bit more
moulting, before she'll be ready to head back to Snares Islands,
but on the whole is one very lucky little bird!
Penguin Place, Otago Peninsula, Dunedin, New Zealand,
March 3, 2011.

Where's Snares?

2011-03-03T13:44:00.002+09:00

The Snares Islands are a tiny group of subantarctic islands off the south coast of the south island of New Zealand, famous for absolutely nothing. I had never heard of them before this week. But they are home to a subspecies of penguin - the Snares Island Crested - which, as it turns out, is what we rescued at Sandfly Bay on Saturday night.

After being picked up by the Deptartment of Conservation (DOC), our little bird was taken to a penguin rehabilitation hospital further up the peninsula. Penguin Place has a large breeding colony of Yellow-Eyed penguins (the same kind we normally have at Sandfly), and has built a series of camouflaged underground bunkers from which to view them up close. For $45, you get a 90 minute tour of the colony, which we often send people to from Sandfly if they haven't managed to get a good look at any penguins on our beach. They also run a hospital with a full time vet, which is good news for any distressed birds in this area (including ours).

It was really nice of the staff at Penguin Place to let us in to see the hospital even though we didn't pay for the tour. They certainly didn't have to. It's a medium-sized enclosure outside, with a nice deep pool for swimming, plants to hide under, and (today) lots of sun to bask in. And it was FULL of birds, mostly Yellow-Eyeds, but also a pair of Snares Islands (ours and one someone else recently brought in), and a very beat-up looking Fiordland that looked as if it had tangled with a fishing line and lost. They said most of these birds were just having a bad moult - not enough squid around to fatten them up before their feathers started coming out. But they do also get birds with bites (shark, sea lion...), or who've been caught in nets. And they fund it all from the proceeds of their colony tours, which makes me feel a lot better about sending people out there for them.

Our penguin turns out to be a little female, badly underweight but otherwise in good condition. She is already hardly recognizeable from the pathetic creature we pulled off the beach 6 nights ago, the one with so many missing feathers and no spark at all. Now most of her new feathers are in and she's sleek and black and shiny. And though the bones in her chest are still visible, she is bright and alert and wanders around the enclosure. The keeper said that she shouldn't have any trouble on release, after a few more weeks of fattening up at the hospital. Yay! So great to see her doing so well.

Slightly Foxed

2011-02-28T06:27:00.000+09:00

Oamaru, New Zealand, February 27, 2011.

Dune Surfing!

2011-02-27T14:50:00.000+09:00

I have SUCH surfboard envy right now!!
Sandfly Bay, Dunedin, New Zealand, February 27, 2011.

On Disasters Big and Small (or, What We Do Makes a Difference)

2011-02-26T18:22:00.002+09:00

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake earlier this week somehow caused the largest recorded ground shaking in New Zealand history. Experts are still trying to work out exactly how the relatively small initial jolt (compared to the 7.1 quake that hit the same city 5 months ago) became what it became - the deadliest natural disaster ever in New Zealand. Their best guess so far is that the first shock waves impacted the basalt hills that ring the city and were reflected back on themselves and magnified - right into the heart of Christchurch. At lunchtime. On a sunny Tuesday. That changed the city forever.

4 days after the quake, 145 people are confirmed dead. Over 200 people remain missing. Over 2000 people have been treated for injuries, including some who remain in critical condition in hospital. 80% of Christchurch has no water. 30% has no power. Large sections of the city have been flooded by burst underground pipes. The damage is unimaginable, and heartbreaking.

But this is not that story.

This story is about a little, lost penguin, very far from home.

As my friend Anne and I pulled up to the car park tonight for our regular Saturday evening volunteer duty on Sandfly Bay, suddenly she turned to me and exclaimed 'Ooh, I have butterflies in my stomach, tonight isn't going to be good.' There were a lot more vehicles in the lot than usual, and most of them were local (often the hardest people to deal with on the beach, because they feel like, being local, they can do whatever they want and don't need to listen to anyone else) rather than the rental campers that we more often see. The weather was calm and sunny, and people were out to enjoy.

We picked up the notebook that volunteers record each night's happenings in at the top of the (loooong, very looooooooooong) hill, and began the steep climb down the sand dunes to the beach as usual. We stopped at the viewing platform a couple of hundred meters below the parking lot to survey the bay, the same as we always do, and immediately noticed a large cluster of people at the base of the trail. Anne pulled out her binoculars, started to scowl, and pointed out the penguin in their midst. And then started down the trail at record speed.

The thing about penguins at Sandfly Bay is, they are very, very, very shy. Of people. Of other animals. Even of other penguins. So the fact that this bird appeared to be sitting right in the middle of a large group of humans was very alarming. More alarming still was how those humans were behaving - swarming all over the little creature, cameras flashing away, giving it no space at all to be. The posted rule on the beach is that people shouldn't get closer than 200 meters to the penguins at any time. And here were 10 or more people only an arm's length away. From a clearly troubled bird.

Anne is in better shape than I am, and has been making the trip down to the beach as a volunteer for the last 3 years. Tonight was my 6th time ever. She made it down faster than I did. The bird was scrawny and quite listless, with large patches of feathers missing thanks to the fall moult. A few of the people were very cooperative and followed her instructions to move back without any complaints. Some took a little more convincing (after having asked him politely several times to back off the bird, to no avail, one man started swearing at her when she finally just stepped in front of his camera). She got the unenviable task of staying there and trying to keep everyone a safe distance away. I got to take the cell phone back up the dune until I could get a signal to call for the Department of Conservation duty officer to come down for a rescue.

It is over a kilometer from the beach to the car park. Straight up. It was another 1.3 km further along the road (up again) until my phone got enough of a signal to call out. The duty officer was very busy, having already had two other emergency calls before mine. Her instructions? Please pick up the penguin, carry it up to the road (ah, the dune again!), and she would meet us there to take it to the hospital.

It took considerably less time to get back down to the beach than it had to get to the point where I made the phone call.

Anne was sitting on a dune, quite a few meters back from the bird, with about 7 people around her. We transferred everything from the soft fabric shoulder bag that she carries on the beach into my backpack, got her polar fleece ready for an ambush, and approached the bird. A Fiordland Crested penguin, approximately the entire breadth of the country away from where he should have been. With me in front of him and Anne behind, he raised his wings half-heartedly but didn't even try to run away. Anne draped the fleece carefully over him, took him firmly in two hands, and together we manoeuvred him into the bag. Keeping well away from his impressive beak (which didn't protest his capture too much in any case). And then we started up the dune. Again.

It is a testament to how tired and weak the bird must have been that he barely tried to move the entire way up to the car. Anne was a superstar, carrying him the long way up the dunes, without stopping once to rest. I, having just made the climb once, was considerably slower. Still, we both got to the car faster than we'd ever managed it before, with no complaints from our little passenger. We nestled him into the safest spot we could think of in the car - on the floor behind the front seat, with the bag straps wrapped around a locked seat belt, and drove up the road to get another cel phone signal to (re)contact the duty officer.

I had never seen a Fiordland Crested Penguin before tonight. It was a strange (and incredible) feeling to have one riding in the car behind me, wrapped in a sweater, seat belted in.

The duty officer, Mel, turned the corner in her DOC truck at just the moment that we got cell coverage to contact her. We all pulled over to the side together, and transferred the bird. I will probably never, ever in my life again get that close to that kind of penguin...holding him in my hands, as Mel removed the coverings and moved him into a plastic pet carrier in the back of her truck. Even with half of his feathers missing, he was still beautiful - twin rows of vivid yellow feathers standing straight up along either side of his sleek, black head, red beak long and sharp, eyes bright. A wild penguin. In my hands.

Next stop for the bird was Mel's house for the night, where he'll get a good meal before going on to the penguin hospital in the morning. He didn't appear to be injured, just very, very small and hungry. During the 2 week moult penguins don't go to sea to feed, but instead stay on land, scratching old feathers out to make room for the new ones, not eating. If they're not heavy enough to get through the two weeks when the process begins they're in a lot of trouble...not waterproof or insulated enough to go out to feed, but not strong enough not to. It's a precarious time for a penguin. For this penguin, nearly his final time.

With the penguin safely on his way to good food and great care, Anne and I decided to head back down to the beach one more time to finish our regular rounds. There were still a lot of people out, and since it was still a couple of hours before dark more birds would probably be heading in. We arrived just in time to sit down with a group of young Brazilians to watch a Yellow-Eyed penguin waddle ashore, and then another, and then another. We watched a couple of giant sea lions showing off their bulk. And a baby fur seal manically chasing a penguin from rock to rock to rock. And we watched the sun set, over one of the most beautiful stretches of land on earth. And then we walked up the enormous dune again.

There was a plea in the newspaper this week for people to bring bagged lunches to a drop center at the university to send up to volunteer rescuers in Christchurch. They asked for non-perishables, like chocolate bars, granola bars, cookies, and cans of tuna (fruit and drinks were donated en-masse by some local companies to add at the scene). Today you can't buy canned tuna in a single store in Dunedin - thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lunches were donated. Walking home from my office (beside the drop point) this afternoon I saw all of the people coming, bags in hand, and the pallets of food already packed up and waiting to be loaded onto the donated trucks to go. Everyone doing their little part to make a difference in this disaster.

Walking up the dune for the 3rd time tonight, I felt the same sense of awe I felt when looking at all those lunches. What we do does make a difference.

Out of Existence

2011-02-24T14:16:00.001+09:00

A cray fish that I caught and cooked,
cooling on a cutting board in the kitchen of
a Christchurch 'backpackers' (guesthouse)
that no longer exists, thanks to the
earthquake. Christchurch, New Zealand,
August 2009.

Christchurch, Before

2011-02-23T10:11:00.000+09:00

Just before 1pm yesterday, a massive earthquake tore
through Christchurch, New Zealand, levelling large sections
of the downtown business district when it was packed with
workers and shoppers. The death toll is already at 75, with
more expected as rescue teams get into more of the collapsed
buildings around the city. This photo was taken from the
hills above Sumner last August (2010), just a week before the last
major earthquake struck the city. Because that quake struck
in the middle of the night, no one was killed. And although
damage was extensive, it was nowhere near on the scale of
this quake, many of the historic buildings having been already
weakened. House sized boulders came off the cliffs just out of
view in this shot, crushing buildings beneath them.

The spire of Christchurch's famous cathedral,
symbol of the city. It survived the first quake
last September, but came down yesterday -
onto the pavement of Cathedral Square, and
also through the roof of the main sanctuary.
A popular tourist activity was climbing the spire,
from which there were terrific views of the city.

This is inside the spire, looking up towards the roof.

From inside the spire, looking down onto the (now absent)
roof of the main sanctuary below.
Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2009.

A Walk in the Park

2011-02-21T06:43:00.000+09:00

Dunedin Botanical Gardens, Dunedin, New Zealand,
February 20, 2011.

"In your body is the garden of flowers..."

2011-02-18T07:10:00.000+09:00

"...Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and
there gaze on the infinite beauty.” Kabir
Chinese Gardens, Dunedin, New Zealand, February 2011.

Festive Taiwan

2011-02-16T09:17:00.000+09:00

During the Lantern Festival,
Beitou, Taipei, Taiwan, February 2010.

Pathways, Now and Then

2011-02-15T09:56:00.000+09:00

The seashore around Goseong, South Korea,
is FULL of fossilized dinosaur footprints. To
stop some of the damage of people walking
all over them, new wooden footpaths have
been built all along the coast.

Just two of hundreds of prints along this stretch of shore.

Basically all of the places where you can see water
reflecting light on the stone are footprints. When the tide
goes out, the prints become little foot-shaped pools. How
incredible to think of something we make every single day
lasting for so long. I wonder what Goseong looked like to
all those dinosaurs?
Goseong, South Korea, November 2010.

When Dinos Ruled the Earth

2011-02-14T11:30:00.000+09:00

Goseong, South Korea, November 2010.

Muralicious

2011-02-11T11:02:00.000+09:00

Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2010.

Deep Enough to Dream

2011-02-10T12:57:00.001+09:00

Mao, Changwon, Korea, February 26, 2010.

In-spire-d

2011-02-10T12:55:00.000+09:00

Looking up at the sanctuary ceiling, Community of Christ
Temple, Independence, MO, USA, April 2010.

In the Kitchen

2011-02-09T06:10:00.000+09:00

Near Zoucheng, rural Shandong Province,
China, February 2009.

Morning

2011-02-08T07:20:00.001+09:00

Rural Jiangsu Province, China, February 2009.

Sunshine for a Cloudy Day

2011-02-07T07:20:00.000+09:00

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 2009.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2011-02-04T06:01:00.000+09:00

Gate of the Chinese Garden, Dunedin, New Zealand,
February 3, 2011.

Auckland Tower

2011-02-02T12:45:00.000+09:00

The tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere!
Auckland, New Zealand, September 2010.

Duck, Duck, Duck, Gull!

2011-02-01T04:56:00.001+09:00

Queenstown, New Zealand, August 16, 2010.

On Lake Wakatipu

2011-02-01T04:49:00.000+09:00

The Earnslaw, an old steamer that goes
from Queenstown, across Lake Wakatipu,
to an old hill station (sheep farm) on the
other side.

Across the end of the lake, towards the Remarkables on
the other side. Queenstown, New Zealand, August, 2010.

Offerings

2011-01-28T09:14:00.000+09:00

Sangjusa, Changwon, Korea, November 2010.

Ducklings!

2011-01-26T09:39:00.000+09:00

Dunedin, New Zealand, January 2011.

Sandfly Bay

2011-01-25T08:42:00.000+09:00

Dunedin, New Zealand, January 15, 2011.

Sandfly Bay

2011-01-25T06:06:00.004+09:00

The best thing about summer in Dunedin is the sixteen hours of sunlight - not quite as much as in Grande Prairie, where I grew up, but still plenty to bracket all of the things you could hope to do in a single day's light. I'm not one of those people whose general mood shifts with the absense of sun, but I'm also not a huge fan of running around in the dark, so I tend to be much more productive in the summer. When the 6pm sun looks like a 2pm sun, it seems reasonable to have a lot of activity left in the day. (When the 6pm sun is a moon, on the other hand, it seems reasonable to make some dinner, curl up with something hot in front of a movie and then head to bed.)

My friend Anne is a Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust volunteer at Sandfly Bay, on the peninsula near here. For about 7 months of the year, during the breeding and chick-rearing seasons, she spends her Saturday evenings from 5pm until dusk (about 5 hours this time of year) on the beach giving people information about the wildlife they see and keeping them far enough away that the animals aren't disturbed. Since both the penguins and the Hooker's Sea Lions that make the beach home are critically endangered, this is a really important job.

For the last two Saturdays in a row, I've gone down to Sandfly with Anne. The first week I went out of curiosity, having seen the bay from the lookout point on the hill (high) above, but never from sea level. I followed her around all night, being a tourist and also soaking in the information (which I heard repeated about three dozen times). The weather was calm and beautiful, the white sand comfortably warm, the sky alive with shifting clouds coloured extravagantly by both a long sunset and a full moonrise. The two chicks on the cliffs at one end of the beach spent hours out on a rock, fluffy and grey and distinctly un-penguin like, while their parents cuddled on a ledge below. At the opposite end of the beach, another penguin waddled through the masses of fur seals sunning themselves and on up the steep hill to its nest, tilting the whole way at an alarming angle but making it nonetheless. One playful sea lion kept popping in and out from behind various sand dunes at people, or laying across the (only) path up to the viewing hide, absurdly resembling a very eager (and overgrown!) puppy. Except for the brutal climb up a very steep, very long and very shifty sand dune at the end of the night to get back to the car, it was pretty much a perfect evening.

I woke up the next morning with sand in my bed and a smile on my face. Having passed the volunteer 'test' (ie, still smiling and asking for more), the second Saturday Anne put my name in the log book and put me to work. The weather wasn't nearly as nice as the week before, although at least it wasn't raining on us like it was on the city. The name 'Sandfly' didn't come from the bugs (which are nasty biting things common elsewhere in NZ, but not here), but rather from the persistant blowing that creates what Anne euphemistically calls 'textural winds' - air you can literally see. I spent a significant portion of the evening bundled into my winter coat, shaking sand out of my ears. Having volunteered on the beach for the last 3 years, she was smart and had a scarf to wrap around her face, lawrence of arabia style, to keep out the worst of the gusts. And despite the grey, people came...and animals too. Many, many more of each than the beautiful week before.
The chicks were out on their rock again, newly penguin-like with white-bellies beginning to venture down to the lower ledge where their parents yelled encouragement. My job was to sit at the base of the dune that leads to the beach, 200 meters back from the cliff, and catch people first thing when they came down. So many interesting people! For an over-talkative, know-it-all, teacher type, this was pretty much a perfect job for me. The fact that it was on what is probably one of the most spectacular stretches of sand anywhere in the world, filled with penguin 'song', was also a perk! Anne spent most of her evening at the opposite end of the beach, at the viewing hide, helping people avoid the very, very active sea lions. During a quiet spell later in the evening, we walked down the beach together with 3 young French people, just in time to see a succession of penguins pop out of the waves and make for their nests inland. And also in time to see 2 big male sea lions have a fight (at the base of the path to the viewing hide, of course, where a group of tourists were stuck), with 2 baby girl sea lions playing in the grass behind them. Up and down the beach sea lions came in and out of the waves, sizing people up as possible playmates, and penguins waddled. I talked to people from Scotland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada (from my old university!), New York (big strapping guy who owns a florist on 5th...fun!), and Uruguay. Easily worth every grain of sand I injested throughout the night. And next day.

Girl in Park

2011-01-25T06:06:00.000+09:00

Contemplating a gift from another child in
the park, Chengdu, Sichuan, China,
February, 2009.

Mahjong in the Park

2011-01-25T06:03:00.000+09:00

Chengdu, Sichuan, China, February, 2009.

Endangered

2011-01-21T05:26:00.000+09:00

This is a Hooker Sea Lion - one of the most critically
endangered animals in the world. There are only about
9000 left in the world - all of them in New Zealand.
Full grown he will be up to 3.5 meters long, and weigh
about 400kg. Right now he's only about half that. Young
males, like this one, are very playful. They will chase people
up and down the beach, or lay across tracks and wait for
people to stumble upon them (surprise!).
Sandfly Bay, Otago Peninsula, Dunedin, New Zealand,
January 15, 2011.

Kiwiana

2011-01-20T09:41:00.000+09:00

Lovelock House, Dunedin, New Zealand, January 7, 2011.

Public service announcement, Dunedin, New Zealand,
January 2011.

A Taiwan Love Affair

2011-01-18T12:27:00.000+09:00

Taipei, Taiwan, March, 2010

Calligraphy Lesson

2009-09-27T11:38:00.000+09:00

A child practices her caligraphy
using a giant sponge brush and
water under the watchful eye of
her grandfather at the Temple
of Heaven, Beijing, China,
February 2004.

Great Wall

2009-09-27T11:34:00.000+09:00

China, February 2004.

Great Wall

2009-09-27T11:32:00.000+09:00

China, February 2004.

Great Wall

2009-09-27T11:29:00.000+09:00

China, February 2004.

Temple Door

2009-09-09T12:16:00.000+09:00

Chengdu, China, February 2009.

Perspectives

2009-08-28T18:59:00.000+09:00

The Anglican church in Devonport,
from behind the lavender hedge.
Devonport, New Zealand,
August 27, 2009.

The underbelly of a private yacht
dry-docked in Devonport, New Zealand,
August 27, 2009.

The prow of an America's Cup racing
sailboat with city buildings in the distance.
Auckland, New Zealand, August 28, 2009.

Spotted Shags

2009-08-26T07:28:00.000+09:00

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

I've Got Ewe Under My Skin!

2009-08-25T13:25:00.000+09:00

Dunedin, New Zealand, August 23, 2009.

Bird of Paradise

2009-08-24T11:16:00.000+09:00

Botanical Gardens, Dunedin, August 23, 2009.

Sandfly Bay

2009-08-23T13:26:00.000+09:00

Otago Peninsula, New Zealand, August 22, 2009.

Montreal Reflections

2009-08-21T11:11:00.000+09:00

Montreal Old Port, August 2007.

Cheese Making!

2009-08-20T14:16:00.000+09:00

Since good cheese is awfully hard to come by in
Korea, I decided to take matters into my own
hands while I'm here in the land of dairy plenty.
I took a one-day home cheese-making class at
the Langdale Vineyard outside of Christchurch!
That's our teacher there on the right - Catherine
Mowbray. She was so much fun! In this picture
she's putting the screws to a new gouda. We also
learned to make camembert, liptour, and cottage
cheese (my farm grandma will either be delighted
or incredulous, since I believe she used to make
that all the time when my mom was a kid), and
to fry up a beautiful halloumi. Yum! With that
introduction and a very helpful book of recipes
that I took away (not to mention the necessary
cheese culture), I am all ready to start creating a
little milky comfort at home.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.

The display table, all set up for our variety of
cheeses. West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.

Hungarian Liptour cheese - which seems to be
basically a cheese ball rolled into a log shape.
Delish! West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.

Fresh butter (with a glass of the resulting
buttermilk just visible above). This is going to
sound silly, since obviously butter is just really
agitated cream, but it was a revelation to see how
incredibly easy it is to make butter (and, by extension,
buttermilk) and to taste how much better it is than
storebought. Definitely something I will be doing
for myself from now on.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.

Albatross!

2009-08-19T13:11:00.000+09:00

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Nose in the Air

2009-08-17T13:51:00.000+09:00

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Beach Flowers

2009-08-17T08:09:00.000+09:00

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Catch of the Day - Crayfish!

2009-08-16T10:50:00.000+09:00

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Moeraki Boulders

2009-08-11T14:22:00.000+09:00

According to the Moeraki website:

'The Moeraki Boulders are a number of huge spherical
stones, found strewn along a stretch of Koekohe Beach
near Moeraki, a small settlement just south of Hampden
on New Zealand's Otago coast. These boulders are grey-
coloured septarian concretions which have been exposed
through shoreline erosion from black mudstone coastal cliffs
that back the beach. They originally formed in ancient sea
floor sediments during the early Paleocene some 60 million
years ago. The boulders weigh several tonnes and are up to
three metres in diametre. Maori legend tells that the boulders
are remains of calabashes, kumaras and eel baskets that washed
ashore after the legendary canoe, the Araiteuru was wrecked at
nearby Shag Point (Matakaea).'

What this extremely dry scientific explanation fails to capture
is that, for a bunch of rocks, these things are SERIOUSLY COOL!
Wandering around the beach, checking out the various globes,
stretching out on top of them, poking at the tiny muscles that cling
to their cracks, checking out the hollow interiors of the broken ones,
was one of the most entertaining things I've done so far in New Zealand.
Definitely something to check out if you are in this part of the world!
Moeraki, New Zealand, August 8, 2009.

Yellow-Eyed Penguins!

2009-08-09T09:26:00.002+09:00

Of all the species of penguins in the world,
yellow-eyed are the most endangered. There
are only about 4000 of them left. New Zealand,
particularly the coast where I am living, is one of
their main habitats. I was very lucky to get up
close and personal with a few of them at an old
Maori 'Pa' yesterday...very close! This one waddled
up the hill right next to me! Katiki, New Zealand,
August 8, 2009.

Safe Distance

2009-08-09T09:20:00.001+09:00

Less than 5 meters, but then, they were laying
on the path I was walking on which made it more
difficult to keep that far away! Katiki,
New Zealand, August 8, 2009.

Moeraki

2009-08-09T08:31:00.001+09:00

Gulls perched around Fleur's restaurant,
a Moeraki institution. New Zealand,
August 8, 2009.

Trivia

2009-08-07T11:30:00.001+09:00

Dunedin often feels like a parallel universe to me, since it is simultaneously freakishly similar to Canada and freakishly different. This is the first time in my life, since moving away from home, that I've been routinely homesick, and I think that's why. Everything is so familiar, but also off.

I love how the waxed paper covers on the sticky bits of 'feminine hygeine' pads here have random trivia printed on them. Who knew that women's middle fingers are more sensitive when they're menstruating (how did they test that, and why???), or that rabbits and parrots are the only animals that can see behind their heads without actually turning their heads. Suddenly I have a whole new perspective on how my apartment must look to my beloved bunnies!

I love that you can get banana-flavoured chewy chocolate bars here (previously mentioned 'perky nanas') and that 'hokey pokey' is a flavour of ice-cream. 'Hokey Pokey,' incidentally, is that crunchy golden foam stuff that you get when you melt white sugar and add a little baking soda to it (for you Canadians in the crowd, what's in the middle of a 'Crunchie' bar, or, for people who've been to Korea, what the little old women on street corners make in thin discs with pictures pressed into them with wire). I also love that corner stores are ALL called dairies, and that they ALL still sell fresh ice-cream by the scoop.

I love that all the little birds I see day in and day out still astound me with their unexpected colours. Fat little chickadee-esque ones that turn their drab brown backs to reveal bright red bands above their beaks and fly away in flashes of brilliant yellow otherwise hidden beneath their wings. Black birds with bright red beaks that behave like robins, grubbing up worms in the dirt. Parrots like Christmas ornaments, half green and half red. Rainbow finches.

I love that people say things like 'chuffed' when they're pleased, and 'knackered' when they're tired. That 'trim' means low-fat milk in the context of coffee, where 'flat white' is a single shot with a lot of un-steamed milk, and 'long black' is a shot of espresso mixed with hot water (aka Americano). That french fries may be 'fatties' or 'skinnies' and are generally eaten with aoli instead of ketchup (which here is called 'tomato sauce'). That sweet potatoes are called 'kumara' because that was the local Maori variant of them. And that people think it's normal to eat peanut butter and honey together on toast but would never dream of eating peanut butter with jam.

I love that up the hill there's a French bakery that is only open on Fridays because the baker is solo and takes all week to stock-pile the quiches and meat pies and fruit tarts and chocolate croissants that will sell out so quickly that to arrive after 8:30am is pointless. We went this morning at 8, and the shop was already half empty. The pastry was surreal, so perfectly flakey and buttery and light.

I love that stores have real sales, BIG sales, seasonal sales, storewide sales. That clothes come in sizes that fit me. That size 10 women's feet are so common that I find footwear in second hand shops. That not only are there people skinnier than me, but fatter than me too. Lots skinnier. And lots fatter. That the 'Jenny Craig' is in a dilapidated old building with little traffic flanked by bustling coffee shops, around the corner from possibly the world's best hamburger joint and about 80% of all things edible in Dunedin.

I love that kleenex comes in either mint or eucalyptus. That sheep are practically a national obsession. That all of the professional sports teams have 'black' in their names (rugby: all blacks, basketball: tall blacks, hockey: black sticks...). That 'Emma' sounds like 'Ee-ma' and 'bra' 'bra-er.'

I don't love that dental floss comes pre-coated with toothpaste. That blister band-aids are $14 for 4 (more expensive than in Korea!!). That busses cost a fortune and may or may not ever arrive at their advertised stops. That broken alcohol bottles (and pools of vomit) are utterly ubiquitous around campus. And that there is so much sugar in everything that my teeth actually ache before I brush them. But these are small prices to pay.

Tomorrow I am going up the coast to a place where the defining feature of the geography is a collection of perfectly spherical boulders. And next week I am going sea kayaking (with seals, I hope, I hope!) and then to a cheese-making class. It will be my first trip REALLY away from town, 6 hours up the coast. Think of the new things to love (and not to love) will be discovered then!

Middlemarch

2009-07-30T06:57:00.000+09:00

Main street, across the street from the train
platform. Middlemarch, New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

A lot on main street, with the snow-capped
mountains in the background. Middlemarch,
New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

One of Middlemarch's two churches...
New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

The other of Middlemarch's two
churches...New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

Taieri Gorge Train Trip

2009-07-30T06:53:00.000+09:00

After the gorge, the train heads up onto the
Taieri Plateau. Looks a lot like Alberta's
badlands, so I felt right at home! New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Yes, that is snow on them thar hills! SO much
colder in Central Otago than here in Dunedin
by the coast. Brrr! New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

Our destination for the evening -
Middlemarch, population 240. Very
fun little outpost on the plateau, surrounded
by elk farms and cows. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Middlemarch's only bank. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Taeri Gorge Train Ride

2009-07-30T06:46:00.000+09:00

Before our departure, while I was busy having
my neck repaired, my intrepid travel companions
were gathering a feast at the farmer's market.
In this picture, Marieke (l) and Jason, two other
PhD candidates from the anthro department,
unwrap an assortment of cheeses. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Ewa (l), a PhD in Nutrition, and Tiffany (r), another
anthro PhD, giggle about the 'Blue Sheep' cheese
(bottom right). Also on the table, amazing kumara
and pumpkin hummus - yummy! New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Crossing the old viaduct over the gorge. This
train has been running since Gold Rush days,
when Dunedin was the biggest city in the country.
New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

Sunset over the end of the gorge. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

Taeri Gorge Train Ride

2009-07-30T06:34:00.000+09:00

The Dunedin Train Station, at the
start of our journey. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

From the viewing platform between
cars overlooking the very start of
the Taeri Gorge. New Zealand,
July 25, 2009.

An old fence post at the Mt. Allen
stop. New Zealand, July 25, 2009.

The newer cars on the train, at our
Mt. Allen stop. New Zealand, July 25,
2009.

Swine Flu Mary?

2009-07-30T06:26:00.000+09:00

After a week of feeling not totally miserable, but not totally well, I am definitely on the mend. I can now turn my head in every direction (and two of those without pain!), walk to campus without feeling like an elephant is camped out on my chest, and sleep through the night. I'm still coughing intermittently, but not with nearly the severity of earlier in the week. I feel the spring returning (ever so slowly) to my step, and motivation for things other than endless DVDs under the covers of my bed along with it. In fact, I was feeling so much better last night that I actually washed those covers before crawling back under them, something which certainly couldn't have hurt my recovery process. There is nothing like the crispness of fresh sheets still warm from the drier (a drier! such a treat!!) to make a person feel better.

Unfortunately, now my advisor has it. He called this morning to postpone a meeting we were set to have with the university administration because he's in bed with a fever of almost 40C, coughing away. Poor man. Now it's entirely possible that, considering I never had much of a fever (about a degree and a half, for about an hour one evening), he didn't get his bug from me. There are certainly lots of people around who are sick. On the other hand, he was the only one in the department (Sue aside, and she's successfully fought off her own bug already which was much milder than mine) who was close to me on the day that I was at my worst. Knowing I'm in Dunedin alone, he came to volunteer his assistance if I needed it. That's what you get for being nice in flu season! I repeat, poor man!

One Sick Letter

2009-07-26T12:54:00.001+09:00

Friday was my big presentation for the Anthropology Department seminar series. It's likely that no one else thought of it in these terms, but for me it was the proving ground...the first chance for my committee to see that I do actually have enough shreds of knowledge to justify my presence in the program. Since I'm not officially enrolled yet, in my head it was the last chance for them all to say 'wait a minute...maybe we need to rethink this...'. I'd gotten good feedback (finally!) on a reworked edition of the draft paper I was planning to present a couple of days before, and am not a nervous public speaker in any case, so heading into the day I was feeling pretty good. And then I woke up. With a stiff neck, fever, chest congestion, and that all-over blah feeling that says 'you really oughtta just stay in bed today.' Just what I needed! After having a shower and choking down half a bowl of oatmeal I figured I'd walk as far as my office and decide on the way whether or not to call someone to cancel the presentation. Since my committee all knew that I'd had some trouble ironing out the paper in the first place, I had some angst about this option. Didn't want anyone to think I was dodging out because I wasn't ready afterall (and I was definitely ready!). Plus, I'm only here for a limited time and might not get another chance to do this. Walking helped clear my head. Just when I'd decided that I was definitely okay enough to present (and then go home and fall into bed worry free), it started to hail on me. Hard. Figures. The day passed well enough. The benefit of feeling rotten was that any minute traces of nerves that may have remained after my preparations were finished vanished in my determination to remain upright for the entire hour. Despite my not following the script I'd prepared beforehand, not talking about half of what I had ready and talking about a whole lot else that I hadn't intended, the presentation went over fabulously. The 25 or so people in attendence not only stayed awake throughout and mostly interested-looking, but also managed to ask 25 minutes worth of questions at the end. I was told by another grad student afterwards that she'd never seen a presentation generate so much discussion. Comment of the day, from my main advisor, 'I can't BELIEVE you're not even enrolled yet!' I went home to a bowl of soup and a dvd in bed, looking forward to a healthier morning. Morning dawned, I did indeed feel better. The congestion in my chest had mostly gone away, and my fever had broken in the night as well. Yippee! I got up early, eager to shower and get myself off to the weekly farmer's market to meet some of the other students as planned. And then it happened. The most excruciating moment of my life. Contrary to its normal pattern, rather than loosening up further in the shower, my neck got more and more stiff. I have relatively often had neck pain in the past, but usually nothing more serious than a persistant inability to look in one or the other direction. It has almost always cleared up on its own after a couple of days. Turning the water off, I leaned over to towel my hair and felt as if someone had torn the back of my head off. Followed in quick succession by the feeling that my left collar bone had suddenly snapped in two. Wow. I don't know how I managed to get my clothes back on or walk back to my room. I was sobbing when I called my classmate Sue. Sue, bless her soul, is a 54-year old mother of 3 sons (the eldest 2, twins, just a few years younger than I am), who is a physiotherapist by profession. She has just started her PhD in medical anthropology, and is a riot to hang out with. She's been my intrepid tour guide on weekend outings, and is the mastermind behind the department's 'peer group' coffee meetings which have injected a strong shot of social interaction into the otherwise studious group of post grads here. She drove right over and got me, stretched my neck enough on her at-home treatment table that I could stop whimpering with every breath, put some hot tea into me, and took me to her friend for proper treatment. She thought about driving me to the hospital, but figured it would mean long waits in the ER, high expenses, lots of probably inconclusive x-rays, and possibly a shot of pain-killers before being sent home with instructions to go to bed and come back if it doesn't improve in 5 days. With something like 50 years of hands-on medical experience between the 2 of them, she figured that if there was anything really serious she or her friend would pick it up in a hurry and could take me then, otherwise perhaps their alternative treatments could offer more relief. I was not inclined to argue. Sue's friend Christine has been practicing oriental medicine, accupuncture, massage therapy, and a whole host of other alternative therapies for about 20 years. She studied first in Japan, and then China, and now travels all over the world doing treatments. She happened to be in town for her sister's 60th birthday party (in an odd twist, staying at Sue's ex-husband's house, where she met with me). This is a woman who absolutely exudes both competence and sincerity. And she was magic. After more than two and a half solid hours of work, stretching, poking, prodding, nudging, twisting, pulling, rubbing, holding, I could move my head in nearly every direction with more stiffness than pain. The knot in my stomach had let go. The relief was so intense I felt like I must be walking around afterwards surrounded by my own sunny glow. She told me right at the beginning that I shouldn't worry about money - that I could pay whatever I felt able, including nothing. And she meant it. I gave her everything I had in my wallet, which was enough not to be embarassing but certainly less than market value. She gave me a big hug and sent me back home to Sue's for freshly made chicken soup and organic avocado spread on rice crackers. For the first time in 2 days, I was famished. Today my neck is unsurprisingly stiff and sore, but not as bad as yesterday. I could get up without trouble, have a shower (I didn't try washing my hair), put on and take off clothes, even put a big load of laundry in the wash. I walked to my office without too much trauma, and to the grocery store (for some avocado and rice crackers to go with the vat of soup that Sue sent me home with). I also spent a long time in the pharmacy, discussing cough suppressants with the helpful pharmacist. The congestion hasn't come back, but the cough is persistent and very, very nasty today. At least thanks to Christine I can cough without immediately tearing up now. As soon as I finish this message I will head back home to bed...or at least to a DVD on top of the covers. Thank goodness I rented a few last week that haven't come due yet. I never was one to sleep much during the day. And if this is the swine flu, which one of my advisors on Friday guessed, since my cough apparently sounds just the same as her husbands who has it, then I hope it doesn't get any worse than this. She assures me that it has been mild and over quickly in his case, and in most of the great number of cases on campus and in town at the moment. It's winter in Dunedin afterall, at a crowded university just back from a break long enough for travel. Flu's peak season. If you are the praying type, this would be a good time to nudge God in my direction. And if you're not, whisper a fortifying word or two in my direction please - no matter how terrific the local support (did I mention yet that Sue is my guardian angel???), it's never fun to be sick far from home. Hoping this finds each of you in better health than I am, but in spirits just as high! Much love.

Maybe this is why my pants are all getting tight?

2009-07-22T13:27:00.000+09:00

An assortment of chocolates from the Cadbury
chocolate factory tour. Dunedin, New Zealand,
July 9, 2009.

Paradise

2009-07-21T09:36:00.000+09:00

Delightful as it felt at the time, I have to say that
hot springs are wasted in a sunny place like Busan.
What I wouldn't give to be in one of these steamy
pools here, in the midst of New Zealand winter!
Busan, Korea, April 2009.

View of the Mainland

2009-07-20T06:29:00.000+09:00

Looking over at the mainland from the Otago
Peninsula, Dunedin, New Zealand, July 18, 2009.

Baaaaaaaad Day

2009-07-19T13:42:00.000+09:00

This poor wee lamb somehow managed to get
her head stuck through a square of a barbed
wire fence (out of plain sight, meaning she was
there for quite a while, judging by the muddy
groove she'd managed to dig in the ground around
her). A couple of fellow anthropology students
and I found her while sight-seeing on the Otago
Peninsula. A lot of soothing, pushing, bending,
knocking on doors, and eventually wire-cutting
later and she was free. Yippee! Dunedin,
New Zealand, July 18, 2009.

Momentary Freak-Out

2009-07-19T13:21:00.000+09:00

It’s just a piece of writing. Why get so attached? Words pop into my head, neurons fire, keys get pushed, and voila, sentences appear on the screen. There is no miracle here, folks. It’s just a piece of writing. (This from the girl who routinely reads favourite books dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, who still turns to treasured texts at the least sign of stress, and in celebration, and ...)

I don’t know what, at 32 years of age, makes me think I can be a PhD. Honestly at this point, it all seems like much more trouble than it’s worth. I haven’t even finished one paper yet (and trust me, with the presentation date only 8 days away, the pressure is on). It’s not like I don’t have a job that I like already. And hobbies. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of stories to tell, without an expensive piece of paper to hang on my wall. Seriously, is being able to check the ‘dr’ salutation box on form letters really worth all of this?

I finally met my elusive second advisor yesterday. For the first time. She wasn’t particularly interested in what I had to say in my draft. I believe her exact words were ‘well duh, this is basic ... stuff.’ Seriously, she said ‘duh’. After my primary advisor read it, to my half panicked ‘you’re not thinking ‘what the hell is she doing here’?’ a qualified, ‘well...’. It took me a couple of hours of hyperventilating to figure out that he probably thought I was asking about the paper itself (which, I admit, may indeed lack focus) and not about my future in academia. That realization only helped a little. This is a man who practically does contortions to phrase things in a helpful and encouraging way. His were the nicest sounding criticisms I have ever had the pleasure of receiving. ‘Well...’ from him at that moment sounded like the last nail going into the coffin of my short-lived doctoral career. I think I may be in danger of hyperventilating again here...

The platitude in anthropology, apparently, is ‘you are the expert in your material – no one knows your project better than you.’ I don’t know if they say that to insecure students in every field or only mine, but let me tell you, if I hear it one more time! Perhaps it has a different effect on other people, but on me...I do not feel miraculously soothed. I am not magically transformed into a master of my material. What I feel is even more acutely aware of how little I know, but less able to express that constructively. Hence the e-mail venting (like Jay told me long, long ago...there’s no therapy like broadcast therapy). It makes me dread that moment when the mask will come off and they’ll all have to admit that I’m just not cut out for this. When everyone will get that I am NO expert.

Oh shit. There’s an earthquake.

Maori Church

2009-07-19T09:04:00.000+09:00

Otago Peninsula, New Zealand,
July 18, 2009.

Penguins are People Too!

2009-07-12T07:01:00.000+09:00

Aramoana, New Zealand, July 11, 2009.

Aromoana

2009-07-11T13:09:00.000+09:00

Aromoana, New Zealand, July 11, 2009.

On Having a Hari Krishna for a Neighbour, and Other Oddities

2009-07-10T08:19:00.003+09:00

My neighbour is a Hare Krishna. For the first two weeks that I lived in the house I nearly never saw him. It took me a while to realize he lived in the house at all. Occasionally he would drift wraith-like around corners at the edge of view, usually early in the morning or late at night. He never spoke to me (or anyone else, as far as I could tell), and with his hunched posture, slightly greasy hair, and perpetually wrinkled black clothes, he always seemed a bit startled and uncomfortable to be confronted with other people. Since the entrance to his room is in a little hallway located at the base of the stairs, I used to refer to him as 'the creature under the stairs.' I am not the only person in the house who knew him this way.

By coincidence, last Saturday morning he and I happened to leave the house at the same time. In the driving rain. He offered to share his small umbrella with me. We walked uncomfortably side-by-side for a block or so, both of us getting wet, making small talk. His name is Young. He is from Malaysia. He goes back once a year, but doesn't miss it much. He's lived in New Zealand for a long time. 'Pleasantries' observed, late for my yoga class, I made my excuses and darted out into the rain and on with my day.

After several hours of wandering about independently of each other, by coincidence we happened to arrive at the front door of the house that evening exactly together again. By the look on his face, he must have thought I was stalking him. And yet, just as I was going into my room, he called my name. It took him a while to build up the lung capacity to get it out properly (the first time it sounded half strangled, as if uttering it was taking an enormous personal toll), but he did. And once he did he managed in quite a normal voice to invite me to join him and some friends some Sunday afternoon for the Hare Krishna gathering. 'They do yoga...and there's really good food,' he said.

After his invitation, I started hearing the chanting when I wake up in the morning, and sometimes when I go to bed at night. Whether he has turned up the volume in response to our opening dialogue or whether my ears have simply grown more attuned I am not sure. But I didn't notice it until that Saturday, and I have heard it every day since. It's not unpleasant or disruptive (I start out my daily group exercise session cross-legged on the floor, chanting 'OHM' after all, who am I to judge?). The sound comes faintly through a carved wooden air vent half-obscured behind an old mirrored wardrobe in the corner, and suits the place. With its enormously tall ceilings, elaborate crown mouldings, and drifting cobwebs much too high for anyone to reach, it seems natural for a song or two to be ghosting about.

Last night, carrying heavy grocery bags home across campus, I ran into Young again. We were in the deserted stone quadrangle between the ancient administration clock tower and the equally ancient geology building, a gigantic moon throwing uneven shadows across the cobbles as the clouds hid and revealed it. I nearly gave him a heart attack when I called his name. When he started breathing again, he said my name. And then immediately started chanting. I wasn't sure if he was simply continuing something I had interrupted, or if it was a particular response, but it seemed impolite to interrupt him. So for the next five minutes or so we walked side by side with nothing but the quiet-but-fervent '...Hare Krishna...'s between us. When he stopped them and abruptly started up a perfectly normal conversation with me a couple of minutes away from home, as if no time at all had passed between our original exchange of names and this, I was utterly gobsmacked (as they would say here). The shift from chanting wraith to mundane chit-chat was enough to give a person whip-lash. A doctor at the local hospital, where he has been practicing for the last 5 years, he was on his way home from a long shift. At the front drive of the house he noticed my bags, and gallantly offered to help me carry them.

Young is not the only thing in Dunedin (though to call him a 'thing' is hardly neighbourly) that makes me shake my head in perplexed amusement. Take, for example, the commercial on TV that reminds everyone to vote in the upcoming referendum on 'Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?' Or the flight advertising campaign plastered on every bus in town 'Bugger off for Bugger all!'

On a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory yesterday afternoon (as my French colleague remarked over lunch 'well, it isn't Willy Wonka...'), I had to keep asking what everything coming off the assembly line was. 'Buttons' are chocolate chips. 'Pinkys' are marshmallows dipped in chocolate. 'Perky Nanas' are chewy banana stuff coated in dairy milk. 'Moros' are something akin to a Mars bar. 'Jaffas' are orange flavoured, spherical, m'n'm type candies. The 'hollow egg' production line was going, which was interesting to see. They only run it 'seasonally' from June until January of each year, in order to produce the nearly 40 million eggs that ONLY Kiwis will eat in a one week period around Easter in February (Easter is in February???). That works out to about 10 eggs per person nationwide in a 7 day span. Next Friday, as part of the annual Cadbury Winter Festival, they will take 13 000 over sized Jaffas to the top of Baldwin Street (with a 35% grade, the steepest officially recognized street in the world) and let them go. Each Jaffa is numbered, people buy tickets for $2 each (proceeds go to a local children's charity), and the first Jaffa into the bucket at the bottom wins the ticket-holder a year's supply of chocolate. Not that my waistline needs it (taste buds are loving kiwi sweets, pants not so much!), but I will be there with all the other ticket holders, cheering on my little ball.

I know there's more (there's always more!), but here it is 11 o'clock, and I haven't done any real work at all yet. Definitely time to start using my laptop for more 'productive' exploits. I hope this finds you well (salivating for a sweet?) and happy going into the weekend. Much love.

Monkeyville

2009-07-09T10:20:00.000+09:00

Chittagargh, India, February 2005.

Hide and Seek

2009-07-07T10:45:00.000+09:00

Dunedin, New Zealand, July 7, 2009.

New Zealand Winter Veggies

2009-07-07T09:01:00.000+09:00

Sweet New Zealand yams, made sweeter with
the recommended addition of brown sugar and
lemon juice. Yum! Dunedin, New Zealand,
June 27, 2009.

Farmer's market brussel sprouts and mashed
blue potatoes...no food colouring here, folks!
Dunedin, New Zealand, July 6, 2009.

Sacred Ibis

2009-07-05T15:15:00.000+09:00

Somehow I always thought they'd be
prettier than this! KL Bird Park,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 16, 2009.

Notes on a rainy Saturday

2009-07-04T12:35:00.001+09:00

Thursday evening there was a tornado warning. I couldn't have been more surprised when my fun Indian house mate told me if she'd said there wasa moa in the kitchen. Are tornados even possible in the winter?? At least up in Northland, apparently they are.

New Zealand is divided by speech into 4 distinct units. In addition to North Island and South Island, which are pretty self-explanatory, there are Northland and Southland. Those are the extreme bits at the top of North Island and the bottom of South Island. There are of course plenty of regional divisions as well, but you don't hear their names tossed about anywhere near as often. I'm told that the weather on the North Island is, though warmer in general, much worse than it is here thanks to a phenomenon called the 'roaring forties'. According to wikipedia that's 'a name given ... to the latitudes between 40°S and 50°S ... because of the boisterous and prevailing westerly winds.' The North Island, incidentally, is also on a major fault line (the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', which also includes the San Andres Fault in California and the fault beneath Japan which wreaked so much havoc in Kobe), and so is prone to frequent earthquakes.

Here on the South Island we didn't get the tornado, although the winds rattled every window in the house right through the night. I was snuggled under so many layers of heavy blankets on the bed that I barely noticed it. Lovelock House has been standing for the last 150 years - it seems unlikely that it will come down any time soon. By morning the wind had blown itself out, but it had swept the rain clouds down from the hills and all over town. For the last 2 days the deluge has not let up once, though it does occasionally shift from torrential downpour to persistent drizzle just to keep everyone guessing. It is not expected to stop until at least after the weekend. Which makes this a perfect weekend for working.

Since I arrived here two weeks ago (the time is going so fast!), I have seen very little of Dunedin outside of the narrow 3 km swathe between myroom and the yoga studio. I have been shockingly devoted to my research and writing, which is coming along. Perhaps not as quickly as I wouldlike (I am a very good procrastinator, as this message testifies!), but coming along nevertheless. I am hoping to get a first draft of this paper out of the way this weekend, and then won't feel guilty about going further afield next week if (when?) the weather clears up.

I am most eager to get out to Taiaroa Head, the tip of the Otago peninsula (technically part of Dunedin), where the albatross, sea lions and penguins all live. My excitement over penguins needs no explanation - who doesn't love those? Albatross in pictures, on the other hand, look suspiciously like seagulls and so are harder to get excited about. But imagine a seagull with a 3 meter wingspan...that must be something to see! There are also the amusingly named 'Spotted Shags', known locally as 'flying bricks' because of their ineptitude in high winds, to keep my eyes open (and my head down) for. What fun!

According to the very helpful man at the tourist information center in the Octagon, it's not difficult to get out to Taiaroa Head by city bus. Unfortunately, according to the same man, it's not so easy to get back. Busses, it seems, have a nasty habit of only going to the end of the line if there is a passenger aboard wanting to go to the end of the line. Otherwise they turn back towards the bulk of the city half way, at Portobello. And at 33 km from the heart of town, on narrow, windy, unlit roads, it is definitely not a place you want to walk back from. An adventure to look forward to!

Most of the wildlife here at the university is of the gull variety. My favorites are the 'black-backed' gulls (whose backs are in fact pale grey), with their neon orange beaks and a pair of black stabilizers that cross jauntily across their tails and are spotted with a single neat row of white diamonds. They are definitely more stylish than their counterparts in the north (though I'm told are equally persistent about stealing food when the weather is warmer)! There were precious few of them around the farmer's market this morning, so I gather that they like the rain about as much as the rest of us do.

The farmer's market is a quaint little affair in the parking lot of the railway station, that goes every Saturday morning from 8 until noon. Another grad student in my department, Sue, was kind enough to pick me up this morning not long after the start to take me down. Considering it's just starting to get light at 8am, I am impressed by the devotion of all the vendors in setting up so early (not to mention all the shoppers, who don't have the benefit of the rain-proof tents that the vendors sit under to stay dry and relatviely warm). Cheeses, cut to sample in generous wedges, so distinctive in their variety of flavours that locals could tell which flock of sheep produced the milk for them. Spicy honey gathered from bee hives set in the neighbouring fields of thyme. Fish caught here, just beyond the harbour. Every kind of smoked meat (free range, from our 'happy pigs'). An endless array of sinful looking baked goods (and the equally sinful looking young men who bake them). And, reflecting Dunedin's thriving international scene, Asian dumplings doused in fiery chili oil, French crepes filled with anything under the sun, Greek stuffed grape leaves, Otago olives marinated by an old Lebanese woman who prepares all her other many delicacies by hand. Sue has been a faithful devotee of the market for a LONG time, and knew nearly every one there. As it seemed did most of the other people wandering about. In a place where I have found it relatively difficult to meet people and make friends (something I am happy to say is starting to shift), it was especially fun to see the easy camaraderie of small-town life play out.

And now, though I haven't talked about any of the entertaining kiwi-isms that are trying hard to muddle my mind (and my accent), nor any of the entertaining characters about town, it is definitely past time for me to be getting back to work. And so I will cut this off for today and save a few notes to share on another rainy afternoon. In the meantime, I hope this finds you all well and happy and, most of all, warm. You are loved!

4897 km to the South Pole

2009-07-04T10:52:00.000+09:00

Signpost on St. Clair beach, Dunedin, New Zealand,
June 21, 2009.

Colour for the Cold

2009-07-03T17:00:00.000+09:00

Chopsticks at a noodle stand,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 19, 2009.

Hungry?

2009-07-02T15:11:00.000+09:00

Clearly, past my dinner time! My mouth is
salivating, just looking at this photo!! These are
Malaysian noodles in a thick peanut-based broth,
with a side of sugar cane juice. Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, June 16, 2009.

Feed Me, Seymour!

2009-07-01T06:36:00.000+09:00

KL Bird Park, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
June 16, 2009.

Hot drink for a cold day

2009-06-30T07:56:00.000+09:00

Shifting seasons being infinitely more
difficult to adjust to than shifting time
zones, I have been enjoying A LOT of
hot drinks here in Dunedin. The one
pictured, a 'flat white', is unique to
New Zealand...though I'm not really
sure how it's different from any other
milky coffee drink. On the plate is a
chocolate fish - a locally made candy
that comes on the side of every hot drink,
and, so I'm told, is given to new PhDs
(a larger version!) when they submit
their dissertations. Pink chewy marshmallow
coated in cheap chocolate - yum!
Dunedin, New Zealand, June 27 ,2009.