Akaroa

It's been a few weeks since my last post and there are a couple of reasons for this: abundant school work as well as lack of inspiration and motivation. And although it's Monday and I should be doing homework and working on the essay that's due in a week, I'll take the next hour or so to answer the pleas of my most loyal reader.

Two weekends ago, my friend's flatmate, Hannah, invited us to her parents' home in Akaroa, a town located on the Banks Peninsula south of Christchurch. Once a former French settlement, this small town has a year-round population of a couple hundred and functions mostly as a holiday destination for fishing, dolphin swimming, diving, and boating. We piled into Hannah's station wagon on Saturday morning without any real plans or ideas for the rest of the weekend, only with the anticipation of having a relaxing and comfortable stay in someone's bay-side home.

Again, the drive through serpentine roads made my stomach turn. On Kiwi roads, the landscape is immediate and commanding, and never is it compromised for the benefit of straight, leveled asphalt. It's always difficult here to look straight ahead and ignore the peripheral countryside that sweeps by the car window, so I suffer. Once our wagon crept up and down the rural hills, we arrived at her home at the top of a steep driveway, high above the water.

The Bedfords' home was incredible even at first sight. The incline on which their home was built is such that the main (second) floor can be accessed at the ground level at the back, and by a couple dozen stairs from the front. Their home has a rustic warmth where local native woods of varying caramel hues frame deep brown leather upholstery, and the aromas of freshly made aoli, pesto, and warm wholegrain bread fill the open floor plan. As Hannah went straight for the fridge, Gil and Trev welcomed us to their home on this easy, warm Saturday morning.

Noshing on homemade bread, pesto, and cake, and marveling at their glass walls overlooking a post-card view of the bay, we chatted with Gil and planned our day. We learned that Trev had designed and built the house himself (including the plumbing)--just the first of many amazing facts about this family. While all their hot water is heated by solar power, most of their produce comes from their gardens, which yield salad greens, lemons, grapefruit, tomatoes, corn, and garlic among many other crops. They have hens for eggs, the bay for fish, and neighbors who readily share the excessive yields of their fruit trees. Now I understood Hannah's distaste for the city and weekly retreats home.

Unsure of what to do with our Saturday and content with lazing around their comfy home, we decided to hitch a ride on their 40-something foot sailboat to town (about a 15 minute ride away). Although Hannah joked that giving sail-boat tours would be her dad's retirement job, Trev was a seasoned sailor, having navigated for weeks through the Pacific to Vanuatu in Melanesia, to Tonga and back again to Akaroa. Beneath his quiet demeanor, there was an adventurer, and later that evening, we huddled over his photo albums, listening to his stories of the sea and exotic far-off islands.

Once we disembarked at the one-dock harbor, we strolled into town, passing cafes, fish and chips huts, and tour guides. After browsing several galleries, we sat for a cup of coffee at one of the dozens of cafes in town. After relaxing and chewing the fat in the garden, we drove back home where we read, napped, and listened to Trev's ipod, the contents of which ranged from reggae- and jazz-inflected Kiwi jams to Cat Power and Norah Jones.

Following a rousing game of Headbandz, we had a family dinner of fresh flounder that Trev had caught the day before, accompanied by salads from the garden. It was the last long day of the year (we were to turn the clock back for winter time that night), so we lingered on the deck overlooking the bay, talking long after our last servings of chips and courgette croquets. After tea and biscuits, we walked on the beach, and after attempting a fire with some driftwood, returned home to enjoy the extra long night of sleep.

Sunday morning, after a bowl of homemade toasted muesli, we packed up the car, and planned our trip home. We decided to stop by a haphazardly arranged and rather bizarre museum at Okain's Bay. While we checked out the colonial and Maori collections documenting the history of the peninsula, the weather turned suddenly: blue skies became gray, rain followed, then hail. By the end of our visit, the skies were blue again. I have yet to get used to the erratic and extreme weather patterns here.

Following the museum, we visited the most important destination on our journey: Barry's Bay cheese factory. After buying three different kinds of cheeses--a rinded aged cheddar, aged maasdam, and a port wine--we headed back to Christchurch. I was sad to leave the quiet, scenic, and sleepy town of Akaroa and Gil and Trev's incredible home. While Christchurch is hardly a booming metropolis, it's traffic, noise, and flat, sprawling suburbs were an unwelcome sight.

Next week begins our three week long Easter break, during which I'm going hiking in Fiordland, touring the west coast, and then traveling to Sydney for a conference on Somatechnics (bodies, technologies, modifications, etc.).





Cheers,

D

Le Quotidien

I have received requests to write about what goes on between excursions--i.e. daily life, the university, Christchurch, kiwis, etc. This weekend provided a good opportunity to do just that since I didn't go anywhere too exciting.

I had originally planned to go to the west coast to the Wildfoods Festival in Hokitika, but at the last minute, I decided I was too tired and didn't want to spend the money on what had been described to me as a "piss fest". So, instead, I spent Friday afternoon working in the Okeover community garden at the university, transplanting seedlings into pots. In exchange for our labor, we can take any fruits, herbs, vegetables, tubers, greens, nuts, or berries that are ready for harvesting. Built on the philosophies of organic farming and permaculture, this small pocket of land is hidden across the way from the engineering school and alongside the Okeover stream. It was started in 2002 by the environmental club at University of Canterbury (UC), and has grown over the years through the work of dedicated volunteers. Now, for the community's benefit, it yields dozens of edible and non-edible species, including perennials and annuals.

I met a handful of other students spending their sunny Friday in the garden and ran into Richard (the chap who sold me my bike) as well. His son, a three year-old cherry-cheeked and carrot haired boy followed his father around the winding, curved beds. As Richard pushed along the wheelbarrow, he followed his dad (just like he did when tinkering with bikes), looking very serious in his wide-rimmed hat, beet red rain boots, and over-sized gardening gloves that dwarfed his already bite-sized body. It was a peaceful environment that made the road, university, and florescent glow of the neighboring science labs seem miles away. After our work and an informal tour of the garden, I harvested some silver beet (a.k.a. swiss chard), beans, strawberries, yellow squash, and rosemary. Not bad for an hour's work.

That evening, Emily and I grabbed a drink at Sammy's Jazz Review, the sole jazz spot in town, where from 7:30 to 9:30 every night you can hear a set or two (no cover charge, no drink minimum). As we sampled from their red wine list, we listened to a young, talented vocalist, Sascha, and a guitarist play cool, easy standards. I was really impressed by her musicianship, improvisation, and bluesy style. Following her set, she sat down with us and we talked about jazz, singing, and the possibilities of lessons. I have her card; we'll be in touch. Soon, a sax, bass, and drummer filled out the rest of the band and did two sets of funk, with Sascha leading on most of the songs. After more wine and dancing, I walked home and sunk into that deep sleep that follows the longest weeks.

Today, after reading for classes at a cafe (much of what I do these days), I wandered around the Botanical Gardens exploring the various habitats. I made a point to spend some time in the rose garden, which has dozens of different varieties of roses, all different shades, smells, sizes, and shapes. I stopped and sampled each one, surprised each time by the differences in pungency and sweetness of each type--some perfumes were intoxicating, while others just pleasant, and no two were exactly the same. After getting lost among silver fern and cabbage trees, I found a warm, bright spot among other Sunday sun-bathers and finished a chapter of reading.

Tomorrow begins my third week of classes and it will probably be the most calm one yet. During the first two weeks, I was learning to navigate the campus, attending club meetings, a departmental party, meeting my research supervisor and professors, going to orientation concerts, preparing a class presentation, buying a car (1991 Subaru Legacy--she's a beaut!) checking out piles of books from the library, and writing my ethics clearance application for my research. Now I feel settled--I have syllabi, course readers, and assignments--and by the end of the week I'll have my office space among the other graduate students in the department.

While my research is pending ethics clearance, I am enjoying being in school again, in classes (theorizing gender, and sociology of health and technologies), and being a part of a university community. I've joined the Canterbury University Tramping Club, the community garden, RDU radio station, and the rec center. It's nice to have a typical college campus that feels more like a community, with an impressive student center housing a couple of bars, restaurants, and cafes. Nonetheless, I still miss New York, and feel the pangs of home-sickness when I can't escape from the library stacks and seek out refuge at the Hungarian pastry shop, Amir's falafel, Kim's, 212, the taqueria, or the Bayit. But those familiar places are slowly being replaced by new haunts with soon-to-be familiar faces.

While I've shared my outward bound adventures with you my, it's really the iterations of the mundane--biking to school, coffee at 101, working out at the rec center, weekly farmers markets, drying my laundry out in the sun, and doing my homework in local cafes--that carry me into the comfort of feeling at home in Kiwiland.



cheers,

d

p.s. click on highlighted text for links. The photos that accompany this post: Cheap as Chips orientation concert at UC (2), the Chinese Lantern festival in Christchurch for the Chinese new year, the Botanical Gardens

Kaikoura

For a last minute getaway, I hitched a ride with my friend and her Kiwi mate to Kaikoura, where they were going to dive for crayfish--a local pastime and culinary obsession. We drove north from Christchurch to this small town to which tourists flock to swim with seals, dolphins, and other exotic marine wildlife, go fishing, whale-watching, horseback riding, hiking, and diving. After almost 3 hours of driving, the green, rolling pastures spill onto rocky, white coastline, which tumble down into brilliant turquoise water.

My friends dropped me off at the information centre, where I scanned some brochures and decided that I would join a fishing party boat for the afternoon. After making my booking at the desk, I was directed along the coastline toward the seal colony to Jimmy Armer's Beach, where my boat would be waiting at half past noon. It was only 11am, but the sun was already very strong, without a cloud in the sky threatening to provide shade. It was a great day to be on the water.

I arrived at the beach early and found the man who operated "Fish Kaikoura." He wasn't ready, so I waited and watched him clean the boat following that morning's excursion, washing away the stains of fish blood and flesh with buckets of briny water. After all traces of the previous hunt were cleansed away, I along with four other tourists--two from Japan, one from Holland, and one from London--climbed aboard with our skipper, an older, affable man with a bright spirit.

Our captain brought us to the seal colony--a series of rocks where we found many seals bathing, swimming, and sleeping in the high noon sun. Perched up on the rocks, they lazily ignored the crashing of waves around them. They seemed bored with their beautiful home among the seagulls, albatrosses, dolphins, sharks, whales, and marine-bound tourists. Some did swim up to the boat expecting a bite, but we had yet to put our lures in the water.

First, we hauled up the crayfish cage, and although it was empty, we were each promised one from the morning's harvest. Moving to the open water, we caught at least a dozen of tangerine-painted sea perch, a small, easily caught eating fish. The dutch girl was lucky enough to hook a blue cod, the larger, more desirable species with shimmering blue and silver scales.

Satisfied with our wriggling bucket of perch, we decided to call it quits, reel in our last catches, and head home. Mysteriously, though, after several minutes of letting it out, my lure had never touched bottom. So I decided to reel it in and hope for something to nibble the bait on the way in. After a minute or two of reeling, the line became taught, the rod arched forward, and it became increasingly difficult to turn the handle.

After about 5 minutes of fighting whatever got hold of my bait, I expected to see two big blue cods dangling from the two hooks on my line. But no more cod were to be caught that day. I snagged something better: a 1.5 meter shark. Almost ironically, trailing behind it on the second hook was another perch, wriggling in the shadow of what we thought was a Mako.

Looking back I wish that I had let it go (if that was at all possible without losing a finger), but at the time, I was excited by the prospect of conquering this writhing, formidable animal. Ashore, this excitement drove me to fillet it, revealing its fantastic organs protected by its tough, sand-paper-like skin. (maybe the surgeon in me??)

While my diving friends returned empty handed, I, on the other hand, had enough crayfish, sea perch, and shark to feed ten people. So we returned to Christchurch, where my friend's grill, the kiwi's chardonnay, and my freshly caught and filleted fish made a great meal under a late-summer's evening sky.





Cheers,

Dana