suuuurrrrPRISE!

What a week Dunedin has put on for us! It has been such good weather I went to the beach at St Kilda 3 times and now I have lots more freckles and am a bit browner, not that I tried to be, and not that you would probably notice. Seriously the beach in the past week has been a revelation to me. I have often thought that Dunedin would be so much cooler if it had a more swimable beach, and by that I meant if it wasnt so cold. On my past three beach missions it has been very swimable, we were in the water for about 30min each time! Did lots of body surfing on first and last trip but on the second one the waves were too massive and too many people to bump into. The water was still colder than North Island beaches like the Mount but not by much. From my memory I can recall only a handful other Dunedin sea swims and they mostly lasted less than 5 minutes. Its like before this week I saw these beautiful beaches and thought what a waste all you can do is walk/sit on the sand and play beach games, me being very much a water person, I just want to swim. So now Dunedin is that much better in my books for having some beautiful beaches that at times like this can actually live up to their potential. Alas I know it is not to last forever and winter shall be here soon enough and that this will be but a memory and a hope for the summer. And I do fear that this revelation will lead me back to the ocean in colder seasons and when that happens I shall not last long, but I will likely try my best to enjoy those waves for the 5 minutes I can bare. Its funny that Im starting my 5th year here and Dunedin continues to surprise. I would rank this up there with a couple of other revelations about Dunedin that really added value for me, such as the one or two snow falls a year, which make the cold so worth it, and discovering the incredible beauty of the Peninsular, especially on a good day and especially on the other side and its so close at hand! Here are some photos of my value adding revelations:

The Beach

The Penisular

The snow

Also another surprise Dunedin threw at me last week was discovering a hidden “mall” on George st called Golden Harvest Mall. It's just down from Mc Donald’s and only has a few shops but the crazy thing is that I have always just walked past it without much of a thought. Plus there is an entrance from the back near the back McDonalds entrance. I went there for Dim Sum, the best Dim sum ive had, this being my third time. After the first two experiences I was ready to write it off, but it has survived my wrath and I will give it another chance, oh look surprise surprise another surprise! This all a bit incongruent wouldn’t you say.

Hedgehog X

There is a Hedgehog who lives in our back yard. He or she, we will call it X, X has no name well none I know of. Last night at 1am as I filled my drink bottle I saw X slowly meandering around our back courtyard. awwww how cute. It wasn’t so cute last week when X woke Kirsten at 3am whilst rummaging through our rubbish. I don’t know how long X has lived here, maybe longer than us, or maybe X is just passing through and is having a bit of a holiday at our place. Before I thought of taking a photo X was gone.

Poll Results for:
The one thing I have always wanted to say to you Justin is…

0% You are so beautiful
17% Will you marry me?
25% You look like a marshmallow
17% Your so vain I bet you think this blog is about you
42% But most of all I like the way you move

Hmmm a bit of the unexpected in this one, I mean has anyone actually seen how good I look these days? and the whole will you marry me thing, well its times like this I wish I could track who voted. It is a bit of a tough one, ya know with two people wanting to marry me, and really there is only room for one, what can ya do. I thought more would have called me vain, and less would say I looked like a Marshmallow and well I knew you would like the way I move.

Help us name our Hedgehog in the new poll. Now I know some of the names are a bit out there but dont blame it all on me. I let Kirsten and Jared each choose two names, and I chose two aswell, for some reason we all decided on boy names. Now its up to you! Take your time and make the right decision…

And if you have any of your own hedgehog dilemmas, don’t hesitate to call the hedgehog helpline or though its in England so you could be forgiven for hesitation.

The goings on

This morning I awoke and thought. So this is Dunedin, so this is my life. yep its the place to be for me.

This is Dunedin from where I sit. This is the view from our deck this year.

My flatmate Kirsten is eating. I said those are wired muffins ay, and she said yeah their plain, and I said there just sponge cake turned into muffins and she said Ha only just realised it is sponge.

So she said... and then they said... so what did you say?

What if we lived in a society where we were to0 scared to go out to the edge of the sea. Lo0king at the Horizon I think what is out there what is beyond? But I know because of scho0l and maps and the amazing race and Intrepid Journeys and the News. Some people don’t know though, like they don’t even know where America is. Ha. But we don’t know where everything is like the Garden of Eden and other places, and that island on Lost, who knows where that is? I don’t and they don’t.

Jared has forgone his flatmate privilege and will wait till I publish my blog, I said he could know what’s in it right now, instead of your now which is actually later than my now and Jared’s now. Jared says I have good indoor outdoor flow skills and that chicks would be impressed. This is because I am blogging out side and opened the window to plug in my laptop Kirsten also forgoes now now flatmate privileges.

Oh what a rude cell phone that intrudes this serenity.

It is beautiful to sit out side in the shade and read and wot not. Sometimes though I feel like I’m in a war against the sun. I’m determined to never get sun burnt ever again in my whole life. And I will apply sun block and it will be SPF 30+, and after swimming I will re-apply it.

I think imagine if instead of this sun it was pouring with rain that would be so emotional, I sometimes find stormy weather exhilarating, when your in it and when your out but seeing and hearing it. And sometimes when It pours down I feel like even if I feel bad about something well the weather feels pretty bad about something too and its like where in it together. And If its sunny and Im in a good mood I think the same applies. My brother likes the rain too, he would like to get married in the rain actually. He says ‘how cool would that be!’ And it would be actually if you were all hoping for it to rain and expecting it and prepared for it, it only sucks when you don’t want it. It would suck if it was sunny though, because you would have paid extra for water proof clothes.

Happy Birthday to0 you etc so the song goes. And the singing it loudly at the neighbors house, and I can smell their BBQ, they sound like fun people because they sing happy birthday in a fun way, they go up and down in pitch and are laughing. Which is a sound that fun people make.

Funny I think the neighbor got a new car, because he is just sitting in it and playing music and just before the car was making cell phone noises, really wired, and sometimes he revs it and he is making the windscreen wippers wipe, and he was even getting under it to look at its belly.

Clip Clip Clipity Clip. So is the sound of nail clipping. Hands or feet I don’t know, but Jared does because it is him who does this Clip Clip Clipping. I have been wanting to do some clipping of my own, but I couldn’t locate my nail clippers, until recently. Jared dont think I dont know what you did! I saw you throw your clippings on the deck, and ha now everybody knows! Even your girrrrrrllllfriend, Im really helping you by sharing this, you know its not good to have secrets in a relationship. I could go over and have a look and find out if they were fingers or toes, gross no, who do you think I am! Im not here just to satisfy the world’s curiosity.

A post like this could last forever. But I will stop.

Attack of the sterilised lipstick smudge

Its early in the morning. It was early in the morning. It is now just the morning. Getting in to the lab before 9am always feels early. Today involved coffee, an unfinished cup at breakfast time. Now at the lab, now having Irish crème coffee whilst reading blogs. Im using one of the departmental cups, after I made the coffee I noticed a red smudge in the shape of a lip near the top of the mug. Litpstick! Gro0ss! Well it is a communal mug, but it has been sterilised, I decided to just drink from the other side. Oh no I find myself drinking form the lipstick side! yuk! its just so natural to pick up a mug and drink form that side without thinking. I determine not to do that again. Oh no! Im almost finished and I notice that the red smudge has almost gone! where? where? no please no it cant be that I have again been drinking from the forsaken side. Do my lips look a little redder? yuk yuk yuk!

No one likes you when your 23, or so the song goes (whats my age again? Blink 182). Me and my flatmate Jared are going to start a club. and at this club we will attack people who don’t like us. and that’s everyone, because no one (meaning everyone) likes you when your 23. Jared is going to be the big fat leader, and he is going to sit in a chair and pat an ugly cat. I am going to be like the last samurai. Though I am now a few weeks into this 23 thing and I have yet to evidence that no one likes me. Maybe they dont know that I am... twenty th***. And It makes you think, If no one (meaning everyone) likes you then what about the other 23ers, they don’t like you either? Thats silly. This club is do0med.

To iPod, an outside view

In writing this post I set out with an odd mix of motivations, initially the simple desire to blog, secondly the desire to say something about iPods and wanting to say something about their chic-ness, and oddly after stumbling across the word aloof in the dictionary I really wanted to incorporate that into the post too. Here goes.

To iPod is to be chic, is to be aloof in a world of your own. Ha easier than I expected. Ha easier than you expected actually. Ha easier than yo Momma expected. And mi Momma probably.

Funny how to iPod is to be chic and aloof at the same time when the definitions of these words would suggest a paradox. Chic is to be elegant and stylish, and aloof is to be apart from people. Ok, not much contradiction at first glance but lets look closer, and lets even get a bit too close. To be chic you need exposure, to the world, to the group of people that believe what you have is chic. To be hot or not requires the endorsement of those with authority in such matters. You might be thinking, no not even! I don’t need anyone else to tell me what’s cool, Ill do whatever I wanna do gosh! and I say you go girlfriend. But I will also ask: where does our opinion of what we like come from in the first place? I think most of us give such authority to others; we expose our garments and gadgets of choice and by doing so we invite judgment and criticism on our style. To minimise such loss of face we do our best to predict what will work. Here we so subtly place authority in the Media and Marketers. These global pied pipers gladly show us how to be cool. Isn’t that why iPod is so popular? Apple got there marketing right, they convinced us it was cool before Sony or someone else did. Yes they got the product design right, and that helps, I mean it is very useful in and of its self. But it wasn’t chic till it was endorsed by their own advertising and then by consumers. Consumers who perpetuated their personal endorsement to all their friends, and to all passers by – look at me, look at me, look at me, see my bright white headphones yes I have an iPod, don’t you? everybody does, see those 5 people behind me also have the same headphones, it is obviously so cool because look everybody has one! Its the style, its the rage its the chic elite. So we see from this that to be cool, hot, or chic requires the opinions, judgments and endorsements of others. To do this involves opening up to others and allowing them into your world, which is not being very aloof. There is also the fact that if you are cool then you are popular and have lots of friends popular people are not the aloofy types.

Thus to iPod which is to be chic is to be open and involved with others. Yet to iPod is also to live life in a world of music, aloof and separate from others. We see it as people walk the streets, take the bus, eat lunch, or even as they go about life in their work places and homes. Doesn’t this stifle conversation; doesn’t it create a barrier between people? Even if it is just with strangers, it creates some separation.

This apparent contradiction that I have some how made up could be explained by the fact that we are connected with others and our environment by more than one sense. So that whilst we may make ourselves aloof in the arena of sound, we can still connect and make ourselves chic in the arena of sight.

Alright that actually became a lot harder than I and all the Mommas expected.

The moth lives

My desk is, my roof is, and my lamp is, and my hand does, and my eyes do, and the moth lives

I felt something, I bent my neck downwards and there was a wee moth sitting just below the mouse pad on my laptop. I thought oh! And I tried to pick it up with my fingers. I saw a smudge of silver brown where my right hand had been resting. I had squashed the wee moth and rubbed its coat onto my laptop. As I grappled with it, it lurched free, going straight towards my desk lamp. Feel the allure of its halogen glow, go moth go! My eyes followed its flight, my eyes were blinded by brightness. My hand was used to switch off the lamp, the room plunged into ambient levels of lighting. Incandescent low, a bulb hung centrally from my roof top. My roof that looks like a floor, that you could walk on, that if you did you would be up the wrong way, that would drop you on your head. Your head that is big fat and red. It is made of parallel planks of wood, as typically seen in polished wooden floors. But this roof, my roof is painted white, white like if you had a white wooden desk. White like anything white. My desk is not white, my desk is covered in fake wood. It has colours and patterns trying to look like real wood. But this desk, my desk it is a solid mash of wood chips. The moth flew by my face, landing somewhere...

I feel something, I bend my neck downwards. I think oh oh oh! Grapple let go! Bright light. Low light. Ceiling that sends me reeling. White and parallel. Like a floor, unlike my fake desk of mash. Moth flies by landing somewhere...

Look down... Oh! Grapple. Blinded. Ambient. Roof top. Upside down. Parallel. White. Desk. Fake. Mash. Moth. Land. Bend... and snap!

Relocation

Still not about my Christmas holiday in the Northern Island. But instead about the past weekend in Dunedin. On last Thursday I commenced relocation of all my possessions, they were to move form one flat to another about 6km away. They were first to be assorted into boxes and bags according to size, weight, shape and according to their kind. Thursday evening was the start of this boxifying, Friday evening was almost finishing it and Saturday morning was lat minute boxifying, then sealing with tape. Friday was also spent weeding the garden, a job which I ultra disliked as a child (all of us kids did) but now has some novelty, thought its mostly a case of it has to be done so do it. I was tired from weeding, my flatmate’s (Kirsten) Mum (Joy) came down to help us, she is a garden expert. I came across a green leafy thing I wasnt sure if it was a weed or a plant, it wasn’t that good looking but it could still be important, I pulled one out to show Joy… no it’s a plant. Opps. I continued wedding, then It dawned on me... I recall taking a leak in this very same spot! gross what was I thinking giving all that Nitrogen to the weeds, hehehe. Even more gross was the old glass milk bottle half full of green water with white slimy slugs about 5cm long inside, I picked it up to see what it was, ahhh, I left it there.

Flip of a coin, heads I win, in some ways I feel bad for winning but gosh someone had to. I get to choose a room, I am very happy with my new room, except for that dim light, is it the lampshade or just a low Watt bulb? I have yet to sort that out. I have yet to sort out many things that do require sorting of some kind.

On Friday night we find the new flat is a mess, the toilet wasn’t even flushed, there had been no vacuuming, 5c coins were randomly distributed through out the house, candles, cobwebs cobwebs cobwebs, a crusty old couch, kitchen stuff, food, a rubbish bag of clothes, abandoned abandoned all abandoned, and yes this is after the property manager had inspected it! Unacceptable! It all had to be cleaned Saturday morning before moving stuff in, we will be compensated for our troubles. Doh and the power had to be reconnected, cost extra on a weekend! Somehow I escaped the cleaning, I was moving furniture I tell you! Kirsten’s Dad (Tom) helped with moving furniture. Jared (also a flatmate) made multiple trips with all our beloved possessions using his work van. We also have a visitor for a week (actually a flatmate from back it the day) she also helped clean and unpack stuff. What a day, after the lows of Friday night Saturday night is an exhausted contentness.

On TV is a movie about a gathering storm, its about Winston Churchill pre WWII. I arrive at the end wishing I had seen the beginning. Earlier in the evening, during dinner there was a programme about 4 kids deciding who their single Dad will go on a date with, one lady they picked later arrived with pink hair.

9am church in the holidays? What sort of holiday is that! They are trying to get us used to showing up at 9am so that when it goes back to two services of 9am and 10.45am more people will keep going to the 9am. Not me. Well anyway you get tea (it was early grey though) and biscuits - in the middle of the service. We had our own property inspection at 3pm so twas back to the old flat and more cleaning. We have a sucky vacuum cleaner that doesn’t suck as strongly as I would like. Help was at hand thought with the arrival of cheap Asian labour (free, except for the returned favour of moving some more furniture), It is soooo much better doing things with more people, it really makes a difference, we were done well before 3pm I think. And passed, we scored a very well done x 3.

Sunday evening was dinner at the Gables, it’s the stables for gay horses!!!! Ha ha ha : ) or it could be know as Jian and Mel’s flat. Mel invited us for dinner, we had interesting conversation on topics such as how to kill a conversation and people eating live monkey brains!

Thank you to everyone that helped, Kirsten, Jared, Me, Christy, Joy, Tom, Mel, Jian, Soo sian you all made it so much easier and funner. Oh and Contact Energy who have a really good team of phone help people, I called them 3 times and seriously never had to wait more than 1 second to talk to someone.

P.S. In breaking news, we get TWO weeks free rent as compensation for the mess our new flat was in! thats $600 between the 4 of us! Kirsten must really have some good negotiating skills.

The temperature of chocolate

It is 10.05 and I feel a bit sick from munch munch munching on a chocolate Santa for the past couple of hours, chocolate Santa is all hollow and munchable, when I first started eating it was a cold morning and the chocolate was not meltable in the mouthable. Don’t worry everything is ok now (well not for Santa). Chocolate Santa is just like an Easter rabbit but has smaller ears and a few other different features. Chocolate Santa, survived the plane trip quite well, compared to those rice crackers, now in a thousand pieces, more crackers to go around I guess. Of all the Easter chocolates I think I like the hollow rabbits the best, and the marshmallow eggs and why why am I writing about this. Gosh. Its been 2 weeks you say, 2 weeks and all we get is that last post about humpty dumpty and this post which combine to make nonsensical blobs of wordiness devoid of delicious news of summer extravaganzas, Christmas indulgence, New Year revelry and Birthday celebrations. Gosh, Justin what is this about your life or about some other crap? Where life means Napoleon Dynamite, baking biblical biscuits, and home invasions, and crap means the temperature of chocolate and putting on shoes at the top of a hill.

milky dilky silky

dump de do
what do u do
when you get to the top
u put on your shoe
and then the other one too
and your hat
and your friend he has a shoe
not as good as yours
he wears it on his paws
he is an animal

fiddle de de
puddle de da
humpty dumpty played his guitar
and drove very far
in a futuristic car

zipiddy do dar
zippiddy day
cows are fat and milky
milky dilky silky



Pole results for 'If I could change the grass I would make it...'

7% Blue grass
47% Glow in the dark
0% With the ability to speak
7% With the ability to grow in deserts
40% Coffee flavoured

Check out the new poll