Greetings from Wally!

Merry Christmas
from Wally the extendable moose!



He brings me joy. He's also my substitute sister(s) for the day. Yay Wally!

The Joker, The Job Search and The Wanderer

I never thought I'd find career/job search encouragement in the Joker from The Dark Knight. But I (and many others) did.

After a particularly worry-rampant night (hah. I almost typed knight), I woke to find a post from The Simple Dollar entitled The Best Career Advice: Do Stuff. It had some excellent advice and pointed to this wonderfully freeing post from the blog Hoehn's Musings. Here's a snippet:

My favorite part of The Dark Knight is when the Joker is talking to Harvey Dent in the hospital, and he says: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just DO things… I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”

And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.

Heck yes.

Unfortunately, as much as I resonate with both posts linked above, what I tell myself about the job search and my future and how I actually feel about it aren't always on the same page.

The Perils of Geeking Out

Today's neglected todos go a little something like this:

1. Research China language studies. [top]
2. Resume Round Two. [top]
3. Send transcription resume. [top]
   
4. Water plants. [high]
5. Illustration job read up. [high]
6. Call ISIC, get refund. [medium]
   
7. Cover letter, Round One. [medium]
8. Illustration job sketches. [medium]
9. Jobs and the Joker blog. [low]
   
10. A conglomeration of other items. [low]

Several todos happily went home with check marks to validate their worth.

The rest were witnesses to the hijacking of their creator's attention by her itch to tweak and bend new technology to her will.

The culprit?

Take the scissors to the head...

"Staring at a computer screen can be hazardous to your hair. I did it all day, got really antsy, then decided to give myself a haircut. This might end very very badly. On the bright side, I can always resort to a buzz if this becomes a failure of epic proportions."

--The Facebook Status Update

On the tail.

The tail. This is what I call the end of my journey down under. Because there's never really a definite moment where the trip ends and life back home begins. I may have just touched down in my home country physically, but my body still thinks that it's in a different timezone.

Even after two weeks of being back in the homeland, I still haven't completely shaken my new habit of walking on the left hand side nor have I completely figured out which direction I need to look when crossing the road (on foot) or at an intersection (by car).

Not to mention the fact that my brain still wanders back unexpectedly through my Australia and New Zealand travels and that my heart feels a sudden pang when I read facebook updates of friends I met during my travels who are still gallivanting down under.

Still, being back home hasn't been that disorienting. In fact, the most disorienting thing about being back is how un-disorienting it's been!

I still have loads of pictures to go through and geotag and hopefully upload. I still have many pictures I promised to send to various people along the way that I haven't sent. And I just barely finished posting all the blog posts I wrote in my journal but didn't have the correct combination of wifi, laptop and time to type up and post. Bad blog etiquette to post retrospectively perhaps, especially since several of them were only finished once I got home, but never mind that. Here are the retrospectively posted posts:

• On Driving on the "Wrong" Side of the Road
• On the threshold between life and death 
• On Art and Animals, or Seeing the Real Thing 
• On Australia and New Zealand 
• On being indescribable, or Bungy! Scuba! 
• And this is just the airport...
• Or, just go to the front page and read straight down!
  

My travel bug has turned into a good-natured travel leech that refuses to let go of me. My direction for my life is not much clearer than before I left. The economy still sucks. But no matter. Life goes on!

And this is just the airport...

Written in LAX after my flight got canceled and my substitute flight got delayed again and again and again...

• My American accent fits uncomfortably again.
• I bought a bag of BBQ chips and they didn't give me culture shock. Back to good ol' taste of American style BBQ.
• Sitting in a shuttle trundling along on the right side feels wrong.
• I automatically stand to the left on the escalator then remember that I'm back in the USA. So I awkwardly look around and indecisively hover around the middle.
• I miss Aussie and Kiwi and English accents. I miss being constantly surrounded by accents from all over the world. I think I also miss being one of the rare Americans (country and continent!) around.
  
• I still hate LAX with a bloody passion. Even after hating the Brisbane airport for making tired travelers pay $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. There's no other option. Cough up the money sucker. But that's not enough to push it above my hatred for LAX. Oh how I truly detest you LAX.
• The gift shops don't have aboriginal decoration themed itmes or kangaroos and emus or boomderangs and digeridoos. They have Oscar statuettes and The Governator t-shirts. Oh my.
  

On being indescribable, or Bungy! Scuba!

There are certain experiences that are so... so disorienting... And so different... That it's almost frustrating to be asked to describe it after the experience.

Bungy jumping was one such occasion. As was scuba diving for the very first time in the Great Barrier Reef.

With bungy jumping, I decided to do it at the last minute so I only had 1 hour for my stomach to perform its nausea-inducing circus acrobatics. I turned off my brain and my fear throughout the registration, the payment, the waiting, the 200+ stairs you have to climb to get to the jumping platform, the securing of the harness and ropes...

Then, after hopping awkwardly to the edge of the platform, I look down at the 50 meters (164 feet!) I'm supposed to be free falling through and all my turned-off fear and nerves come rushing back full force. (Just look at my expression!)

And unlike skydiving where your tandem dude is the one who's responsible for jumping out of the plane, here, jumping off a platform 50 meters above the water is entirely up to your own free will.

Luckily the guys on the platform countdown for you so you don't have to think too hard...

Three. Two. ONE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I was shaking afterwards. And people kept asking me how it was. At first I said, "awesome!" which wasn't entirely true, so I switched to "crazy!" which was truer, but finally, I just left it at shaking my head in awe.

But I think, it was slightly indescribable. Disorienting. Happens so quickly.
It's so disorienting. And so different. It's a blur to be honest.

Now which line was written in my journal after bungy jumping and which was written after my first scuba dive?

I have a fear of being in small spaces underwater. It's a fear of being stuck where you can't get out, and even if you could get out, you'd still be screwed because you wouldn't be able to breathe. (Sort of like the garbage compactor in Star Wars, but put underwater.) Hence, scuba diving scares me. It's underwater so you're clearly enclosed by water and you're putting your life in the mercy of this canister on your back and this tube at your mouth. It's not natural.

You'd think that after jumping off a platform 50 meters high, jumping off the side of the boat from less than 1 meter above the water would be a piece of cake. But it wasn't. I had to sheepishly request that one of the crew countdown for me.

Big splash!

My scuba instructor dude brought me through some incredible places on the first dive; the scariest and most insane being a narrow pass in between two towering reefs that felt like canyons to my terrified scuba newbie self. I stopped moving entirely so the instructor ended up steering me through.When we resurfaced, the captain of the boat asked us if we liked it.

"I don't know!" was my painfully honest answer.
"Well, I'm slightly offended!" returned my scuba dude.

Whoops, sorry scuba dude.

But really, as I wrote in my journal after the first dive: "I still don't get how anyone can expect me to properly express how something was immediately after the experience. It's far too rich for that. I need time to sit with the experience when it's the manageable memory and not the onslaught of real time. But I am so glad I'm doing this."

So glad indeed! It got better the more times I went out, to the point that I was able to truthfully answer, "Yes! I loved it!"

So even though I can't say that I loved the bungy jump (in the way that I loved the skydiving experience), I feel compelled to go bungy jumping again to better experience it after the shock of the initial run.

Who wants to join me?

On Australia and New Zealand

What excites me outdoors
NZ: Whee! Sun!
Aust: Oooh! Shade!

Footwear
NZ: Jandals. Hard to find because who the heck wears flip flops in the rainy spring?
Aust: Thongs. They're everywhere. And I'm immature enough to have to suppress a giggle when a mommy tells her daughter "Now, don't forget to wear your thongs!"

Fast food
NZ: McDonalds. Starbucks. Burger King.
Aust: McDonalds. Starbucks. Hungry Jacks.

Internal relations
NZ: Treaty of Waitangi. Bicultural coexistence. Maori cultural education is easy for tourists to find.
Aust: Aboriginal rights, reconciliation. Past treatment like past treatment of Native Americans AND of blacks in the USA. Beyond their art their culture isn't promoted to visitors.

Giftshop chocolates
NZ: Kiwi oopsies.
Aust: Roo poo. (i.e. chocolate covered almonds)

Giftshop jewelry
NZ: Jade jade jade jade jade jade jade
Aust: Opal opal opal opal opal opal opal

Giftshop toys
NZ: Kiwi birds and sheep. Lots of sheep.
Aust: Kangaroos, koalas and platypuses. (Platypi?)

Possums
NZ: Run the $#@*$&%$ vermin over!
Aust: By law, protected. Score one for possum.

On Art and Animals, or, Seeing the Real Thing

I have a confession to make. When I saw Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew last year in Italy, towering over me in all it's massive chiaroscuro glory, I felt little beyond a twinge of "Ooh, cool! It's so big in real life!"

I never admitted that to my classmates. Artists always declare that art MUST be seen in real life to be truly appreciated. I, on the other hand, feel that it's good to see art in real life especially because the scale gets lost in textbooks, but that it's not a life or death matter.

Still, I have come to the conclusion that that there is one key element that makes seeing the real thing necessary: movement.

This conclusion came after seeing

• Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne
• Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
• Kangaroos, echidnas and wombats at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane.

Images just can't capture the spirit of these artworks and animals.

I had a bit of a mental freakout when I chanced upon Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II. I had written about one of his "solid light films" for an art history class which made finding this piece in an exhibition about film and movies (rather than an art museum) all the more exhilarating.

Basically, the artwork is a projection of shifting lines and curves of white light through fog/smoke/haze in an otherwise pitch black room. You can change the art without changing its base by interacting with the smoke and light at various points: fanning the smoke to watch it swirl in the light; blocking the light path at various points to see long thin shadows stretch to the opposite wall; or standing at different points and heights to get varied immersions. Or you can just sit in a corner and watch it uninterrupted.

At certain points I felt like I was underwater. At another point, a horizontal beam of light moved slowly down to my neck and I held my breath as if it was about to choke me. When the light described a curl, I stood in the middle and felt like a surfer within the curl of a massive wave. Seeing this after Bill Viola's Ocean Without a Shore meant that I couldn't help but make connections with light, water, life and death.

It was beautiful and absolutely fascinating.

My words are painfully lacking for describing the experience. And even though I said that images can't capture the experience, especially with something that requires you to be wholly immersed in a 360° environment, these images (click!) will at least give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

The movement of these works and the fact that they unfold within time means that you truly miss out if you don't experience the real thing.

As for the animals? You just need to see a kangaroo hopping very slowly, a wombat executing a startled 180° jump and turn, or an echidna waddling around in its hilarious spiny glory to appreciate the fact that images can never do the wonkiness of these Australian creatures justice.

Ode to Heat

The streets are unbalanced
Tipping with weight of pedestrians
Who gravitate to the side less touched by sun.

We seek shade.

Squares, plazas, seats,
Full in the morning shade
Ghosted by afternoon sun.

Life clusters under shelter.

Even then
The indecision of the breeze
Makes shaded relief temporary.

Walking. Dripping.

Museums, libraries, info centers.
Cool wisps of air beckon enticingly
From their briefly opened doors
Whispering a single promise.
Air conditioning.

But the sun is life
And the blue is joy
And the spring that feels like summer
Of 94 degrees in November
Leads to one conclusion.

It's slurpee season.


(Tapped in the shade at 37"49'05.47S 144"58'07.99E)

On the threshold between life and death

I've never been a fan of video art. Maybe it's because my attention span jumps like a hyper kangaroo or maybe I just don't know how to appreciate it. (It referring to the video art, not the hyper kangaroo.)

Enter Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore. (Look it up. But only after reading this.)

My entire time in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne was spent with this piece. The introduction for Ocean Without A Shore states that it "explores the threshold between life and death, or as the artist has stated, 'the presence of the dead in our lives'."

For someone like me who feels compelled to record my experiences in scribbled sketches or scraps of brochures, it's frustrating to spend this much time with art this amazing and not be able to take any sketch or image of it with me.

But when all else fails, benches beckon and ink meets paper.

So here, in words scribbled into my journal, is my attempt to preserve my experience of Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore immediately after emerging from the room.

~

It's absolutely mesmerizing. You enter a small, darkened room and take a seat on a bench. It's silent except for a constant muffled noise as if you are underwater and water is falling some distance above you. A large vertical video screen is ahead, maybe five feet in height. Two more screens stand guard, one on the left wall, one on the right. All three propped up on altar-like structures.

Newcomers stand uncertainly at the entrance before their eyes adjust to the heavy darkness.

Each screen is fuzzy, noisy, dark, and grey, with tiny muffled figures in the distance, one figure per screen.

Slowly, one figure starts to move forward. Slowly, ghostly. Their image shifts, blurs, falters, even as they grow larger in their approach.

A sheet of water, invisible prior to contact, separates them from us.

They begin to cross the threshold into the world of the living. One figure's fingertips graze the sheet of water, testing, testing. Another figure walks erect, chest pushing ahead of neck, nose ahead of forehead. No hesitation. Yet another presses their palm to, then through, the liquid sheet. Another bows their head and pushes through, unseeing.

Noise of falling, rushing water fills the room, increasing in intensity as more of the person's mass interrupts the flow of the water

As they emerge, color floods their drenched figures, sometimes with jarring saturation in their attire. They stand in the world of the living for varying lengths of time, with varying degrees of interaction with we living spectators.

Some refuse to open their eyes. The world of the living must be met with caution.

Others hold your gaze. Disconcertingly.

One old woman emerges with great joy on her face. Contagious joy. But it soon turns into a troubled expression as if she knows she can't stay. She lingers for a very long time once she passes through the water back to death. Even in death she is reluctant to leave the living, breathing.

A woman dressed in vibrant green has her head bowed slightly, to the side as if listening, deliberating. She takes a very long time to open her eyes. But when she finally does... slowly... she lingers...

And as she stands there cautiously in the world of the living, a man in the middle frame walks quickly to the water, through the water, and stands surveying this world. He puts his hands on his hips as if he doesn't care much for what he sees. He turns and walks back, easily, quickly. All this while, the woman lingers on...

The people do not emerge from the left to right frames in an orderly fashion with similar speeds. Life is not predictable. Death is not predictable. We are not predictable.

They make contact with the water differently. They move through it differently.They are individual and unique in how they enter the world of the living and how they respond to it.

But the constant truth is glaring. Invariably, every single one of them must leave and return to death. And we, sitting in a darkened room in the world of the living, can't help but feel ...

On Driving on the "Wrong" Side of the Road

Let me rephrase.

This is about driving on the OTHER side of the road. Because it's only wrong if you can't distinguish between right (correct) and right (side).

What I discovered at the beginning of the trip is that the road side swap doesn't really bother my sensibilities. Surprisingly, trundling along on the left side of the road is not terribly disconcerting.

However, I WAS disconcerted by the number of things I did which showed how deeply ingrained the right side dominance is in we right side drivers...

• The bus driver mentions that an interesting road sign is up ahead. (I think it was Shag Point or something?) Sitting on the right side of the bus, I eagerly get my camera ready and wait for a sign that never comes. Actually, a sign did come but I only got its backside. Whoops, we drive on the left side, thus the sign was actually on the left side of the road. Photo op missed.
  
• Distracted while talking to Scott, I instinctively head toward the escalator on the right hand side. I pause. Then look down in great confusion. The escalator steps are moving towards me. Ahh. Unless I want to be a little kid running down the up escalator (which is certainly entertaining!), I need to go to the left side.
• Darkness is falling and I'm trying to find a bus that will bring me back to my hostel. I see a bus drive by on the other side of the street. It takes another 5 minutes to realize that that bus was heading in the direction I wanted. I was waiting in the dark, in an unfamiliar untouristy area, on the wrong side of the road. ACK!
• On the streets, heading towards another pedestrian. I could play Chicken with them but I don't really know them well enough. So, I veer to my right. So do they. What? You want to play Chicken?? No? Oh, you walk on the left side! Walking on the left side has become such a habit for me that I actually get annoyed when people walk on the right side of the path!
• When I'm crossing streets, I look like I'm shaking my head like a child in a tantrum screaming "no no no no no!" Looking both ways. Again. And again. And again. It's called playing it safe to avoid being roadkill.

I shudder to think how much trouble I would've been in had I tried driving over here. My right hand would be bruised by the number of times it would smack into the door. The windshield wipers would forever be wiping a dry windshield everytime I wanted to make a turn. And, well, playing chicken with another car hurtling along at 100 km/hr isn't quite as harmless as playing chicken with another ambling pedestrian...

Excuses excuses.

On Being American

It's odd to realize that I'm not an American until I open my mouth.

Even then, to some people, the accent still isn't enough to classify me as such. To be "American" is still embedded in being white. You may protest here. I would protest myself in other circumstances. But at the reactive gut level for many people, it seems that to be American is to be white. If you look Asian, there is a disconnect if you classify yourself as American. I've gotten several double takes when I say I'm from the United States, not to mention several curious looks when my accent reveals itself, as if it's a perplexing thought that someone who looks like me is from the United States.

Jim, our bone carving teacher, said to me towards the end of our time together, "Your English is really good!" Oh, er, thanks. This was after at least 6 hours of meeting us, hearing our accents and hearing us say that we were from the United States. He asked something to the effect of how long I've spoken it or where I learned it or how it got to be so good. Well, it's actually my first language and I'm sorry to say, my one and only language.

No, I don't speak Chinese. Yes, I am Chinese. Yes, I speak English well. Yes, it was my first language. Yes, I did learn Chinese when I was younger, but lost it when I moved to Texas. Don't worry, I really do want to learn Chinese again. Yes, I am Chinese. But I am also American.

If I were, let's say, the third or fourth generation in the United States, I'd be pretty peeved about having to explain how it came to be that someone who looks like me ended up coming from the United States and ended up as the classic American monolingual. As it stands, my first memories are from Malaysia so even though I was born in the United States and am undeniably highly Americanized, I still have enough of a feeling of being part of an immigrant family that explaining myself isn't terribly odd. I still hold to the fact that I am Asian-American and specifically Malaysian-American-Chinese. But if my family's entrance into the United States had been generations and generations ago? I'd probably be greatly irked. We are perpetual foreigners in a land called home.

The article Bigots fuel myth of 'white' America by Andrew Sullivan from the Sunday Times appeared in Christchurch's local paper today. Interesting, considering all of the above that's been going through my head.

I'd like to be able to express my opinions on race and identity better someday. For now, it seems that race and identity is one subject I'm actually better at exploring in the visual arts rather than words.

This article did resonate with me, so click the image for the full article. (The quality is as good as I can get on the road.)

Read on for the bits that stuck out for me. Note: It's actually is a rather large chunk of the article and it's only the article. My only contribution is choosing what to type up and choosing what to emphasize in bold.

Days 26-28, in journal pages

Click for mildly larger images...

A house in the Lake Tekapo neighborhood was selling massive pinecones as big as my head (or so it seemed). They were quite hefty and almost as prickly as a durian. Ouch. A hardcore kayaker we met in Tailor-made-Tekapo Backpackers bought one for his mate who laughed at him and refused to take it. So they made the above impromptu sculpture and were contemplating lighting the dang candle. Crazy kayakers.

A seismograph of sorts. Lake Tekapo en route to Christchurch. These were attempts at straight lines. Buses are bumpy.

Went to the Christchurch Art Gallery. Terrible gallery tour left me drained so I refueled with a mocha (which they pronounce more as mok-ka than mow-ka). This old man was sitting there, mildly glum and entirely uninteractive with the woman across from him.

A rubbing of a plaque on a bench in the rose gardens. "This place you came to reflects the beauty of your soul." It makes my heart happy!

I sat in the Botanic Gardens today, basking in glorious sunlight and laughing at the ducks splashing in the large puddle lakes left over from the morning's downpour. They move far too much to be captured in more than gesture.


Nuf said.

Ode to Lost Things

I've left a trail of myself all over New Zealand.

My gray Westmont zip-up hoodie in Auckland, my bright orange ear plugs scattered one by one in a range of hostels from north to south, my cold blue ice pack in Wanaka, and now, my trusty black wallet wandering somewhere between Oamaru and Lake Tekapo. Not to mention the most recent loss of my cooking oil in Tailor-Made Tekapo Backpackers. Ah mental lapses and rushing against time toward arriving buses. How you slowly strip me of my possessions.

On the quandary of color

The shores of Lake Tekapo

Latitude: 44" 00' 06.95 S

Longitude: 170" 28' 49.25 E

Blue is the color of this lake.
That's a lie.
It's green. Greenish-blue. Um. Teal?

Sky is the colour of this lake.
A greener version of the sky.
This colour's lightness belongs in the sky,
not held down on earth, trapped in this lake.

But if it were in the sky,
I'd think the grass had seeped upward to contaminate the sky.

There's just no way to win.
This color is unnatural.

Scott calls it gatorade.

Gatorade is the color of this lake.
Gatorade should not be the color of any lake.

There's exactly one place in nature where this color would be at home: in a hot tropical beach surrounded by bright green palm trees, glowing golden sands and a blinding hot sun.

But no, it's here in the South Island of New Zealand with a chilly breeze and a crisp sun muted by vague clouds. Here, preceded by chalky white rocks that will undoubtedly transfer its white powder to the seat of my dark black pants. Here, bordered by dry, brownish green hills that could easily be transplanted to sunny southern California in the heat of fire season. Here, followed by icy bluish mountains capped with snow.

There is something unfailingly epic about snow capped mountains.

But epic bluish brown snow capped mountains don't fit with unnatural Gatorade blue-green teal sky-seeped-grass colored water that should only be paired with a blazingly hot beach.

Pictures were attempted. But the camera mocks me by adjusting the color until the lake only displays a brilliant blue. None of this green-teal-grass-seepage business.

Maybe that's the color other people see as well. We don't really have a way of knowing how different our perceptions of colors are from other people's. That bothers me sometimes.

This landscape, these colors… They only fit together when you jump off a tour bus in the company of a hoard of camera-wielding tourists, squinting at nature through layers of plastic and technology. Shoot and run. Shoot and run pile hoard back onto the bus.

But to sit here at 44" 00' 06.95 S, 170" 28' 49.25 E, contemplating this landscape and these colors? I'm befuddled.

What a quandary.

On Fern and Scott

On choosing a hostel
Fern: Not a Magic bus hostel! Book exchange!
Scott: Free soup! Free cake!

On shops that get us excited
Fern: Bookshops! Art stores!
Scott: Honey shop! Ice cream! BAKERY!

On what to do in Nelson
Fern: World of WearableArt museum!
Scott: Beer tasting! 

On hikes
Fern: Cool tree! I want a picture of it!
Scott: Cool tree! I want to climb it!

On what to do in Wanaka
Fern: Write, read, sit… coffee shop!
Scott: Climb Mt. Roy on steep 5 hr hike!

On walk in the dark to find glow worms
Fern: This is creepy. I want light.
Scott: It'd be awesome if we ran into a velicoraptor right now.

On Lake Wanaka
Fern: Mmm, look at that COLOR! *mental freakout* It's so BLUE!
Scott: Nessie, ooh, no, orca whale man, rising from the depths to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting township! Bwahahahaaa

On the big dinosaur slide in the park
Fern: Wheee!
Scott: Slide!

And we take turns sliding down, giddy with glee

Things that bring me joy!

• Bunny butts (that is, the flash of their white tails as they hop around)
• A patch of blue sky and the sudden emergence of sunlight after constant clouds and rain
• Seeing Ferns in company names and logos everywhere in NZ
• Meaningful connections with strangers no matter how brief
• Separating from the Magic Bus by means of a different hostel or taking the Intercity bus instead
• Sheepies and lamblets!
• Gorgeous landscapes stretching out below you in the light of a sunset
• Light!
  
• Unexpectedly finding a lovely handmade blank journal in an artist's co-op shop when the previous journal is down to its last page.
• Eavesdropping. Hehe.
• Baaing at sheep, barking at dogs, quacking at ducks, clucking at chickens, mooing at cows
• Quirky hostels like the Funky Green Voyager (Rotorua), The Green Monkey (Nelson), and Wanaka Bakpaka (Wanaka)
• Fish and chips ice cream. That is, chocolate fish and chocolate chips
• Reverting to childhood joys by giddily running up the dinosaur's tail and sliding gleefully down its neck.
• Little kids with Kiwi accents
  
• A resurgence of energy and creativity after much needed downtime and solitude

Fern Speak.

In other words, what a few packed days and poor-sleep nights produce. This is a sampling of what I said over the course of our lunch stop:


So today I'm more...
Words failing oh wait
Yeah, that is- I'm done.

Well, I think it's just
Or maybe- ngaaaaagh!!

I'm done.

I've been recently being-
*giggle!*
It's just not working.


May Scott be blessed by a babel fish to stick in his ear to translate Fern Speak for him.

Skydiving!

Today I skydived.

Today I skydove.

Today I went on a skydive. There.

This morning I had no idea I'd be going on a skydive. I woke up in Rotorua at 6:15 AM. Walked to the bus stop. And waited. The bus didn't show. Magic Bus, or more accurately, our last Magic Bus driver, screwed up by giving us the wrong pick-up location thus leaving us stranded. We hates Magic!

So we caught an Intercity Bus south to Taupo. It made me feel like a real traveler using non-tour transportation. It was absolutely lovely.

Since we'd be arriving in Taupo at 10 AM with Intercity rather than at 4 PM with Magic, we figured we'd try to get our free skydive a day early.

"Sure!" said the very chipper Lisa at the Taupo Tandem Skydive. So it was set. At 11:40 AM, we'd skydive. That was unexpected.

We call at 11:10 AM to confirm. Friendly Lisa told us, sorry, the weather is unfavorable. Clouds and rain. No go for skydiving.

Reschedule for 12:50 PM.

Call at 12:20 PM. Sorry, says nice Lisa, the weather is still crap. We've postponed everything 'til 2 PM.

I'm not expecting much. So I take a nap.

Scott calls again at 1:30 PM.

"Call back in 5 minutes."

Scott calls at 1:35 PM.

"Call back in 5 minutes."

Scott calls at 1:40 PM.

It's ON! "The shuttle will pick you up in 15 minutes."

Uh, okay! I hurry and gather my stuff. I'm still stuck in a haze from lack of sleep the previous night, general irritability and my recent semi-nap.

We pile in the shuttle with 6 other people. One girl looks terrified beyond belief. I'm still rather indifferent.

I'm going skydiving right next to a lake larger than the size of Singapore in weather conditions that postponed the dive on multiple occasions. Shouldn't I be nervous?

We suit up in bright orange jumpers slightly reminiscent of prison and a baby's onesie. Odd combination.

They help us put on a lifejacket belt and completely awkward harnesses. "Can you breathe?" asks the lady. "Yup, no problem at all," I reply with ease. "That's not good," says she. Oh dear.

Finally we're all prisoned/babied/tightened/secured. Sorta like this group who went after us:

They eyed us skydive survivors with trepidation and awe as we walked back like we were an Apollo mission going to the moon or group of Hollywood movie heroes who just saved the world from complete annihilation.

I'm totally making that up by the way. Except for the part where they eyed us with trepidation. Shouldn't they eye us with relief since we who went before them didn't die or break or dismember anything?

We clambered into the cramped plane. Skydiving makes sitting on a stranger's lap, awkward spread-legged positions and a complete lack of personal boundaries entirely acceptable. We are a many-layered human sandwich of yellow and orange.

I have yell-conversations with my instructor. He takes my lack of nervousness and absence of hand-wringing as a challenge. "We're at 2000 feet," he yells, shoving his wrist-strapped altimeter in front of my face. "This is where we try to open the parachute. TRY." I laugh at him.

Moments later... "So, if there's a choice between landing among horses and bulls, which would you rather?" I ask if he can maneuver us to land ON a horse. "Do you ride?" he asks. "Nope!" I yell. "Then it's probably not a good idea," says he. Well, pfft! You're the one trying to scare me with talk of landing in the middle of a herd of large animals! We might as well get some horseback riding in if that's the case.

Moments later... "Can you swim?" Yessir. You're gonna have to do better than that if you're trying to freak me out.

Well, he didn't really have to try much longer. Because suddenly, less than half a minute after telling me we might have to hover for a while as the pilot looked for a clearing in the clouds below us, the side panel was lifting loudly, and the first skydiver was leaping into a freakin freezing free fall.

And I was next.

I am very happy to report that I do not have any video or photographic evidence of the terror on my face during the first few seconds of freefall. I don't think I felt that terrified. But I remember the muscles on my face freezing into a mush of terror and worry and oh my god, I can't breathe panic. It's cold air rushing past you. The initial tilt as you fall from semi-vertical to face first with nothing but cold grey unfriendly clouds beneath you. Not even beneath you. That would imply looking down toward your feet. No, this was like a stomach flop onto cold and blasting nothing. I breathed through a wide open mouth as if that would help. I'm fine with falling. Really. It's the turns and twists and anything but straight forward straight down that really messes with my head.

It was exhilarating!

My tandem guy had to mime opening my arms to me because I wasn't confident that the nudge on my shoulder was really him tapping me to tell me I could let my arms fly free. In hindsight I wish I'd done something ridiculous like flap my arms like a flailing bird. As it was, I yelled something that was incoherently gleeful.

The parachute opened and it was just tandem dude and me gliding down with gorgeous views over all three hundred and sixty degrees. Snow covered mountains (including Mount Doom) to the south. The lake larger than Singapore to the west. Farms and green all around. Tandem guy yelled, "Look! Baby cows!" and proceeded to tell me that he recently saw one cow giving birth and that it was cool. And disgusting. Tandem guy was highly amusing. I enjoyed him.

Looking all around me was beautiful. Looking directly down put our height in perspective and really really messed with my head.

"Wanna direct the parachute?" he asked.

YES.!!

So I stuck my hands underneath his in the loops. Yank down on the left to swirl left, yank down on the right to swirl right. Easy peasy!

It was fine and dandy until he took his hands out of the loops leaving my nervous hands completely in charge of the parachute.

"BAD IDEA!!!" I yelped!
"Well, it's your life," he said.
"Yeah, yours too!" I replied.
"Shit." (That would be him, not me. Though it would be an accurate representation of my sentiments as well.)

We were instructed to lift our legs up as we approached the ground. I was a bit over prepared and kept lifting my legs to a horizontal position too soon. In my defense, he told me to do so way too early just to mess with me. Most people did land on their feet. I didn't even try. It was butt down for me! After a second with my butt parked on the grass I yelped, "You mean I have to get up on my feet now on my own free will!?" As you can tell, yelping was a rather common occurrence today.

So I sat there on the ground for a bit longer, basking in the fall and glide until tandem guy laughed at me and yanked me to a standing position by way of my harness.

I skydovediveddidaskydivewheeee!

(They asked for your full name, so that's what I gave them. I figured it was in case you got maimed or died or something. I think it was just to make these things look more official. Ah well.)

My tandem dude Mikey H. obliged my shutterbugging tendencies. He also randomly had a pipe which I appropriated for the picture. It was fake.

The very sweet Lisa on the phone and at the front desk whispered conspiratorially to us about the existence of a YouTube video containing the aforementioned tandem dude, Mikey H (Michael Holmes), and a failed parachute. I YouTubed and Googled.

Turns out he survived a 12,000 foot free fall after his parachute failed to open. He waved goodbye to his camera as a farewell to life, crashed into a bush, and survived. 

Come to think of it, he did mention something about a man surviving a huge free fall after his  parachute failed. But we were kinda very high up in the air with a cap solidly over your ears where yelling loudly is no guarantee that all your words will be heard. I think he neglected to mentioned the rather important fact that this fail parachute dude was him.

So thank you nice phone-lady Lisa for not mentioning this to me before my skydive with my tandem dude whose parachute didn't open 2 years ago on a skydive from the same height that we did today.

Given that skydiving wasn't something I approached with great fear and trepidation (these horror stories did not make it to my ears until I was safely back in my hostel), I've decided that I need to go bungy jumping in Queenstown. Bungy jumping fills my heart with feaaar. Check back to see whether or not I go through with it.

And don't you dare send any bungy jumping horror stories my way.

Day 10, in snippets

Coffee shop? What coffee shop?
It was a wet day. Not nearly as wet and ridiculous as Opononi when Scott and I foolishly decided to go on a hike, thus giving all our clothes (and my backpack) a thorough soak in the rain. But still wet and grey enough to make me seek out a coffee shop to sit and warm my hands on a hot cup of mocha goodness.

But Rotorua doesn't seem to have any concept of coffee shops. "There's a Starbucks down the corner," said a lady at a bookstore. Starbucks?! Never!! I am from the USA. I am not in the USA. I must not go into Starbucks. Or McDonald's. Or Burger King. Or KFC. Even if the latter was wafting delicious fried greasy smells up my nose from a block away. Must… resist… yummy… smell… aggh! So I refused the Starbucks.

But street after street in the grey wet drizzle only revealed café after café. I gave up and settled down in Milly's, a bright yellow-filled café with two bright yellow couches in the corner, which I took as an indication that hanging out for a while would not be frowned upon. I read the local newspaper, wrote lots of postcards (hint: dear readers, I need your address), and sat there far longer than any other customer did. I will resist you Starbucks.

Polynesian Spa. A Minor Quandary
In my infinite wisdom, I decided to change into my swimsuit before heading out to the spa. Less stuff to carry across town, thought I! Then, after a lovely soak in the sulfurous hot pools at the Polynesian Spa, I meandered into the changing room only to encounter a minor quandary. My swimsuit which was my undies was currently drenched in hot sulfuric water. Do I put my clothes on over it and get awkward wet spots? Or do I strip off the wet and awkwardly go commando on all fronts? I eschewed the awkward wet spots.

Wet. It's all wet.
On the way back to the Funky Green Voyager (our freakin awesome hostel), I passed a delicious looking bookstore. Dripping wet swimsuits do not play well with bookstores, so I wrapped the dripping wet swimsuit in my tiny quick dry towel, burrito style. TADA! Burrito swimsuit plays well with delicious bookstore. Back in the hostel, I hop in the shower to unsulfuricize myself. Hop out of the shower. I'm dripping wet. As is my towel. I squeegee myself with the wet towel like you squeegee your windshield clean at the gas station. I still dripped. As did my towel.

Laundry... Surprise!
The tiny quick dry towel and the swimsuit were still sulfuricized even after scrubbing them with detergent in the shower. Gerard, the awesome funky owner of the Funky Green Voyager, came across me preparing to rinse out out my soaking sulfurous swimsuit. "Don't use that tap," he told me. "The water is full of sulfur. Use the tap by the washing machines instead."

Two days ago I did a hand washing blitz of most all of my clothes. (I don't have enough clothes to justify using a washing machine.) It's been cold all over New Zealand, so hanging clothes up results in fail dry. Hence, a hand wash blitz to take full advantage of the $2 dryer. As Owen from Guernsey said, clean laundry is the Holy Grail of backpackers. I had the Holy Grail two days ago. Unfortunately, I attained the Holy Grail by use of the aforementioned sink and tap that spews water full of sulfur. All my clothes are sulfurous. Holy Grail? POOF!

Hobbiton!, In pictures

Cousin Ben was our driver from Rotorua to Matamata/Hobbiton. He was an extra in LotR as an orc! And he made it into the LotR location guidebook too. He's on the left and his brother is on the right.

He told us that they were paid crap wages at first. $40 a day, no breaks. Then someone had the bright idea to call up the local union. They all signed up (or however that works) and lo and behold their pay jumped to a decent $140 (or something) per day with breaks. It was interesting to hear how unglorified the job was, especially when Scott and I would gladly jump at the chance to be extras in the Hobbit for no pay at all.

Hobbiton! In the toilet. HAH.

Hobbiton is located in the middle of a large sheep farm.

I'm a huge fan of SHEEPIES!


At the beginning of FotR, Frodo's reading under a tree... this does not show that tree. However, when Frodo jumps up after reading and runs to Gandalf riding along in his cart... yes, it was in this grove of trees...

Wheee!

Sheepies like Hobbiton too.

 

Potential hobbit holes for The Hobbit? (Click for larger view!)

Our tour guide Benji with a lazy storytelling voice told us his boss has revealed nada.

Remember the field where Bilbo had his massive birthday party?

Benji: Would anyone like to dance on the party field?
Group: (awkward silence)
Fern: (chortling) I do!!!

Another girl, there with her sister and mother, decided she wouldn't mind making a fool of herself either, so we walked out into the party field and stood there holding hands while we tried to figure out what dance or dance pose to do. The result is as follows:

Dancing beneath the party tree with the lovely gal Lily. =)

Moments later...

Benji: Would anyone like to hug the party tree?
Group: (awkward silence)
Scott: Wanna?
Fern: (pause) Yeah!

Hugging the party tree. We likes the party tree.

Next we see locations of former sets that only have colored posts to hint at their existence:

The red marks the bridge, the blue the mill and the yellow the town. It's crazy how these locations seem so real and permanent in the films but in real life, they're polystyrene and quickly dismantled. Apparently they never completed the "stone" work on the back side of the bridge since they weren't filming from the other side. Smart move.

The left side of the above lake:

When Sam and Frodo journey out of the Shire, Sam halts in the middle of a corn field and says "If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Well, that was filmed at the red line in this picture. Sam really didn't travel far did he?

I'm in Bag End!

I'm not in Bag End!

The red post is where the oak tree stood that Bilbo and Gandalf smoked next to overlooking the party field...

Peter Jackson went and found his desired oak tree on another farm and had it brought over to this farm. No big deal right? Well, not really. They took a picture of the tree, cut a branch off, numbered it, took a picture of it, took a picture of the tree again, and repeated the entire process until the entire tree was cut down. They reassembled said tree at the location of the red pole but since the tree was now dead, they had to import leaves from Taiwan to individually attach to the tree. And after all this tedious work and money, how much time did this tree get in the movie? 20 seconds. 20 whole seconds. 15 in The Fellowship, 5 in Return of the King. Does the good the Lord of the Rings movie does for humanity really justify the cost of creating those movies? I don't know.

SHEEPIES! Did you know that lambs have rather long tails? (Just hit the end of lambing season so there are oodles of them around!)

Sheep shearing time. How awkward does this look? Poor sheepy.

Naked sheepy =(

Feeding little lamblets!!

It's still hungry... Sucking on my finger!

Aww...

Then they gave us this deelicious snack at The Shire's Rest.

Scott has more detail: http://theyearofthehalfautumn.blogspot.com/

I must get ready for Mitai, a Maori cultural show and hangi dinner, hence this very brief post!

(edit: Two days later brings a lazy night so I've gone back and added stuff. It probably isn't good blog etiquette to not indicate what has been changed, but whatever. I rebel.)

On English

While preparing for this trip down under, there was a part of me that was disappointed that I wasn't going to a foreign country with a foreign language. Part of the fun of traveling is the language: the mishaps that occur when you're attempting conversation; the glee of successful communication no matter how minor the success; the fun of conversing with someone in broken snippets of multiple languages because you don't share a common first language; and the immediate camaraderie created when you ask someone for their name in their language. (Read more from last year's post On the Butcheration of Language)

But in being here in New Zealand and meeting people from all over the world (Germany and England mostly, but also Chile, Taiwan, Canada, Switzerland, Brazil, and the Netherlands), it has become clear that communicating in English is neither straightforward nor dull. Varied accents abound and communication mishaps still occur, especially with those with English as a second language.

Kiwi bus driver to Marisol from Chile: You don't have any mulk in there do ya?
Marisol: Mulk? What is mulk?
Kiwi driver: Mulk. Mulk, you know…
(beat of silence)
Marisol: Meelk? You mean meelk?
Kiwi driver: Yeah, yeah, mulk!

In case you haven't figured out, mulk is meelk is milk!

Even I, a native English speaker, have been thrown off by the Kiwi accent on several occasions.

On the drive north out of Auckland, our bus driver Mike was telling us stories of the Marys. The Marys this, the Marys that, the Mary belief this, the Mary legend that…

"What on earth?!" I thought, "I didn't know that Catholicism and the Virgin were so important here." Then the Kiwi-speak dawned on me. Ohhh, he's talking about the Maoris, not the Marys!

The same bus driver also pointed out good spots for Forest Chicken for all those interested. "What on earth?" I thought, "I didn't realize there were chicken in this area, much less forest chicken. What the heck is a forest chicken?!" I mean, later on I did see some chickens but only on wide grassy deforested fields. Then the kiwi-speak translation kicked in. Ohhh, he means forest trekkin', not forest chicken!

Then there are Kiwis who are in a class of their own. Tawhiri (TA-fee-ree, meaning Windy in Maori), our guide-to-be for the Footprints tour into the Kauri forest at night, came to our hostel to give us the tragic news that due to the horrendous downpour of rain that blessed their normally sunny region, our tour was canceled. "Do you think it'll be the same tomorrow?" we asked. Turns out, the area doesn't get a weather forecast so it'd be hard to tell. Tawhiri told us that the day before it looked like the weather would be bad all day but by nighttime it was perfectly fine. He continued to say that today looked like a beautiful day at first but now, in his words, "it's rainin' like the shitzu!" My dismay at the canceled tour was summed up beautifully by Tawhiri's epic expression, "Flippin' shucks, mate!"

That line sent me scurrying for my journal and a nonexistent pen. I've decided that that phrase should be added to my speech in daily life. Instead of saying things like 'shoot,' 'oh dear' or 'crap,' I should now say with great exuberance, FLIPPIN' SHUCKS MATE!!

(edit 10/8. I've got another one. Tonight at the Mitai Maori cultural show and hangi, our host told us on several occasions that we should learn a "moldy song" to support the chief of our 20-nation tribe. He playfully sang this "moldy song" to us line by line and we sang this "moldy song" back to him, line by line. What on earth is a "moldy song" you ask? Why, it's a Maori song! Oh the confusion.)

Tutu, two-two, 22!

It is officially my birthday. Based on time-span, that is. Based on date, however, yesterday was my birthday. I spent most of it on a bus between Opononi and Auckland.

But at one stop, I got to laugh at hungry cows!

The gal in the picture is from Germany but is nannying in Auckland. We met her and her friend last week on the bus out of Auckland. They stayed in Paihia while we traveled on to Opononi. Reunited on the bus back to Auckland, they surprised me by remembering my birthday and singing to me in the morning! They couldn't remember my name, but hey, I'm far more impressed with them remembering my birthday.

Back in Auckland at night, I said the line that will go down as one of the most ridiculous things I've ever said to Scott:

"Thanks for my bastard!"

Yes, Scott gave me a bastard for my birthday.

That is, a Bastard Burger from BurgerFuel in downtown Auckland. A deeelicious Bastard Burger stuffed with 1/3 Pound ground beef, melted cheddar, beetroot, mango, avocado, bacon, salad, relish, and aioli.

The burger is even more massive than the picture shows... I'd already eaten 1/4 of it before caving into my tourist-taking-pictures-of-everything desires.

I feel odd saying I'm 22. Still young--very young--but somehow more dignified-sounding than 21, if any age in the 20s can be considered dignified!

Oh, what the hey am I talking about. I'm still young and undignified. Heehee!

Bone Carving, In Pictures

My initial design in my journal copied over to the bone. It's a Fern! It only seems appropriate since my name is Fern and I'm in New Zealand where ferns are everywhere: in nature, in culture, in history, in logos..

Practice drilling. Which I turned into a semi-smiley face!

Cutting out the design with the drill in the background. This hurts the hands, greatly.

Done cutting!

Thinned and rounded...

No pictures of the filing and sanding and filing and sanding which took forever. I accidentally filed down several fingernails into odd shapes while filing my pendent.

This is Marisol from Chile doing the final sanding. She's a lovely quirky lady whom I really enjoyed. I'm glad we got to see her off and on over four ish days.

 
Thankfully, Jim drilled the hole into my fern. It was a delicate step which required hands far more skilled than mine. Here's a picture of him tying the cord into a necklace.

Final product!

I have to say, this ranks as my top NZ experience thus far. Jim picked us up from our hostel (Globetrekkers, also my favorite hostel thus far) and brought us to his home a few minutes away. Opononi (the tiny town we were in) just had a Country Music Festival (which I found oddly amusing) so Jim and his wife Charlotte had lots of their extended family wandering in and out of their home. They were completely natural and at home even with three complete strangers siting in their living room hunched over a piece of bone for 6+ hours. For lunch, Charlotte cooked us an insanely delicious meal of pumpkin soup and the best biscuits I've ever eaten. She sat and ate with us and shared their Maori culture, life, stories, beliefs, etc, with us.

I'm falling in love with Maori culture. It's poetic and beautiful and I can't do their stories justice with my poor memory. Granted, I've only had a taste of it and I haven't been exposed to any negative aspects, but still! Charlotte can recite her family history back 67 generations. Family history is held in high regard. It is respected so much that they only recite their family history when it holds meaning for those who listen. For us bone carvers, the names she would say would hold no meaning for us so Charlotte would never recite her history for us. For other Maori people she would, because a single recognized name in the recitation could be enough to link their histories together, thus connecting their webs of life.

As for the bone carving, Jim told us that as we wear the necklace, the bone pendant absorbs our body oil so that you become a part of it. When you pass it on to the next generation, they will have a part of you with them. Their body oil also becomes a part of the pendant so that both generations (or both people, whomever they may be) have a shared story and are connected through the pendant.