08 November 2014

The Khagan Weekly: Snoozing Through Alarms Since 2014 (Issue 3: 11/8)

NEWS BRIEFS
The Last Train to Midnight
These past weeks have been quite busy for numerous reasons, yet I have not slacked once on my duty to complete my book, Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I still plan to get the darn thing out by the end of February, but that task is not easy. In that time, I will also be writing the first chapter of my PhD thesis and my supervisor is on my back constantly to get working on it. I've read some material, but it's really hard to find time in all the various tasks I've set up for myself. The major writing portion of my train book will be done by the end of November, but then I have three months of editing, formatting, rewriting, and advertising, all while working on my PhD and traveling. Traveling, to be honest, is probably going to be short trips to locales in the South Island. We just can't afford financially or time-wise to go further in this first summer here.

Writing has also taught me that I can be quite repetitive with my word use, so I am constantly trying to find ways to work around using specific words. Oddly, the words I feared overusing the most rarely come up, usually no more than once or twice an article, while other words such as "remain", "survive", and "while" appear quite frequently. I'm not looking forward to finding all those errors. I also plan to print this entire thing in mid-January for a thorough editing and read-through, which I'm not looking forward to paying for.

A Final Bout of Classes Before the Long Slog
This week was GradFest, put on by the Academic Skills Center. With this being the second straight week of classes on postgraduate programs, it was quite a bit less helpful with numerous redundancies throughout. The students varied each day, though a few from our previous week's program showed up intermittently. John from Sweden joined us for the first two days, while Chong from China was there the first three. We also met a few other Americans, though none of them seemed overly excited to hang out with Americans, which is depressing.

The main thing that everyone seems to keep saying, though, is start writing early and often, even if you don't have the information needed to actually write properly. This fact really bugs me. As an historian, I feel that I shouldn't write until I have a firm grasp on the concept and a solid collection of data from which to pull my ideas. But everyone who spoke with authority at GradFest and the previous week event, as well as my supervisor, say I need to start writing within the next few months. I mean, I collected my data for Santa Cruz Trains over three years before I started to write, and now I'm chugging out pages a day. The entire book will have been written over the course of three months writing only 1-2 hours per day. Why can't I do the same for my PhD? I'm not sure but it's starting to get to me. Perhaps its just the expectation of results, or the desire for our supervisors to be given plenty of time to read through drafts, but this aspect of the PhD program is really not my cup of tea.

Guy Fawkes and His Attempt to Blow Up New Zealand
So apparently in 1605, Guy Fawkes not only attempted to blow up the English Parliament, but also the nonexistent New Zealand government. That's the only reason I can assume the Kiwis love the night so much. Firework sales begin on November 2nd and run until November 5th, and then they are outlawed for the next 360 days. But in that time, it is perfectly legal to fire off fireworks anytime you wish, you just can't buy any more of them. Thus, Guy Fawkes day is not just an opportunity to light up the sky with rockets, but a chance to stock up on supplies for the next year including such events as New Years Eve, Easter, Valentine's Day, Boxing Day, your grandmother's birthday, the day you graduate from high school, or a random Tuesday that just seems like it needs some flare.

We bought a big box of fireworks half off on November 4th (short sales season!) and tried desperately to light them off in freezing temperatures with wind. It mostly worked. The sparklers kept fizzing out and one of the bottle rockets was a dud, but the rest worked just fine. We forgot to leave any for later, so instead we just get to enjoy everyone else's fireworks which are still fired off each evening until everybody runs out or gets bored with it. Yay for silly New Zealand laws!

Making It Count: Gardening For Dummies
Our shopping spree of over a week ago got us a large collection of seeds from which we intend to plant a garden. Our decent-sized garden box was full of weeds, so Kara cleaned it out over the week and then we divided and add soil to it. We have eleven different vegetables we planted, as well as two fruits. It's too soon so far to see results, but no weeds have come back, which is a good sign considering there are dandelions consuming the nearby and downwind lawn.

My jalapeƱo bush, though, is doing great. It has over a dozen flowers and proto-peppers growing on it, and a few decently-sized ones. I hope no birds suddenly get a hankering for Mexican spicy plants. We planted some regular bell peppers and chili peppers, too, to make salsa. Woot!

Giving Up Is Hard to Do!
After a somewhat successful attempt and a second failed attempt to make refried beans, I'm tossing in the towel. I don't know if its our crock pot or the beans, but something just doesn't work here. We made them successfully from beans at Pak 'n' Save but they ran out of stock immediately afterwards and haven't brought them back since. The beans from the Cosco and Bin Inn both did not make great refried beans, unfortunately. I think they may just be too old. The mostly successful beans of last weekend were still hard in parts, not keeping that creamy texture I so enjoy in my refried beans. I also did the maths and realized that the cost of making the beans versus the cost of a can was negligible, thus making the decision to abandon the attempts more justified. I still want to make salsa and we have had pretty good success making tortillas, so we'll keep up with that.

DISCLAIMER
The Khagan Weekly is the unofficial news outlet for an American living in Christchurch, New Zealand. Anything he says can and may be used against him. His statements should be taken as factual, except when they are not. All rights reserved, except where prohibited...like in Russia. They prohibit everything there. Psh. Punks. Let's start a punt Putin day. That'd be fun.

No comments:

Post a Comment