tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91673286783824776102024-03-13T07:58:21.037-07:00Adventures of the Great KhanDerek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-10977896756266159642015-11-28T19:27:00.000-08:002015-11-28T19:27:39.625-08:00The Khagan Irregular: Explaining My Thesis to the Masses Since 2014 (2:13 – 29.11.2015)It has been nearly four months since my last update and I must say that not much has been going on for me. We haven't gone on any trips. Uni life is fairly standard. I did present a short paper on Robert III, count of Beaumont-le-Roger during the Postgrad Showcase, but the scientists in the room were not really interested in it (almost everyone there were scientists). This coming week I will be volunteering to help for a symposium on Magna Carta (which celebrates its 800th anniversary this year) and a broader New Zealand Historical Association conference. For specific updates on our recent activities, check out Kara's blog: <a href="http://amongstthekiwis.blogspot.co.nz/">Amongst the Kiwis</a>. I honestly don't have the time and interest anymore in specifically relating every event that's occurred in New Zealand. Plus, Kara is generally doing more than I am in any case.<br />
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Now the real reason for this post is that my advisor has finally given me a big thumbs up regarding progress on my thesis, which just passed the half-way point of the first draft two weeks ago. This joyful moment means that I can finally tell you all precisely what my thesis is about in a manner that hopefully makes sense to everybody. So here it goes...<br />
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<b>Title: </b><i>The Wilted Lily: The Capetian Dynastic Imperative in the Age of the Hundred Years War (1274 – 1464)</i></blockquote>
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<b>Summary: </b>A long time ago in the kingdom of France, the royal family, called the Capetians, patronised the Abbey of Saint-Denis in the outskirts of Paris. By 1274, it had become the burial place for all French kings and many other members of the royal family. In a corner of the abbey, monks studiously and judiciously wrote and duplicated historical chronicles dating to the earliest times in French and Frankish history. One monk named Primat was commissioned to do something new, though: he was to create a GREAT CHRONICLE that related the entire history of France to the present time in French (well, Old French), rather than the traditional Latin. When he finished his work, it ended in the year 1223 when King Philippe Auguste died. Other monks continued where Primat left off, appending translations of the Life of Louis VIII and the Life of Saint Louis IX to the text, slowly but surely expanding it into the fourteenth century. The original text ended around 1328 with the accession of King Philippe VI de Valois. </blockquote>
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Things became more interesting after this because the monks began creating an entirely new story, independent of any previously-existing Latin manuscripts. Richard Lescot and Pierre d'Orgemont continued the chronicle to 1379, describing in detail the early years of the Hundred Years War between England and France. Jean Juvénal des Ursins then translated another Latin text and appended this to the continuation. And Jean Chartier wrote simultaneously a Latin and Middle French continuation, bringing the <i>Grandes Chroniques</i>, as it is now called, to about 1464. Thus, for almost two hundred years, this abbey and its monks wrote and continued a chronicle in the vernacular French language under royal guidance and patronage, therefore documenting a specifically pro-French history of France derived from contemporary sources and first-hand experiences. This achievement was unrivalled in Europe at the time. </blockquote>
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With this distinctly royal perspective in mind, it is my quest to discover specifically how the chroniclers portrayed members of the royal family during this period. How is the king and his family portrayed? How are the families of his siblings and uncles? And more importantly, how are relatives who defy royal authority portrayed? People like the duke of Brittany, the king of Navarre, the count of Beaumont-le-Roger, and, most importantly, the king of England. What do the chroniclers have to say about royals defying kingly authority? </blockquote>
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But my overriding question is more structural: when Primat first wrote the <i>Grandes Chroniques</i> around 1274, who did he focus on as the structural cores of the Capetian dynasty (answer Philippe Auguste and Saint Louis) and how did later kings and members of the dynasty relate their own actions and activities to the precedents set by their illustrious ancestors? Furthermore, did the pursuit of this precedent—this dynastic imperative—lead them to recklessly continue the Hundred Years War, or was the war something else unrelated to Capetian dynastic ambition?</blockquote>
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That's it. That's the thesis. Ten chapters of discussing these questions and hoping that the conclusions I come to answer the research questions in the way I want. So far things have been looking good, but I still have a lot of work to do before it's perfect. For one, I have only embraced my current research style wholly in my previous chapter (although elements of it were incorporated in the chapter before) Re-writing chapters 1-3, therefore, will be important to my overall argument. However department policies are now making it so I only will probably turn in two drafts of each chapter, which is probably a good thing if I want to graduate on time. If I can finish the first draft of the thesis by mid-2016, then that will leave me with over a year to finish the second draft which will hopefully lead directly to a final draft. Only time will tell.<br />
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Anyway, let me know what you think and I'm happy to answer any further questions you may have. Cheers!Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-53947264575959055922015-08-01T17:16:00.002-07:002015-08-01T17:16:41.091-07:00The Khagan Irregular: Blogging When I Feel Like It Since 2014 (2:12 – 01.08.2015)<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>UPDATE</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Nitty-Gritty of Life</i></span><br />
Wow! It has been a long time since I blogged last. Sorry about that but, honestly, things have gotten rather crazy since my May post. Theses are ongoing, social life is questionable, computer fun time is irregular, board games are getting dusty, and my suitcase is worn out. With that all being said, this blog—and most of my others—have been placed on the back-burner indefinitely, hence its second name change in six months. It's nothing personal—I like you all very much (except you in the back, stop staring at me that way. It's creepy!)—but blogging is just not the most important thing I can be doing. I've neglected my <a href="http://thebarbarianreport.blogspot.com/">movie review blog</a> and haven't <a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/browse/boardgame/0?username=Whaleyland&forumname=reviews">done reviews</a> for either of the new <i>Carcassonne </i>expansions, but I'll get to those someday soon I hope. I also have plans to write a children's book, but that hasn't materialised yet either. On the plus side, I have updated <a href="https://canterbury-nz.academia.edu/drwhaley">my Academia.edu account</a>! You can now read my master's thesis, free of charge (tips accepted).<br />
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Anyway, stay tuned. Keep watching my Facebook feed. Follow me on twitter (@whaleyland) and always remember, the more you comment and talk about my postings, the more likely I am to do more of them. Yeah, I'm selfish that way. What can I say.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>NEWS BRIEFS</b></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">To In-Sydney...AND BEYOND!</span></i><br />
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So, off I went, into the wild Australian East Coast! Kara and I had a double-doozy of conferences to attend in Australia but we made the most of our time there all the same. Kara had never been to Australia before I was last there when I was eight, so that hardly counts. We began our trip in Sydney and ended in Brisbane. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time or the money to really go anywhere else outside those two places. Both places were also broken up by the conferences. Kara went to a Digital Humanities conference for the first week we were there and we had three days afterwards to wonder around the city. Then in Brisbane, we had five days off before going to the ANZAMEMS (Australia & New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies), which was for me but Kara went to all the days as well and even presented there. But first, the fun parts.</div>
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Sydney is an amazing city. It is like San Francisco ran up to Seattle for the weekend and somehow had a threesome with London, and this city was the result. I mean, they have a Space Needle. Sydney is probably the most multicultural place I've ever been, and I've been to many places. There are literally shopping malls everywhere and most of them are hidden underground. I mean, they are under residential towers, town hall, city parks, historic buildings, and beside subway terminals. Oh yeah, and they have a London-style subway system! I mean, they literally stole the logos and everything straight from Victorian London. It doesn't have quite the same breadth, but the city is a tad bit smaller, too. The geography of the area is gnarly, with rivers and streams meandering all over the place, and islands and peninsulas littered along the coast. The Sydney Opera House is pretty cool to behold, but I was much more impressed with the beautiful arched truss bridge that spans the harbour behind it. It's freaking beautiful! The Rocks area, which was the original inmate colony of Botany Bay, is now a hip little café district with a weekly arts and crafts fair that runs down multiple streets. Another district called Darling Harbour is a touristy area like Pier 39 in San Francisco, with a bunch of trendy expensive restaurants (literally, like 25 of them), an enclosed zoo, an aquarium, a Madame Trussauds, Australia's only IMAX theatre (where we watched <i>Jurassic World 3D)</i>, a maritime museum, and, of course, a shopping mall. The old train bridge over the harbour has since been converted into a quaint pedestrian bridge, and there is a large stadium at the bottom of the harbour which was all cordoned off because Channing Tatum was arriving for the world premiere of <i>Magic Mike XXL</i>. We also saw a production of the musical <i>Les Misérables</i> while in Sydney, which was a treat.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-d4maNxdINp2aYau7ye4bAVJVJkqoH8i8ljpIy6Bej_1Mr4XBZ9o6ToAr3Cemawkc_3hO0_Yv3_bMc8wq_RH7CuL1XSFzERMqVNU3SZcfdDjl9xJjZBBOLZy2CPjFiCBxBcep74PA88/s1600/P7032635.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-d4maNxdINp2aYau7ye4bAVJVJkqoH8i8ljpIy6Bej_1Mr4XBZ9o6ToAr3Cemawkc_3hO0_Yv3_bMc8wq_RH7CuL1XSFzERMqVNU3SZcfdDjl9xJjZBBOLZy2CPjFiCBxBcep74PA88/s640/P7032635.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">All Bris and No Bane</span></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgVQGm-DJR_phE6gZqD-YSf659un1Tqr25qrcjiYEmu9gFwcc2U0W8HcXLAOlV1ILjSQSHxnXkmpCVir7OWeyKTc9LxZPA0M13bwOkIQdZVJqP-XxuoExH7KvYZx2ZpP9Ijrbx0hlcYGU/s1600/IMG_1567.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgVQGm-DJR_phE6gZqD-YSf659un1Tqr25qrcjiYEmu9gFwcc2U0W8HcXLAOlV1ILjSQSHxnXkmpCVir7OWeyKTc9LxZPA0M13bwOkIQdZVJqP-XxuoExH7KvYZx2ZpP9Ijrbx0hlcYGU/s400/IMG_1567.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">800 Years Ago, I, King John of England, signed some<br />piece of magnate crap and now everybody remembers<br />me for what I never wanted to do. I was blackmailed!</td></tr>
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Brisbane was a very different city than Sydney. While it did have its downtown area, the skyscrapers were lower and the malls were fewer. The city was much more like Los Angeles than New York in that it sprawled outward rather than upward. And just to be a nuisance to everybody, the Brisbane River meanders all over the place through the city, forcing bridges to cross it frequently. About half those bridges are toll brides, and Kara and I had a car this time around. We stayed at my mother's penpal's house about 15 minutes from downtown via the main motorway. Having a home base to return to each night was very nice and our host was absolutely amazing. We've adopted her as our new aunt. Kara and her got in long discussions almost every night about politics, the medical industry, insurance, Kiwi-Aussie relations, Kiwi-US relations, Aussie-US relations, etc. The house also catered to one grouchy little kitty and a tiding of Magpies who came up to the door and ate directly out of our hands! The little monsters. We took mostly day trips during the first days we were there, venturing down to Surfers Paradise—which is pretty much the same thing as Miami—and up to three different venues. The Sunday before the conference, we went to a medieval reenactment fair which was actually really fun. They had tons of camps run by different medieval-dressed people, lots of little themed shops, reenactment centres, old-timey photo shoot, jousting, sword fighting, gypsies, and a bunch of other fun stuff. It took up most of the day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp3mSlhQQghElxMvK5fH6no_Vbla4giYfn-03I3SKTULNVCkAkrddeGxhTOJy_brH20Ds_cS7kkLhyphenhyphenPqey2f9d_AZP01eDCd4HEsOMKFXqWJK-4uIp7BC4scDa-tNrfg0iPLGcjAFe_74/s1600/IMG_1595.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp3mSlhQQghElxMvK5fH6no_Vbla4giYfn-03I3SKTULNVCkAkrddeGxhTOJy_brH20Ds_cS7kkLhyphenhyphenPqey2f9d_AZP01eDCd4HEsOMKFXqWJK-4uIp7BC4scDa-tNrfg0iPLGcjAFe_74/s400/IMG_1595.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me presenting at ANZAMEMS. Topic is visible on screen.</td></tr>
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On the following Tuesday, we began the long five-day ANZAMEMS conference which was primarily people talking about history. I mean, I'm not sure what else I can really say about it. Conferences are essential to CV-building but they are a lot of talking. In the end, only a handful of the presentations especially interested me, and virtually none directly impacted on me, but I'm still glad I went. I met a lot of other young historians and bonded more closely with my own Canterbury peers. The next conference is being held in Wellington, which is closer to home, so I suppose I will be attending again in 2017.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT_SuRBr3_VTfr82ttMsxYMq-KXwJwwslVxn122tt7y16ONJn8H1fpaEbVGqEvls7slgtJqU98mDC6F3CXWJbX1JMtqsjzUuDQMPzy4Z3C8MBzttG7fGcUIOkXRlFTuu02XKac7A7sp8A/s1600/P7102950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT_SuRBr3_VTfr82ttMsxYMq-KXwJwwslVxn122tt7y16ONJn8H1fpaEbVGqEvls7slgtJqU98mDC6F3CXWJbX1JMtqsjzUuDQMPzy4Z3C8MBzttG7fGcUIOkXRlFTuu02XKac7A7sp8A/s640/P7102950.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of New South Wales from the crater rim outside Surfers' Paradise.</td></tr>
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We flew out the day after the last day of the conference and had to almost immediately resume our studies. The flights were pretty stable, minus a few bumps and noisy kids, and our neighbours were never <i>too </i>annoying. Still, we probably won't be travelling again soon, except for short weekend trips.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Animals Here, There, and Everywhere</span></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAGEkAr5-6cj0D-AFjF1xectGW81jX028SxlJyImd3i9kgM38JVx0g-Hkw_sKq06_2g2vArdrePwPG4Q9SJIxyCmvRYXkC99SjiDI_j11Hr5EwAgQSyZwQbC6IDPa3nW6pFvLu8ZQ33I/s1600/P7082861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAGEkAr5-6cj0D-AFjF1xectGW81jX028SxlJyImd3i9kgM38JVx0g-Hkw_sKq06_2g2vArdrePwPG4Q9SJIxyCmvRYXkC99SjiDI_j11Hr5EwAgQSyZwQbC6IDPa3nW6pFvLu8ZQ33I/s400/P7082861.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wombat.</td></tr>
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One thing I skipped above were the three wildlife parks we visited during our travels. Our first zoo was in Sydney—the Taronga Zoo—and we needed a boat to get out there! Yeah, pretty awesome. It was like <i>Jurassic World</i>, except for that whole eating people part. We got a good preview of all the amazing Australian animals, from kangaroos to duck-billed platypuses. We didn't get to see the deadly snakes because Kara doesn't like them, but we did get to see a few alligators and a bunch of non-native animals. It felt very similar to the San Diego Zoo, especially since they had a gondola and the zoo was constructed up on a hill. It was also about the same age, being founded in the early 1900s and expanded through the years.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUl1EiIpdQt4Y-VkYHnDnQHtCtfKfmqz1TDL6jKf6BiL5dY08nPgNU3STmtylbEMWqXVtwQg6QdX8HepO1jVdpAGTm_6Gm4q9k95MN0ux1V8cHAkMK2XXNiKqpJGoTyVwDPcgpb3YXVc/s1600/P7032750.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUl1EiIpdQt4Y-VkYHnDnQHtCtfKfmqz1TDL6jKf6BiL5dY08nPgNU3STmtylbEMWqXVtwQg6QdX8HepO1jVdpAGTm_6Gm4q9k95MN0ux1V8cHAkMK2XXNiKqpJGoTyVwDPcgpb3YXVc/s640/P7032750.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A red panda, also known as a firefox.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPkoHRPgVh5nIWN1NlNsgvjyzRzanuQLgMaN-xEp3XqWbsC_115Y0LtJ5FNHSfQ_P2JoeFnYnuBYDdWADA447V5B8P25YGSzLqXthKrd6Tnflt5cEVlkFvq_1uyLlgncT7ynEkAJL3dc/s1600/P7032701.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPkoHRPgVh5nIWN1NlNsgvjyzRzanuQLgMaN-xEp3XqWbsC_115Y0LtJ5FNHSfQ_P2JoeFnYnuBYDdWADA447V5B8P25YGSzLqXthKrd6Tnflt5cEVlkFvq_1uyLlgncT7ynEkAJL3dc/s320/P7032701.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A kookaburra. </td></tr>
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In Brisbane, we visited the Australia Zoo, which is owned by the Irwin family of Steve Irwin fame. And, I'll tell you what, you don't miss that fact once in the park. Steve's family is everywhere in the park, with his daughter Bindi used in marketing everywhere and his son, Robert, now somehow a palaeontologist (he's like 10). But the park was pretty cool. It had a lot of crocodiles and alligators, a ton of Australian animals in general, and a fair amount of other creatures including some cute tigers. Surprisingly, they didn't have any lions and their elephants have disappeared without explanation, but it was a fun day all the same. They have a huge amphitheatre where they do a crocodile show each day so we got to see some handlers coerce a croc into attacking. Pretty fun stuff. The next day we visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and got up close and personal with a bunch of different animals. You are allowed to wonder through two separate fields to pet and feed kangaroos and wallabies. I also got sneezed on by a wombat, which was a...unique...experience. And then when we were pretty much done with everything else, we got our photos holding a koala. Definitely a highlight although we only held him for a few seconds and weren't allowed to scratch him or anything. Still, I think this animal park felt the most Australian of the three. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone visiting the area, though Australia Zoo and Taronga Zoo were also both quite fun.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wallaby in its dirt pile.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisavwY7cNvApiiNO6_x16G4C8gd7rsLVIf-eradCcSxZSu3V2jVpkqRsmtPoiQrcfxLips2nCbsKTebL7wDvQkbDAb7BqyTQl62-2qtdwHbe5fFEc_7Gp17y3NcLOKMVLxJBA8I2_f49g/s1600/P1020079.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisavwY7cNvApiiNO6_x16G4C8gd7rsLVIf-eradCcSxZSu3V2jVpkqRsmtPoiQrcfxLips2nCbsKTebL7wDvQkbDAb7BqyTQl62-2qtdwHbe5fFEc_7Gp17y3NcLOKMVLxJBA8I2_f49g/s640/P1020079.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A dingo standing sentinel.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuj8oOZfZ3yeuIeXFNe2nr5WH9tQD1NmhQZRYlGtQNJTfplbeh_-P4V3m5k6_L81tbLeF_G8I-yD1Y6BqakXWgalKm2nMSnfgzGv5PMwtLXANCCR3C0SHE8cb638Sd7lGalFCuGM9SlA0/s1600/P1020085.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuj8oOZfZ3yeuIeXFNe2nr5WH9tQD1NmhQZRYlGtQNJTfplbeh_-P4V3m5k6_L81tbLeF_G8I-yD1Y6BqakXWgalKm2nMSnfgzGv5PMwtLXANCCR3C0SHE8cb638Sd7lGalFCuGM9SlA0/s640/P1020085.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A koala and her joey.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgr1t3_Pj00aA9U3i_Tmr_PV6H_jxgBVMZun7dIY0ewRwD6eWIaL7ssbLFeL2l7WVbjdKwpZ1zJpDm5JHc41JNjbEC0qgeNopXuyQRvKqYeXVPQHAvNi6vWaklXJ0LBuko2vPWaDSUb38/s1600/P7092878.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgr1t3_Pj00aA9U3i_Tmr_PV6H_jxgBVMZun7dIY0ewRwD6eWIaL7ssbLFeL2l7WVbjdKwpZ1zJpDm5JHc41JNjbEC0qgeNopXuyQRvKqYeXVPQHAvNi6vWaklXJ0LBuko2vPWaDSUb38/s640/P7092878.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Four lorikeets eating from Kara's food tray.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKAB-hPdRaCSxh9-NMXsKLwEIk7RtcOO1lEMoITu0Y34eBRIXs7V9FFXX-wvp01JzjRP2OZX0skiD0M83HbVxOh21b3T_1njb5S2ofh8PRZnDKLy3KbLI9IyMZZ-PX7K7pv1XuXnXBL-Q/s1600/P7092944.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKAB-hPdRaCSxh9-NMXsKLwEIk7RtcOO1lEMoITu0Y34eBRIXs7V9FFXX-wvp01JzjRP2OZX0skiD0M83HbVxOh21b3T_1njb5S2ofh8PRZnDKLy3KbLI9IyMZZ-PX7K7pv1XuXnXBL-Q/s640/P7092944.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Tasmanian devil on the prowl.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>REGULARS</b></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Burning Bacon</span></i><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi7BwYHnD6xqN70GNYCBPufNG3WNt5rdEYVTfKJzBqXBsSHCEi7prQCHsFsboOCPV4aBlo-4CDMv8xcVkeaAqlNIfYP4E41qYj-OWM7J3T3n96nv6lqSuzJP75kZFAXuxPFoY_UIa4_TY/s1600/IMG_1601.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi7BwYHnD6xqN70GNYCBPufNG3WNt5rdEYVTfKJzBqXBsSHCEi7prQCHsFsboOCPV4aBlo-4CDMv8xcVkeaAqlNIfYP4E41qYj-OWM7J3T3n96nv6lqSuzJP75kZFAXuxPFoY_UIa4_TY/s400/IMG_1601.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Geláre cinnamon/chocolate waffle. Mmmm....</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Nothing has changed much with our food situation except we are growing increasingly tired of the foods we've fallen back on. During the trip, we switched to having cereal for breakfast for the first time since October 2014. It was weird and while we sort of liked it, we found ourselves quite hungry by lunch time every day. We've since returned to eggs and bacon. We also did a tremendous amount of eating out during this trip, more than we really could afford or wanted to do, but we did get some variety. We got a fully paid-for steakhouse dinner, a free catered restaurant feast, and a casual night on the town at a Japanese restaurant. I struggled at all of them, as I do, but fortunately most places have chicken, which I'll eat. Otherwise, we found ourselves getting pizza twice, Subway once, McDonalds twice, oporto chicken twice, ice cream and gelato a few times, and random other snacks here and there. We even found a fun little place called Pancake on the Rocks, which is apparently a chain, although we went to its original store. There are also two amazing dessert places in Australia called Geláre and Chocolateria San Churro. Definitely check them out if you are in the neighbourhood.</div>
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<div>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Ups & Downs</span></i><br />
<div>
While I can't say that we did any scheduled walking on this trip, we certainly got our exercise in most of the days. Me especially. During the week I was alone in Sydney, I went on walks all over the place, probably covering around 2km minimum per day not counting the usual walking around associated with life. The sheer number of shopping malls made it impossible not to want to walk around, and then with Kara the zoos and animal parks are pretty much all-day affairs. Our only dedicated hike was punctuated multiple times by short car drives, but it was at a national park near Surfers Paradise south of Brisbane. It overlooked the rim of this massive volcano that had collapsed millions of years ago. The walls of the volcano still were standing and there were hiking trails all around it, so we got some excellent views of waterfalls, the ocean, the other end of the crater, and just nature in general. We even got to see a wild wallaby run into the woods on some back road we took. Pretty cool.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Thesis Schmeshish</span></i><br />
<div>
Things have been progressing more smoothly with my thesis of late. During the first week in Sydney, I dedicated my four days alone to working on Chapter 3 of the document. The chapter is arguably the most important to the work as a whole since it grounds my theory on a number of historical events. Everything that comes after this will relate back to it in some way. I just submitted the draft on Friday after some comments from Kara and two other students. I think it's good, but we'll have to see what my supervisor says. This chapter will likely become Chapter 2 in the next revision, and the current chapter 2 will get rearranged a bit and become Chapter 4. The new Chapter 3 is what I am working on yet. This will be a bit more fun as I get to demonstrate how quickly the ideas developed by the guys in the previous chapter got screwed up right after they died. Fun! Fun! Fun! I love dynastic disorder.</div>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The Kiwi Way</span></i><br />
<div>
Comparisons between Australians and New Zealanders abound aplenty here. It can't be helped since so many Kiwis travel to Australia in the winter and so many Australians vacation here in the summer. But one thing that we began noticing almost immediately when we were in Australia is how much more polite Australians are compared to Kiwis. Granted, this is not a universal thing—we have found many nice Kiwis—but I think the general timidity of Kiwis comes out accidentally as rudeness or indifference. This begins at the basic level of the store clerk, who in Australia smiles and offers polite chit-chat and in New Zealand keeps a straight face and says little-to-nothing. Even when I try to chat, as I do, I almost get nothing from them here. In Australia, meanwhile, it can be difficult to disengage from some clerks! Obviously this can be a bad thing, but it is certainly better than a complete lack of interest. Whether this is linked to "Tall Poppy Syndrome" or just a more British air about them, the Kiwis are just not as friendly or sociable as the Aussies. From clerks to amusement park staff to conference attendees, we saw the same pattern.</div>
</div>
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<b style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="line-height: 12px;"><strike>Fortnightly</strike> </i><span style="line-height: 12px;"><i>Irregular</i> is</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 12px;"> </span><u style="line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span></div>
Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-16755376069122278612015-05-24T01:59:00.003-07:002015-05-24T01:59:46.507-07:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Writing Until Midnight Since 2014 (2:11 – 24.05.2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Speaking Out Loud</i></span><br />
This was a big week for public speaking and taught me that I really do believe I can be a lecturer. On Wednesday, I gave my first postgraduate seminar talk to a crowd of about 25 people. It was a mini-version of my ANZAMEMS conference presentation and focused on the French successions of 1316 and 1328. They were quite contentious and set a very important precedent for France. It was well-received by the students and even my supervisor. I was, of course, nervous, but I knew my stuff and handled it well.<br />
<br />
Then, on Thursday, I had a second joint-presentation with two History MA students in front of a crowd of 54 undergrads. We did this one completely voluntarily. Since finals are coming up and most of these students had never taken a final exam before, we felt that they could use some coaching, so we ran a seminar on how to prep for a history exam. Kara's doing a similar one for writing essays next Monday. It went so well that I didn't even get nervous. It surprised me even! But it also taught me that as long as I know what I'm talking about, I can run courses like the pros.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>To the Bottom of the Earth</i></span><br />
The only other real event of note recently was our long-awaited trip to the International Antarctic Centre. This is the real deal: people go from here to the Antarctic to explore, research, and do things in blisteringly cold weather. Crazy, crazy people. The public part of the centre is more or less a discovery museum with a lot of gimmicky things. There' a 4D theatre that squirts you with water too many times, a recreation of North Dakota in November (-18˚C/-0.4˚F), and a penguin enclosure. Okay, the penguins were cute, but I digress. And the cost of visiting was an utter fortune. Granted, we had Buy One-Get One passes and got a student discount on top of that, but it's something like $54/person normally. This is a rip-off pure and simple. The whole place takes you only 3:30 hours to go through. And most of the signs are a few years out-of-date. The most exciting thing during the whole tour was a 10-minute ride on basically a halftrack through an obstacle course. That was pretty fun, but the place was just expensive and definitely designed for the younger crowd, which is just too bad. I only recommend this place if you a) are über-wealthy, b) are absolutely bored of things to do in Christchurch, or c) have found an amazing coupon like we did. Otherwise, a cruise to the Antarctic would probably be much more satisfying. (Disclaimer: I do not recommend or condone cruises to the Antarctic due to increased pollution and environmental damage caused by Antarctic tourists. A visit to the International Antarctic Centre will teach you more about these modern problems...not that I recommend visiting the centre either...um, yeah).<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon</i></span><br />
Food has been taking some strange turns lately. We have been coming back late most nights and dinner is sometimes at school, so cooking is becoming less and less of a thing. That being said, there are a few treats we've made recently. Last week we made chocolate-dipped pretzels and peanut butter-chocholate pretzel sandwiches for my History Pre-Exam Seminar. They didn't go at all, except to the other two speakers, but they did taste good, at least. I also just made today a beautiful orange and chocolate bundt cake for our History PostGrad meeting for Tuesday morning. Kara made a pumpkin bundt, so we've got everything covered for that. We have plans for a Mexican dinner party next week, but nothing will be made for that until mid-week, so it's been slow. Bacon and eggs for breakfast every day are still our usual fair.<br />
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Oh, we also made our own microwave popcorn bag, which caught on fire in the microwave. Yay!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs</i></span><br />
I'm keeping this short: we didn't have time to do anything except walk around the block last week. It's too cold and wet to do anything more. Instead, I ride my stationary bike for 25 minutes every day while watching <i>Vikings </i>and <i>Outlander</i>. It's better than nothing, I suppose. No hikes planned for the foreseeable future either. Eh.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish</i></span><br />
The world of theses is never smooth and for me that seems to be especially the case. My advisor and I disagree about a great many things, among them the expected attitude of a PhD supervisor. After having a brief meeting with another lecturer in the department, my supervisor, that lecturer, and I sat down and discussed the nitty-gritty of PhD research. It didn't really go as planned, but I expected that, so maybe it did. Somehow the ball has been stolen into his court as well, so now I just have to sit and wait to see what happens next. In the meantime, I've been working on Chapter 3 of my thesis, which deals with defining the Capetian Dynastic Imperative. Sound academic, right? Oh, and we did discuss my last chapter and he actually liked it quite a bit, so much so that we probably are going to end up splitting it into two chapters before this thesis is done. It is increasingly unlikely that I will even research the English side of things, but that's okay. I still have a long ways to go in learning French, but I'm making progress there too: I just finished my study book and have re-ordered the French textbook I started this endeavour with.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way</i></span><br />
It seems that many of my local Cantabrian friends have taken a liking to reading this blog. Fair enough; I do post it online for everybody to read and they have increasingly been friending me on Facebook (and vice-versa). Since this seems to be the case, let's have a quick summary of Kiwi writing habits. They're terrible. It is truly the see-and-do technique of learning since the primary and secondary systems here really don't focus on sentence structure, paragraph design, or essay outlining. To be absolutely honest, I hated these things when I was in school, but I did learn them, and I learned them pretty well according to many. What the bigger problem here is that people don't learn how to write, and then they write stuff that other people see, and then they in effect copy what they see, and thereby don't learn how to write. It's a vicious cycle!<br />
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Take one example: sentences with unnecessary commas in them. Just absolutely, unnecessary. See what I did there? That was, an unnecessary comma. So was that. It's really easy to do when you want to, but they aren't needed. That last comma, that was necessary, as were these. Unbeknownst to the modern Kiwi, there are actual rules that govern the usage of commas. They aren't all hard and fast, but they are there, and there are plenty of places where they don't belong.<br />
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Speaking of punctuation Kiwis don't know how to use, I present for your enjoyment: the colon. No, not the strange organ in the body, but rather this lovely little pair of dots sitting atop each other. You can use them to equate something—money: the root of all evil. You can use it to prompt a list: one potato, two tomato, three zucchini, squash! One thing you can't do with them, though is end a sentence with them; this is where the semi-colon comes in. It's like a full stop got jiggy with a comma and had a love child—it's great!<br />
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So my Kiwi friends, remember, commas have a purpose, and colons and semi-colons do too. If you can't figure them out, the internet has the answers to many things, including these.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-84346322088327770952015-05-10T01:20:00.000-07:002015-05-10T01:20:04.138-07:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Skipping Issues Since 2014 (2:10 – 10.05.2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Dinner & a Fiesta</i></span><br />
Two parties within 24 hours gave us an evening of international students and a Mexican party. First off, we had our fourth Operation Friendship dinner on Friday night. We are becoming known by the 15 or so hosts of the monthly parties and a number of the regulars know us now, which is good. Like usual, there is a decidedly Kiwi-international blend of foods served, most of which I won't touch but some of which is quite good. The games this time around weren't great—in fact one wasn't really even a game. We always do some games but this time it was pictionary and charades with a strange getting-to-know-you thing that was only okay.<br />
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The next afternoon we went to a Cinco de Mayo party with the Americans in Christchurch group. That whole thing is horribly unorganised for some reason but the food was guaranteed to be good this time around because Kara and I made a bunch of it. We made two different sauces/salsas, refried beans, and baby churros. People liked all of it except the white sauce (their loss because it's amazing!). Pretty much the whole time was spent talking to Kara's San Diego friends that she met here, Hannah and Blair. They're a fun group and agree with us on pretty much everything regarding both America and New Zealand, so that's kind of fun. The party itself was a bit simple and the rest of the food wasn't great, but it could certainly have been worse. Oh, and the cake was good. It was a Mexican flag with a Mexican and French flag crossed atop it. Two points to anyone who knows why those flags are important to Cinco de Mayo. No points for checking Wikipedia.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Movie & a Club</i></span><br />
I got hijacked into joining HistSoc a few months back and then conned into becoming an exec, but it was a good decision all around. We had our first event two weeks ago, an Inaccurate Movie Night where we tried somewhat sadly to make fun of Mel Gibson's <i>The Patriot</i>. The movie was a bit too long, though, and people are not super comfortable with assertiveness here (not that I can talk). Still, we had a good night and a decent turnout and we definitely will be doing another event soon. In fact, our next event is in two weeks and I am one of the three co-hosts of it. We're going to do a tutorial seminar regarding exam preparation for the undergraduate students. A bit of it will also discuss their crappy essays and how to make less crappy essays in the future. It's nothing major, but we are expecting a big turnout since none of these first year students have taken a uni-level history exam before.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon</i></span><br />
Well, food things have taken a decidedly different turn. The past few weeks we've been skating by with the regular food items mostly, but we did make a monster blend of Mexican food right when we came back from the North Island. The mixed our chicken/cheese enchilada filler with homemade refried beans, rice, and more cheese to make something truly magical. Mix that with some of our homemade hot sauce (read salsa del fuego) and you've got an excellent dinner.<br />
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Our bigger endeavour has been to turn our cooking into profits. Kara thought up the idea while on our trip and I won't go into the details right now, but let's just say that Kiwis are not the most ingenuous peoples and so we're going to try introducing some good ol' fashioned American foods into the market and see how they do. We're still working on a business model, but something may happen. We'll see.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs</i></span><br />
We've been so busy these past few weeks that our adventures out of Christchurch have been decidedly limited to walking to and from school, with the exception of a short walk we took around the block today. Weather has been intemperate, too, with some days being freezing cold and others being actually quite nice. The nicer the day, the more likely we have to stay in the room studying. Murphy's Law or something equally annoying.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish</i></span><br />
When we got back from the North Island, I spent literally 10 days in a row mostly writing a chapter of my thesis. And it was a long 10 days. Technically, I got done early on day 8, spent the afternoon editing it, and then had a few MA students read through it to make sure my supervisor wouldn't think it's garbage. After they approved it, I sent it in. I've heard nothing since.<br />
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Since May 1st, I've been working on my next chapter. It's a strange thing to go from writing for 10 days straight to suddenly reading full-time. This is the reading/writing cycle of a PhD student. My job last week was to look up various different survey books on my chapter while my goal for the next three weeks is to find books, articles, and primary source documents that discuss my chapter topic more directly. Trying to not get off topic is really hard, too, especially since this chapters has a lot to do with the next two chapters and the thesis as a whole. I just hope I can pull together as snazzy of a chapter as I did for the last one.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way</i></span><br />
So heating in New Zealand is, well, a mystery to the Kiwi. There are a few different types of heaters in us in the country, but the most common is the heat pump. A heat pump is an air conditioning system that pulls air from the outside and chills it for the inside. Wait. Did I just say chills it? Yes, heat pumps are actually air conditioners. "Heat pump" is a setting on them that is not recommended for use. In other words, most Kiwis use air conditioning systems to heat their homes. These systems are expensive to run, cannot be shut off except at the circuit breaker, and do not heat up a room very well. The next system they have are portable or mounted heaters. The Uni has tons of these everywhere. They're so simple that, well, you can't really program them at all. You turn it on and turn it off and adjust the intensity, but if you want a cold room to be warm, you either have to just leave the heater on the whole time or be cold first as it warms up. At Uni, we don't have a choice—the controls are nowhere to be found and the heater is running all the time, day/night/winter/summer. The stationary ones can be a bit better because some have programming, but they have so many safety mechanisms on them that many of the programs can't really be used. A lot of them are also straight up crap. Ceramic heaters are such crap heaters that do nothing except radiate a little bit of heat around its immediate periphery. Utter crap. There is also a slightly rarer thing that we are blessed to have called an HRV. This device is mounted in the ceiling of various rooms of a house and it pumps (read uses a fan) in warm air from the attic. In other words, the attic doesn't get as cold and the house gets its heat. This works great until the attic temperature drops below the house's, at which point it's worthless. To be fair, it won't intentionally push more cold air into the house, but since there are holes in our ceiling and cold air is heavier than warm air, it comes in all the same. The one thing they don't have here is central heating. Not at all. Don't even think about it. And what's the point anyway? There's no insulation in the walls to keep the heat in to begin with. Central heating is apparently cost prohibitive here, but I don't buy it. Just like so many other things, the Kiwi way is just a silly stubborn way, when things like central heating would make everybody happier.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-54204565579775264052015-05-01T20:02:00.000-07:002015-05-01T20:02:03.945-07:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Ringing Up Tabs Since 2015 (2:9 – 22/04/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Way Up North</i></span><br />
The past two weeks have been one long adventure on the North Island. We visited many places along the way and more or less circumnavigated the sucker, minus most of the west coast as well as the area north of Auckland.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">A troll almost stepping on me at the Weta Cave.</td></tr>
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We began our journey north by heading on a five hour drive to Picton, the ferry port between the two islands. The boat ride was uneventful but the screaming kids did grate a little. We got into Wellington at about 10:00 pm—it was dark, rainy, and almost impossible to see. We realised quickly that while people talk up the wind in Wellington (we didn't notice it being overly windy), they don't emphasise enough the mountainous nature of the city. The city is situated between three bays that have experienced millennia of tectonic activity. In many places, there are little communities in tight valleys, while houses are on every conceivable location, including the very impractical. Our Air BnB was in one of these homes, with a beautiful view of the city, but we feared for our lives in case the long-awaited earthquake hit while we were there. Fortunately, it did not. We spent our first rainy day at the Te Papa Museum, which is the national museum of New Zealand. It was very well done and I highly recommend it to visitors passing through. That evening, we met up with our brief homestay roommate Sam, who moved there a few months back, and we chatted over dinner and snacks. Our second day was not raining...much...so we visited the Zeelandia wildlife park and then ventured downtown to the Trolley Museum. There wasn't much at the museum, unfortunately, but we did take a ride on the trolley. That also wasn't as impressive as we'd expected. It is more Shadowbrook Restaurant tram and less San Francisco trolley than we were expecting. We went for a walk downtown, but the area was a mess and we decided to cut our losses and return to the homestay.<br />
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The next two nights were spent at the small town of Turangi where we stayed at a hostel that had an overly friendly dog as its namesake. The hostel wasn't terrible, but it could have been better, too. Our full day there was spent venturing up to Tongariro National Park and hiking around the volcanoes, which fortunately appeared for some photographs before falling behind the clouds again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bubbling mud pots in downtown Rotorua.</td></tr>
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Following Turangi, we spent a single night at the relatively nearby town of Rotorua, which is literally situated in the middle of a massive volcano. The thing blew up in 1886, destroying some amazingly beautiful sulphur terraces that were located on either side of a then-small lake. The eruption destroyed most of the terraces and deluged the rest, flooding much of the valley around the town. Today, the town is a tourist haven that attracts fans of volcanoes and hot springs alike. They have heat vents and bubbling mud literally everywhere in town, and apparently homes regularly fall into new vents that open up. The town also smells terrible, but it is definitely a place to check out. We went to the museum there which used to be a large Victorian bath house, and this isn't the giant swimming pool kind of bathhouse—this thing actually had a bunch of single-person baths in it. They catered to the sick and wealthy and tried to cure ailments with sulphur, mud, or any other tectonic treatment they could think up. The museum was one of the unexpected treats of the trip.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1Jez_HH8uD90LaJXyNcT2DkmclqokFpCFNOT85nl2i68_pYOhYulc4MW7xuZzV0lqrRiWppbgY1INusx4zTyNje1r2qDCuUmRLxJb8jv1Seb5pfbg7NySpi3Y3zgQ0Z8_bS5hTTfIwE/s1600/IMG_1264.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1Jez_HH8uD90LaJXyNcT2DkmclqokFpCFNOT85nl2i68_pYOhYulc4MW7xuZzV0lqrRiWppbgY1INusx4zTyNje1r2qDCuUmRLxJb8jv1Seb5pfbg7NySpi3Y3zgQ0Z8_bS5hTTfIwE/s1600/IMG_1264.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bilbo Baggin's home at the top of Bagshot Row, Hobbiton.</td></tr>
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On our way to Auckland, we finally stopped at Matamata and the Hobbiton Movie Set, but it was pouring rain for our entire visit, which was very unfortunate. The rain stopped just as our tour was ended. To be honest, the tour is a bit overhyped. The hobbit holes are awesome and the scenery amazing—I have a high respect for Peter Jackson's ability to visualise and create a set—but the tour was just done all wrong. Besides the rain, there were people everywhere and the whole thing was treated like a series of photo stops. It was literally, 'Take your photo, move along. Take your photo, move along.' Nobody was in costume; the actual stories told by the tour guides were rather basic, direct, and uninteresting; and there was no <i>Lord of the Rings</i> or <i>Hobbit </i>music playing on the set or in the bus (the bus was playing 1990s pop, of all things!). It just didn't give us the feeling we were hoping it would. And the gift shop was fun because of all the merchandise, but there was no theming at all. In contrast, the Weta Cave in Wellington, which we visited but didn't tour, felt like it knew its origins and the whole place just exuded <i>Lord of the Rings</i> and Jackson's other films. The two locations were in utter contrast to each other.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TBDBaSDCv1xVeTodGBSIXUzzAjWO9mfutl6GFXr9GyN_xyXNHv64d1E4zfzdSiwZhfFt2IePJjTaFwHFmO6oKcConjNqR3SkqAK2ChHlezd6KRL6xF3aku-I2HzggUwYl2Y9khhJcuE/s1600/P4132331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TBDBaSDCv1xVeTodGBSIXUzzAjWO9mfutl6GFXr9GyN_xyXNHv64d1E4zfzdSiwZhfFt2IePJjTaFwHFmO6oKcConjNqR3SkqAK2ChHlezd6KRL6xF3aku-I2HzggUwYl2Y9khhJcuE/s1600/P4132331.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A sleeping tiger at the Auckland Zoo. All the animals were out that day (except the kiwis!).</td></tr>
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Auckland itself was rather uneventful. The Air BnB there was pretty terrible, though it's large tv was a bonus. They crammed a queen sized bed on a full-sized frame that was the lower half of a very squeaky bunk bed. The kitchen was lacking in many important things, more prominently a microwave. And ants invaded the second night following a day of rain. It just was all kind of lame. Our first day out we out to the Auckland Zoo, which was very fun. All the animals were out because of the light rain, including the big cats. I highly recommend this zoo to zoo lovers. The red pandas were really cute. Our second day was a boat ride and hike on Rangitoto Island out in the bay. Prior to the boat, we also checked out the nearby art museum, which had a fun collection of paintings and other forms of art. Our last day was supposed to be a study day, but we spent much of it at the MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology) were we got to ride a historic streetcar and view some very large historic airplanes. Auckland as a whole was a success, but the city was less impressive than I expected.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">A recreated city street at the MOTAT Museum, Auckland</td></tr>
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Our ride back to Christchurch was long and meandering with a bunch of single nights at various east coast towns. The first day we headed around the Coromandel coast where we stopped at the Driving Creek Railway and rode up to the top of the hill. The railroad was built by a potter, of all people, who needed to get clay down from the hillside. Over the years, he kept lengthening the track and began running passenger lines. The track and everything on it were built by him and his small team of workers over the past 40 years, which is pretty amazing. The thing includes three tunnels and a bunch of bridges. After that, we headed to the famous Cathedral Cove where the heavily-photographed sail rock is located just outside the afore-referenced cathedral cave. The hike was long and there were a lot of people there, but the view was delightful and beautiful. We stayed the night at Tauranga, where it began to rain well into the following afternoon. Not the best time, but the Air BnB was nice, at least.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzzKII39RYvt4wm1BSQX28R0Z-cNHaVRNzYYFBGd9jZppHr4QPIbO1V2Pxj_guL1kAfklOo15X7lDWvr617M-nyg-sOY-pQ-rKM8k1a3rHEJ-VQbaJIQfCzvsgA5hVy7tQ6DSmTPWn2OM/s1600/P1010097.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzzKII39RYvt4wm1BSQX28R0Z-cNHaVRNzYYFBGd9jZppHr4QPIbO1V2Pxj_guL1kAfklOo15X7lDWvr617M-nyg-sOY-pQ-rKM8k1a3rHEJ-VQbaJIQfCzvsgA5hVy7tQ6DSmTPWn2OM/s1600/P1010097.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Driving Creek Railway, showing the side of the train and one of the switchbacks, Coromandel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE5USZglnseAwROCZav1idXNnLyBFnOAzi6QndgOtI9mBXyd5oEo5sWUP_w6of9aL0zZ83XdNpMQyXsNcS0eZMH0iW9IzX-3V_12AQdTT2LewFeetNigcNIVs7thRkvFkFCfshfTmrgQ/s1600/P1010098.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE5USZglnseAwROCZav1idXNnLyBFnOAzi6QndgOtI9mBXyd5oEo5sWUP_w6of9aL0zZ83XdNpMQyXsNcS0eZMH0iW9IzX-3V_12AQdTT2LewFeetNigcNIVs7thRkvFkFCfshfTmrgQ/s1600/P1010098.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A teracota tunnel constructed along the Driving Creek Railway, Coromandel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheYBpVV6t_ehdEZ14jj6lKovCJsRh0_wyBfQY5r55DGgiSU3lwmcCUYxTSDxg0TQcLaL1ZiDqED-gzENxTzRNRM0c4S-9MOEqoADlg0sS2yHwWWUxYGmJy63LugJbGTlPFG5wp0SDOrvE/s1600/P1010102.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheYBpVV6t_ehdEZ14jj6lKovCJsRh0_wyBfQY5r55DGgiSU3lwmcCUYxTSDxg0TQcLaL1ZiDqED-gzENxTzRNRM0c4S-9MOEqoADlg0sS2yHwWWUxYGmJy63LugJbGTlPFG5wp0SDOrvE/s1600/P1010102.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Driving Creek Railway passenger train, named "Snake", Coromandel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8ENHL_9ttL6Wy-Gd3qBGKk1I6VJxYap55_wr0rcrX3RMlp8sM67a-0oWriQG33iXP7xcCWkDbBAV9pTIBxaa0SkDseSOk6APgc3LVTUQsM4sHLpI92yujcopdCZ_A65ZmJZ-WJ4BycY/s1600/P4162434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8ENHL_9ttL6Wy-Gd3qBGKk1I6VJxYap55_wr0rcrX3RMlp8sM67a-0oWriQG33iXP7xcCWkDbBAV9pTIBxaa0SkDseSOk6APgc3LVTUQsM4sHLpI92yujcopdCZ_A65ZmJZ-WJ4BycY/s1600/P4162434.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the beautiful sea rocks on the Coromandel Peninsula.</td></tr>
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Our next two stops were really more waypoints. We headed south to Gisbourne late after a hike with Kara's friend/student. There really was nothing there worth visiting (mostly outdoor stuff) so we moved out early the next day for our next stop: Napier. Napier was destroyed in a terrible earthquake in the early 1930s and rebuilt in an entire art deco style, which is absolutely crazy! My Aunt Klinda and my mom would love it. We got there early, checked out the Napier Aquarium, and then walked downtown. For some reason, everything is pretty much closed in these towns this time of year. I mean, even restaurants aren't open passed about 2:00. We ended up having to eat at Dominos Pizza of all places!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeD_-naopUB21xPzWmPRio1WPxRZ75qKVmfQo9HOS-OlUKP5DuTjyhWBqpteTH3S8iH9p4Iaz6ILDqfizPOpfM2xDL3FXGrcXYDGNDMfwEKaBERE3wWgFNBYa7rGwtPJSMp_SVr-BXdE0/s1600/P4182456.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeD_-naopUB21xPzWmPRio1WPxRZ75qKVmfQo9HOS-OlUKP5DuTjyhWBqpteTH3S8iH9p4Iaz6ILDqfizPOpfM2xDL3FXGrcXYDGNDMfwEKaBERE3wWgFNBYa7rGwtPJSMp_SVr-BXdE0/s1600/P4182456.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downtown Napier, showing a few of the art deco buildings. We stupidly didn't take any better ones. Sorry!</td></tr>
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The next day we headed south to Wellington for the ferry back to Picton. We stopped at a few <i>Lord of the Rings</i> locations in the Upper Hutt valley, but they ended up being less impressive than we were hoping. New Zealand still hasn't really figured out the whole people-love-<i>Lord-of-the-Rings</i> thing, so they really make it hard to search for these film sites. Our ferry back was much shorter than the ferry over and more relaxing. In Picton, we had a nice hostel to stay out and we headed out early the next day for home. On our way home, we stopped at two locations to check out fur seal colonies, both near Kaikoura. The northerly site has a little steam where the seal pups like to go and jump around beneath a waterfall. Idyllic is really the only word to describe this adorable display of youthful play. Just outside of the town itself, another colony sits on a peninsula and a little seal pup tried to come up to us, presumably for us to pet it. We didn't, but boy was the little thing cute. Another teenage pup was crashed out on the wooden walkway, not caring one bit about the people cooing over it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQvkiLZHjTgEnuH7AaPeETpgGRyS4BLrNrM9aBHLrcaZw22sHZr-qatWO3ryWhIyDKuYxtOzFfNpPCWwLLmXYL1Lxc3cP1HQv8u2e-JeofpjMHIxKty_ee5gxiVGw63aUs9zh6CqBTjgI/s1600/P4192482.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQvkiLZHjTgEnuH7AaPeETpgGRyS4BLrNrM9aBHLrcaZw22sHZr-qatWO3ryWhIyDKuYxtOzFfNpPCWwLLmXYL1Lxc3cP1HQv8u2e-JeofpjMHIxKty_ee5gxiVGw63aUs9zh6CqBTjgI/s1600/P4192482.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The park through which Gandalf and Sauruman walk in Isengard in <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i>.</td></tr>
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And that was pretty much our two week trip to the North Island! I hope you enjoyed the photos.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Southern Alps at Kaikoura, where they reach the Pacific Ocean.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JCjXb1uFmTqLVk86tphH1vgjyCajPkK1aauTi_yCeSvqrJA3lK9bXSRkS3GJXKavqaMjRFo4g9udQBPBUnyKMgpF27dmPaJ_YvWWW-8kgIPmEQ5IztdNCR4P4Oj_WAsdjDgdER4SOKk/s1600/P4202565.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JCjXb1uFmTqLVk86tphH1vgjyCajPkK1aauTi_yCeSvqrJA3lK9bXSRkS3GJXKavqaMjRFo4g9udQBPBUnyKMgpF27dmPaJ_YvWWW-8kgIPmEQ5IztdNCR4P4Oj_WAsdjDgdER4SOKk/s1600/P4202565.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seal pups playing beneath a waterfall near Kaikoura.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">EXPOSÉ</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The True Kiwi</i></span><br />
Searching for kiwis is a strangely difficult task in New Zealand. Since they are an endangered species (and there are six species of kiwi), they are not found easily. We've already been to numerous places, in fact, that have kiwis, but we never even saw a trace of one yet. The North Island has more kiwis, but our search for one was still difficult. At Zealandia, we found that the daylight and openness of the park protected them, but also allowed them to sleep through the day (they're nocturnal, naturally). At the Auckland zoo, we discovered that they had multiple kiwi in an exhibit that flipped day and night. Yet the exhibit was still so dark that even if there were kiwi in there (we think we saw one's feet), they were out of sight and ignoring us. Finally, out of all places, we discovered that the Napier Zoo had a single large kiwi on exhibit, also with flipped day/night cycles. But we got there in the simulated morning, when the exhibit was somewhat illuminated, and right there, searching for bugs in the middle of the exhibit, was a class A kiwi bird.<br />
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These creatures are much larger than you may imagine, about a foot tall and round like a kiwifruit. They also are surprisingly fidgety. The one there was pecking around everywhere for foot scraps in the ground. And it found some, too, because it kept eating stuff it found. But also was pacing around frantically, which may have been because of the exhibit, or the simulated day, or who knows what. In any case, very strange creature and one of the weirdest birds ever. You've got to try and see one if you're in New Zealand, although results vary.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon</i></span><br />
During our journeys, we did the almost impossible: we hardly ate out at all! That's right, we carted around our bag of pre-cooked bacon and eggs and other not-so-cooked comestibles. It wasn't always easy to accomplish and we broke down a few times, especially near the end of the trip, but overall we saved a bunch of money on not eating out. As a reward, we had a lot of ice cream or, more specifically for me, thickshakes. Thickshakes are what Americans call milkshakes. They are called that because they are <i>thicker</i> than a New Zealand milkshake. Like in the UK and elsewhere, milkshakes are more literally milk with just some ice cream, so they are really cold but really watery. Thickshakes put in around twice as much ice cream to keep it thick and creamy. Oddly, they also pretty much use vanilla ice cream exclusively for thickshakes, adding in flavour burst that resemble (and taste a bit like) snow cone flavours. Very odd.<br />
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We also tried to so something else creative on this trip: we pre-made taquitos. They actually came out really well, though they were a bit soggy by the last day. I didn't get sick of them despite eating them for five days in a row. Kara mixed in really pulled apart chicken (which mulched in the slow cooker), cream cheese, milk, mixed cheeses, a few peppers, and other spices. It was crazy gross looking but tasted amazing, wrapped in little initially crunchy corn tortillas. We decided as soon as they were finished to make them again this week, but turn them into full on deep-fried chimichangas with homemade refried beans, rice, and more cheese. They're going to be amazing, I can sense it! Too bad I'm almost out of my salsa. We ran out before the taquitos were done. The red salsa was SO hot, but it tasted good and I was actually getting used to it by the time I ran out, so that's good.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs</i></span><br />
For once, we actually did some hikes. A bunch of them in fact. Our first hike was within Zeelandia wildlife park. The park is built in a reclaimed forest that served for many years as a two-tiered reservoir. When they realised the entire thing was built atop a major fault line, the dams were decommissioned. Today the park is slowly growing to become an old growth forest, though it has about 500 years to go before that goal is achieved. While the park has kiwis and rare owls, those creatures are only visible in the night, but since it had rained the night before, all the other animals were out in abundance. We wondered around the trails checking them all out, including native parrots, tui birds, large pakehas, fantails, and a bunch others. They also had little roach hotels for the native wetas, which we viewed a little too close for comfort when we wondered into an only gold mine shaft where these buggers are literally right there on the far-too-close-for-comfort walls. That little explorative journey didn't last long.<br />
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A few days later, we did double hikes around the volcanoes of Turangi. These were the inspiration for Mount Doom in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, though they weren't, in fact, Mount Doom. The first hike was out to a beautiful waterfall that ran off an old lava flow. We walked through some beautiful forest and pretty fields on the way. It was quite beautiful. The second hike was along a major hiking trail through the volcanoes which takes about eight hours to complete. We only walked to the first hut, about 45 minutes away. Still, the view we got of the nearest and most picturesque of the volcanoes was perfect and the clouds even went away so we could enjoy it that much more.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6NqbYoTZ3fBDrf5LuGw0JWcc9KvMfq0oBj8BogUcLVyIokIedI-IWVkHuhhPs6582Byw-d-r6UHxVAhfSK6OYrqIRypEGFz6D-dSlio34N9QZ8PwvZfShiyxnjmVftCBpLCwQ_NrtxkE/s1600/P4102152.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6NqbYoTZ3fBDrf5LuGw0JWcc9KvMfq0oBj8BogUcLVyIokIedI-IWVkHuhhPs6582Byw-d-r6UHxVAhfSK6OYrqIRypEGFz6D-dSlio34N9QZ8PwvZfShiyxnjmVftCBpLCwQ_NrtxkE/s1600/P4102152.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A waterfall along one of the trails in Tangariro National Poark.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc-Ra7illIRmQqEHHq_A2nBfjJUugVyoiugk1hQGJfxKAa2sWlto37LUouGsQROz5YalstUsyzbtkiT5fN22Eu7-rWhcVZXCNY4JmyLLGbWZi4HK9d-nvqX-l9YlUemWCB2AewxgiofKs/s1600/P4102199.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc-Ra7illIRmQqEHHq_A2nBfjJUugVyoiugk1hQGJfxKAa2sWlto37LUouGsQROz5YalstUsyzbtkiT5fN22Eu7-rWhcVZXCNY4JmyLLGbWZi4HK9d-nvqX-l9YlUemWCB2AewxgiofKs/s1600/P4102199.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the volcanoes in Tongariro National Park.</td></tr>
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Flashforward a few days to Auckland where Kara decided that all the animals she had seen were not enough, so we went out on a boat to the island of Rangitoto, where we were promised magnificent views and animals. We didn't really get either, unfortunately. The weather got somewhat bad while we were out there, and the boat was diverted to a different dock which made the walk a whole heck of a lot less scenic. The island was an old shield volcano (such as the Hawaiian Islands) and it still had a bunch of rocky lava flows all over it, which were mildly cool but got old fast. The climb to the top of the mountain was long and rather boring, and the view was nothing spectacular. I took a panoramic of it, but the clouds kind of greyed everything out.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbUCRgiAmPUd7bD4YgjFURyOuAFS5wW2hIc5ZZvOBX4i8m_4FibFFQw8jeS_AC6Sj6r5vWc1kEhzHmVdf8MDjRX6hOTnN9PT6vZqcLiwMjMVx93tSx-RPj6cpnZXyGxFwFhZkn2pblzo/s1600/P4142392.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbUCRgiAmPUd7bD4YgjFURyOuAFS5wW2hIc5ZZvOBX4i8m_4FibFFQw8jeS_AC6Sj6r5vWc1kEhzHmVdf8MDjRX6hOTnN9PT6vZqcLiwMjMVx93tSx-RPj6cpnZXyGxFwFhZkn2pblzo/s1600/P4142392.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Auckland from the ferry to Rangitoto Island.</td></tr>
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At Tauranga, a few days later, we decided foolishly to go on a hike around yet another extinct volcano. Considering it was raining at the time, this was in hindsight a stupid thing to do. The walk took over an hour and we were head-to-toe soaked afterwards. We returned to our AirBnB to change and dry off a bit, but we had to get on the road so I was wet the rest of the day, which wasn't very fun. The hike itself was somewhat scenic, but it was so cloudy/foggy that we couldn't see out in the bay very far and the mountain itself was shrouded in mist, so it definitely could have been better. All-in-all, not a great hike.<br />
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That's pretty much it for hikes and walks. Quite a lot in a little time, but there were so many more we didn't do that we could have. New Zealand is a hiker's paradise, for sure.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish</i></span><br />
Getting a thesis chapter done while on the road is virtually impossible, I've found. We even dedicated a day to it at Auckland, which turned into a nice afternoon out at the MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology) instead. I mean, I got a few pages done early on, but we kept getting in too late and then there was <i style="font-weight: bold;">DAREDEVIL!</i> Yeah, that's right, a t.v. show distracted us. When we got into our otherwise rather crappy accommodation in Auckland, we discovered that we had a huge HDTV there. And I mean HUGE, like 60+ inch huge. Conveniently, I had downloaded first episode of <i>Daredevil</i> the night before, so we tuned in and OMG! Yeah, that's pretty much when our studies ended. All our other t.v. shows went on hold, all our nightly homework assignments went out the door, we have been watching a couple episodes a night, with a few interruptions, whenever possible. We were going to see <i>Marvel's The Avengers: Age of Ultron </i>tonight, but the tickets sold out, so we're going tomorrow instead. That means we get the <i>Daredevil</i> finale tonight instead. It's been a Marvel-ous week to be sure. In any case, these next two weeks are going to be <i>very</i> thesis-filled.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way</i></span><br />
Roads are something the kiwis are kind of bad at. From paving them properly, to keeping them at least two-lane, to remembering to put reflectors in them, to maintaining them—kiwis are bad at all of that and our trip proved it. First off, unpaved roads show up suddenly and without warning more often than they should. Sometimes a perfectly paved thoroughfare will become unpaved for a brief stint because of a recent construction project or something. When will they pave it? Someday, I presume. The road at the end our street is still unpaved three months after the construction crews stopped working on it. .:.sigh.:. Another phenomenon is the lazy bridges. Bridges here are often only single-lane. When you approach one of these, there will be a sign showing who has right-of-way, and even some long bridges are one-way, with little pullouts in the middle in case two cars both decided to try it at the same time. I can only guess that economics is the reason for these narrow bridges, but they really stink. From there, reflectors and even reflective road lines don't really seem to be a thing here. When it rains, the lines in the road literally disappear from sight—in Wellington, we had no idea if we were in one lane or straddling two lanes. It was sheer craziness! And road signs are often not reflective either, so at night you can't see where you're going or what you're driving on. One last annoyance is that most roads in New Zealand are two-lane, even major thoroughfares. Passing lanes may be provided, but it is always the slow lane that must merge into the passing lane, even though the passing lane always is broken off from the slow lane. It doesn't make sense, really. Passing lanes are not always marked, either. Sometimes they get their own lane, sometimes they are short sections that the vehicles have to almost completely stop in, and sometimes they are just really wide sections of road where cars can just move over to (sometimes noted, sometimes not). Regardless, almost all sections of road allow passing, and double-yellow lines outside of cities are pretty rare and reserved only for the most dangerous passing areas (sometimes). The bottom line: driving in New Zealand is more free, but is also less controlled and somewhat more difficult, especially at night and/or in rainy weather.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-22335954612888441522015-04-05T02:48:00.001-07:002015-04-05T02:48:08.747-07:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Misreading French Since 2014 (2:8 – 04/05/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Outoftowners</i></span><br />
We were privileged this past week to receive a visit from my old friend Nicole and her partner Neil. I met Nicole back in Fall 2004 in Swansea, Wales when I studied abroad for a semester. The two of us became fast friends and despite having a relatively large group of Americans and British friends while living over there, Nicole is the only one of them that I've remained in regular contact with. She and Neil were in town to carpool to Queenstown with Neil's sister, who is a dairy farmer near Christchurch. This is a good fact, because that means the two of them are likely to visit again before we leave and Kara and I both enjoy their company quite a lot. The four of us are peas in the same proverbial pod.<br />
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After giving them the grand tour of Christchurch (i.e., showing them the crater that is downtown) and chatting for a while at our place, I went with both of them to Neil's sister's dairy farm where I got to see how cows get milked industrially first-hand. It was crazy! The cows are on a 50-cow carousel spinning around as they get milked. And they like it; they really like it. I guess we've bread cow to have such large utters now that they are literally stomping their hooves in anticipation of being milked. They knew that they're doing from start to finish, with the workers hardly having to do anything more than attaching the milking device and removing it. Each cow gets milked twice a day, 12 hours apart, and only sits on the carousel for about 15 minutes or so. It was an amazingly efficiently operation. The cows here are also pretty much all grass-fed, free range cattle. Apparently the cattle are just as efficient as in the US, but live much happier lives.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Time Twisting</i></span><br />
I hate daylight savings time, it just is such a joke. I know farmers like to have light when they wake up, or something like that, but most of us aren't farmers and having to adjust all of our schedules for them is really a pain. Granted, I like the bonus hour I got last night with the end of daylight savings time, but I'll just have to give up an hour in six months. The trade-off isn't worth it. That being said, Autumn and Winter here are very strange. In the Northern Hemisphere, Fall comes with Halloween and Thanksgiving (at least in the US), and Winter is heralded in with Christmas and New Years. There's literally none of that here. I guess Easter is the equivalent of Christmas, but the anticipation for it is a lot less and its migratory nature on the calendar makes it just harder to get excited about. In any case, that's at the start of the season, too. In Fall. Winter in New Zealand literally has no major holidays, nothing to get excited about. And the lack of insulated houses is already making ours feel colder. Throw on top of that New Zealand Standard Time, with its sunset at 6:00pm and sunrise at 6:00am and you have a relatively dark existence. Until yesterday, our evenings were light and enjoyable, but tonight just feels like it's going on forever. The darkness came so suddenly, and I really don't like it. Granted, this is the time it should be according to the late Pope Gregory and his calendar, but if we stuck to the same time year-round, we could acclimate to this sudden darkness, not just get pitched into it. Blarg.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon</i></span><br />
Cooking has gone somewhat to the wayside lately but I have been refining my sourdough and putting my jalapeños to use. The sourdough bread is becoming slowly better as the sour flavour comes out, but it's taking its sweet time. I'm not sure why it is taking so long, but at least I have the cooking end of things down pat. I've been using the bread machine, since it is insulated, to help the bread rise, while I can also use its mixing function to stir in new amounts of flour and water occasionally. While bread isn't the healthiest thing in the world, at least sourdough rises by eating its own gluten sugars, which means it is relatively sugar free.<br />
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Over the past two weeks, we've also made two batches of jalapeño hot sauces. The first batch was with green peppers and it is very much in the style of most taquerias, although it is slightly on the hot side. My red pepper blend, though, puts the other batch to shame. It is HOT, too hot, really. I dillute it with the other sauce when I use it, but man it's just fire. Because it was made exclusively with red peppers and a few sweet tomatoes (small ones), it has a slightly sweet taste to it, making it taste a bit like Tabasco sauce or Tapatillo, neither of which I like much. Fortunately it's so hot that you can hardly taste the old flavour anymore. I still have a whole bag of mixed peppers and we have a few more traditional chilis growing in the garden, all of which we want to use to make a hopefully milder salsa.<br />
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Lastly, I harvested the seeds from four (mostly three) sunflowers this afternoon, washed them, boiled them in salt water, and plan to roast them tomorrow. I'm not sure how they'll turn out, but Kara will eat them on our trip to the North Island if they are edible. None of the seeds look like the sunflower seeds in America, but Kara tried one and said it tastes pretty much the same (i.e., fibery). Fingers crossed that the seeds will be edible.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs</i></span><br />
Another two weeks, another lack of hiking anywhere interesting. We drove around a lot, though, with Nicole and Neil. We finally visited the Christchurch Cathedral, which though in the middle of town is surprisingly difficult to get to. It looks awful still—much of it collapsed in the 2010-2011 earthquakes. We drove to Sumner afterwards and then up Summit Road to the top where we hiked to an overlook of Lyttleton Bay. Surprisingly, on the south bank, nearly completely isolated from the rest of the world, a whole little town was flourishing with a small craft harbour just near the mouth of the bay. So crazy. It must take those people 45 minutes to an hour just to get to Lyttleton and another 20 minutes to get to the nearest decent grocery store. Some people really like their isolation, I guess. Other than that and a short walk around the dairy farm, the weeks have been pretty dry with hiking. During our North Island trip, we are going to regret that fact very much as our feet collapse beneath us. Ugh.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish</i></span><br />
Most of my time the past two weeks has been spent working on my thesis. I have a chapter due on May 1st which, to be fair, is still a month away, but I will be gone for two weeks of that month, beginning on Tuesday. I got all my book reading done for it but I have a number more articles to read. I've already written a 5,000-word draft of the chapter, but there are no quotes or citations in it yet and I suspect that large portions will have to be re-written before the end. During our trip, we both plan to work in the evenings when possible, despite wanting to check out the towns. Fortunately, for our sakes, the smaller towns along the way close down at night, and with daylight savings time now over, darkness may also convince us to not bother with going out at night. We'll see. We are in Auckland for three full days, though, and one of those days is designated for studying-only (within reason). It doesn't make for an ideal vacation, but I have to prove to my supervisor that I am capable of writing a thesis chapter. Hopefully this one does it. I have far more sources than I need and I also have quite a few primary sources, all in Modern French, Middle French, or Church Latin, so that's got to help me out some. We won't know, though, until it's submitted and assessed.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way</i></span><br />
Public holidays in New Zealand are a strange phenomena that cannot be explained by religion or logic. Easter, the pinnacle of the Christian holidays, wins the award for strangest of them all. First off, Easter is a <i>big</i> deal here, at least in regards to marketing. The United States has Easter egg hunts and candy and whatnot, but not like the Kiwis do. When you walk into the department store here, you get bombarded with giant chocolate easter eggs. They are everywhere. Large displays in the middle of the store and little bits here and there. And they have shark eggs, and dinosaur eggs, and Star Wars eggs, and, of course, Biggy Piggy eggs. Yum. Second, Good Friday is a public holiday. A <i>mandatory</i> public holiday. Only essential businesses are open, nothing else. Fair enough, except that New Zealand is one of the most secular states in the world with fewer than 48% of the residents being Christian divided between <i>all </i>denominations including Mormons. Saturday is, naturally, a normal business day, at least as far as Saturdays go. Easter Sunday itself, meanwhile, is sort of a holiday, but mostly in that Sunday-is-always-a-holiday kind of way. As a business holiday, Easter is celebrated on Monday (Easter Monday), which is another mandatory public holiday. See reasons why this is stupid above. Lastly, Tuesday is celebrated by some businesses as the increasingly silly Easter Tuesday, a holiday with literally no function other than to give people yet another day off for a religious celebration they don't celebrate. It mostly is for schools, probably so kids can return home from a long weekend or something. Woo!<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-88547422290897687472015-03-22T01:09:00.000-07:002015-03-22T01:11:28.073-07:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Unconsciously Elected Since 2014 (2:7 – 03/22/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>How to Be Elected Club Exec</i></span><br />
In an interesting twist, two weeks ago I became an exec of UC HistSoc. I'm not quite sure how this happened: I was minding my own business one day when BOOM, I got an invite to the exec Facebook page. Yeah, that's how things apparently work these days. I went to the first exec meeting where I became co-marketing rep with Ruth Larsen, an MA student that shares the same room with Kara and I. I also was elected bank rep since I'll be at the school the longest (the rest of them are all MA students). Very strange and sudden. To be fair, Kara's a member of two exec boards and is a consultant for a third. We tried to have our first event last week, but we're still having to go through hoops to reactivate the club for 2015, so we're hoping this week will be different. Fingers crossed!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Selling From Down Under</i></span><br />
In other news, my book, <i><a href="https://www.createspace.com/5330016">Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains</a>, </i>is selling relatively well for only having a single venue currently. In better news, there will be 12 copies available at the Bruce MacGregor talk on March 26th, which should really boost my publicity. I've already found a few small errors in it—nothing major, fortunately—but I'm still waiting for reviews to come in. I'm not even sure if people have received their copies yet.<br />
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Kara threw a book release party for me on St. Patty's Day, which was nice. We ended up staying really late with mostly other history MAs from our room and the adjacent one. But it was nice chatting about things that weren't only about our supervisors (though that certainly came up). Alcohol wasn't even needed because we were all drunk on the cake and rice krispy treats Kara made for us, as well as pizza, juice, and other tasty things.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon</i></span><br />
Kara finally finished her baking class and we've returned to good old fashioned December diets. Perhaps we've been having too many carbohydrates, but fortunately I haven't gained any more weight this year. In fact, I've been pretty stable for the past three months, which is great considering it's the lowest weight I've been for years.<br />
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I have been having much better luck in making my own sourdough. After getting the San Francisco sourdough starter smuggled into the country, it took a few batches to get things tasting...sour. It still isn't there quite yet, but it is getting closer. Things like this take time. One thing that is awesome, though, is that I discovered a recipe that uses a bread machine to do all the work for me. The loaves don't come out as perty, but they taste just the same and the slices of bread are much bigger and more even. It still takes around 24 hours to get a loaf done, though, so patience is a virtue. My refried beans recipe is now consistently coming out tasting the same, too, so we look forward to that each week. Next week, when we have some friends from the US visiting us, we are going to try making our own tortillas again with the tortilla press. Hopefully they come out better than last time.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs</i></span><br />
Hiking has not been a huge priority lately, partially because of the increasingly cold and wet whether and partially because we just don't have the time. That being said, we have wondered all over our local neighbourhood and discovered a few strange things. First, corner markets—dairies, they call them here—are everywhere. We have five dairies within a three block radius that we know of, not counting the BP petrol station market or the various other markets across from it. And all dairies sell the same thing: milk, butter, junk food, soda and energy drinks, cigarettes, and newspapers. They're like pint-sized 7-11s but they're everywhere! They're not even owned by a single company. It's very strange. They also sell dairy products for much cheaper than the stores (at least 10% less if not more).<br />
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Second, there are literally no houses beside the Avon River. It is freaky. When the earthquake hit, all the homes along the river sank and were declared too dangerous to live in. Over past four years, each and every one has been levelled so that many of the lots don't even look like they've been recently lived in except for the barrier plants. It's freaky! The couple of lots that do have homes still on them are literally falling to pieces. The earthquake definitely did a lot of damage to this area, but Avonside especially got it bad.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish</i></span><br />
After a less-than-inspiring meeting with my supervisor and a more inspiring meeting with another random lecturer from a completely different department, I finally decided to reboot my thesis entirely. Same topic, but the chapters have been utterly reorganised and now I have a ton more of them, which is not exactly a good or a bad thing, it's just a new nuisance to contend with. My supervisor has been strict, though polite, but there is definitely tension building there. I've decided to deal with it by largely ignoring him unless I can't avoid it. Many people have recommended I take this approach, which works just fine for me. Others have also been helpful in fleshing out the character and nature of my supervisor so that I can anticipate his actions and opinions better. Hopefully things will resolve themselves in the future, but I also kind of hope another medievalist appears that I can switch to. Personality clashes really aren't my thing.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way</i></span><br />
Generally speaking, Americans like to keep control over their cats and dogs. There are reasons for this, and not all of them are entirely logical. Take cats, for example, they like to do their own thing and don't like to be restricted. Therefore, New Zealanders let them do their thing—outside, inside, whatever. There's not really any such thing as an indoor cat here. Dogs, on the other hand, have to be more restricted because they're, well, dumber. That being said, when people take their dogs for a walk, there's a very good chance those dogs will be running free. Dogs here just seem to be more loyal in general; they don't run away when unleashed and they don't even stray to far from their owners. They obey commands and return when called. I don't know if it is just how dogs are raised here or if it's an inherent trust relationship that develops with a dog. In any case, it's very different from the US. To get back to the cat issue, because cats are indoor/outdoor creatures, people don't really understand people like Kara and I, who imprison our cat because he's naughty. When people are over, we have to be on our guard to make sure the cat stays in. And we don't like letting people, even our landlords, in when we're gone because we fear that they will forget to close the door. It's a strange reality but one we have to live with because we chose to have an indoor cat. Indoor cats are a fairly normal concept in the US, but here, it is extremely unusual and people don't seem to get it.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-16912436383773388992015-03-07T22:36:00.000-08:002015-03-07T22:36:15.842-08:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Studying Hard Since 2014 (2:6, 03/08/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Feminism 101</i></span><br />
It was a cheeky Sunday and the ladyfolk were out in force. Perhaps it was because it was International Women's Day or perhaps it was because there was a panel of feminists in Sydney via livestream and right in front of me. Who knows. Anyway, for International Women's Day, the University of Canterbury in cooperation with the Sydney Opera House lives-streamed a panel of six relatively well-known feminists who were discussing the current third wave feminist movement. It was quite an enlightening discussion that had some high points, though the conclusions were all disappointingly low, especially considering the great steps back the United States has taken in the past few years regarding women's rights. Far from passing the ERA, women in America today are fighting simply for equal pay, access to free or cheap childcare services, and reproductive freedom. All of these issues should have been dealt with in the 1960s and 1970s, but they are still on the agenda today and becoming surprisingly relevant again. The streaming was about an hour followed by another hour discussion with a local panel of feminists speaking on site. Included in the mix of panelists was a Maori, an African-American, an American video game designer, a journalist, a Mormon, the FemSoc president, an Australian aborigine, a transexual woman, two Canterbury lecturers, and the elderly Germaine Greer. It was an interesting mix, though it lacked any Asians, Muslims, or truly darker-hued people, thereby slanting the debate decidedly toward the white, middle class women debate, which was remarked upon only barely. Interesting times all around, and Kara is now raring to become more politically active in feminist circles.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Book! A Book</i></span><br />
In more exciting news, <i>Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains </i>should be available for purchase by the middle of the month and best of all, it will be a print book! Check out my press release <a href="http://santacruztrains.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/santa-cruz-trains-press-release.html">here</a>. It took four days to get the indexing done, which surprised both Kara and I, and then another three days before the book got approved for the proof copy. And it was a good think it didn't get approved, too, because I had the page numbers at the beginning all over the place. I'm not sure what happened there. It's all fixed up now, though, so stay tuned and watch my Santa Cruz Trains blogs for an announcement regarding the book's release. It should hopefully be by the end of the week.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Internationals</i></span><br />
On February 27th, we had our second dinner with Operation Friendship. For those who forgot or didn't read back in December, the group is composed of elderly locals who cook dinner for local international students once a month (except January). They are a Christian group, but they are very respectful of the fact that virtually all of the attending students are either Hindu or Muslim. Thus it is a very eclectic group. Not surprisingly, most of the Canterbury students are some type of engineering major, since that's the biggest program at the school, but there are a number of other majors represented as well. One of the members, Stephen, befriended us at our first meeting and we went to a coffee shop with him the following day. Kara did most of the talking, and he was very interested in American politics. Stephen is Indian by birth but has lived in New Zealand most of his life and also has worked in the Silicon Valley, so he's been around very different cultures and had some interesting life experiences. He is going to be moving over there shortly, so we won't be able to keep him as a close friend, but it's been nice to have somebody our age to chat with who knows something about American politics.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>New Neighbours</i></span><br />
Speaking of new people, in the days immediately before and after school started up for the year, Sue, the College of Arts administrative assistant, decided that the master's students room was all full but that the PhD room could use some more souls in it. Suddenly, people were being added on a daily basis, with four added in one day! Our quiet room of about a dozen students, most of whom were rarely there has now become a nearly-full room of 20ish students, most of whom are history master's students, which makes me happy. Granted, my side of the room is quieter and less populated than Kara's side, but it still is nice. The only complaint I have (and I'm guilty of this too) is that with all the students now in there, it sometimes gets noisy, which makes it harder to work. The master's students are younger than the rest of us and they all know each other, so that's a rather strange switch from before where only a few of us knew each other, and none very well. Regardless, having more people around has been great for networking. Kara got a job out of it as an engineering English tutor, and I am now on the executive committee for a reborn HistSoc (History Society/club). Yay?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Burning Bacon: Cooking for Kara</i></span><br />
For the past month, Kara has been taking an almost exclusively-Asian cooking class. Her food has not been great, but her preparation of it has been perfect. That being said, we've been just kind of doing our own things lately for food and it has mostly worked out. I perhaps am eating a few more carbs than before, but I am also eating more meat, which is good. Fish is popular here, like in England, so I've been having that, while also indulging in the occasional hot dog (the only brand that does not include lamb meat...eck!). My sourdough utterly failed last week because I was impatient but this weekend I created a new batch using the bread machine to mix and cook it and it came out excellent—it's the first batch that actually tastes like San Francisco sourdough, which is awesome. I've learned a few things about breadmaking over the past few weeks and I'm putting those skills to work. We've also perfected my refried (though not fried at all) beans recipe. The only thing we've mostly given up on is making our own tortillas. They simply don't come out very good. They're too thick and too dry and it is too difficult to remove them from the tortilla press. Plus, they're too small for either of us except when we make enchiladas. I probably should try to make them again soon but I've just been too busy with other stuff.<br />
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As an aside, even though it is becoming autumn in the next few weeks, our garden is still going strong. We have about a dozen ears of corn almost ready for picking. A cucumber just sprouted and should be ready to eat in a week or so. We have so many zucchinis that we don't know what to do with them all. It's crazy how well they've grown, actually. We also have a whole bed of carrots with their heads sticking out of the ground. My peppers have finally begun to turn red and we have so many that we don't know what to do with them. Kara may begin taking some of these things to her tutorials for the students just to get rid of them. Four sunflowers are on the way out and we're going to hang them out for seeds once they've wilted a bit more. And coming soon should be a large tomato crop and a few pumpkins, if we're lucky, though Halloween is a bit too far away to enjoy those in their appropriate context.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ups & Downs: Going Nowhere</i></span><br />
Going out to hike has been a bit of a challenge these past two weeks. Last week was indexing...all day...both days... This week we had to catch up on other stuff plus it decided to rain yesterday, so we just haven't had time. On Monday, though, I resumed exercising on our $4 stationary bike that we picked up at a garage sale in November. I actually prefer bikes and treadmills to going outside most days because no sunscreen is required and I can watch my shows. I just finished part one of season one of <i>Outlander</i> and I'll be moving on to <i>Video Game High School</i> for the next week or so. I also watched the very first episode of <i>Pokémon</i> today and regret to say that it was not as bad as I expected and it was in many respects rather cute. .:.sigh.:. I'm downloading the full 80-episode season now (head lowered in shame).<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish: How Not to Write a Thesis in One Step</i></span><br />
I got back the first draft of the first chapter of my thesis at the beginning of last week and was disappointed to discover my adviser did not like it much at all, except for the style of writing. Most of his points were valid but we differ on a number of issues that will have to be resolved in our meeting this coming Tuesday. Unfortunately, one of the issues will not get resolved and that is my general feeling that he does not have enough time to aid and guide me in my thesis and that I have no one else to turn to. This has been a growing issue but it is at a peak right now. I should have my secondary supervisor approved by the end of the month, but until then, all she knows of me is what my adviser has said, and I don't entirely trust what he has said. It's some serious issues that need mending soon. Fortunately, I've reassessed aspects of my thesis and feel it is on a better track now, although I'm not entirely certain where I want to go with it, which is a major problem. I'm realizing that I am part of a school of thought that things information is good for information's sake, and were I writing a dissertation, that may work, but a "thesis" is by its very nature an object that is trying to prove a point. I don't really know what my point is and I don't know if I really want to make one, so this is something else that we need to decide upon.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Kiwi Way: Europeans at Heart</i></span><br />
Finally, I bring us back to the Kiwi. Kiwis are Europeans. This is something I've come to realize completely. While there is a strong infusion of Maori culture that underlies much of Kiwi life, Kiwis in general relate more with the British than they do with the Tahitian. Kara and I began notetaking two weeks ago for two LAWS classes (yeah, plural, weird) and they have taught us a lot about New Zealand laws and legal practices. The most interesting is that the Parliament in New Zealand is absolute. Nobody can question it, nobody can override it, and there is no judicial review. There also is no written constitution. Laws can be made and unmade by any government, and old laws can be intentionally or unintentionally replaced by new laws. The government here is based on a snapshot of the United Kingdom common law from 1840, with diversions thereafter, but aspects of British law after 1840 can and are often still considered in legal decisions. In other words, government here is a jumble of British and local laws. Stranger, still, is the fact that the Treaty of Waitangi, made with the Maori tribes of the North Island, is not technically a binding legal document—in fact, it doesn't have an status on its own in law. It is referred to heavily by other laws, but the treaty itself has no legal status, which is amazing considering how important it is to understanding British-Maori relations.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">Fortnightly </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">is </span><u style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;">the</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 12px;"> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-28455807940225116682015-02-22T13:37:00.001-08:002015-02-22T13:47:05.293-08:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Wishing I Were Asleep Since 2014 (2:5, 02/22/2015)<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-7466043763096062356" itemprop="description articleBody" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 728px;">
<b style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="font-size: large;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><i>One Book Down, Index to Go</i></span></span></span><br />
As of today, my book <i>Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains</i> is 100% done and formatted. All that is left to do is the indexing, which will not be a fun task, but shouldn't be too difficult thanks to the power of searchable PDFs. Still, it will take precious time that I barely have. If everything goes alright, the book will be available on February 26th, as I have intended since the start. Making that date has been darn near impossible, but somehow I pulled it off. I am still awaiting a few things from the SLV Museum, primarily a few photographs for the last two sections, but I'm uncertain if those images are forthcoming. It will be a loss to the book, but I'm more worried about the blank page it will leave in the middle of the fifth section. More news should be coming out at the end of the week on this subject, so check my Facebook wall and other Santa Cruz Trains outlets for information.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>MacBeth!!!</i></span></span><br />
Last week we attempted to see <i>two</i> plays that were being put on by the city. The first play, unfortunately, got rained out despite the fact that the rain let up within 15 minutes of the show time. Since it was outside and staged on a grassy field, I imagine it wouldn't have been that enjoyable. It was <i>Peter Pan</i> and was understandably geared toward the younger crowd anyway. Still, we were a bit bummed.<br />
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Two days later, though, we got to see <i>MacBeth</i>, Shakespeare's origin story for the Stuart family. Yeah, I went there. It was a much reduced version of the play, only lasting 1:45, but it was fun. The set was on a knoll across a small creek and another knoll, upon which we all sat. It was a fun little arrangement, although Kara and my backs were not liking the situation a bit later in the evening. It almost rained, but after just a few drops it cleared up enough for the play to complete without interruption. It was in many ways the last event of the summer here. School starts on Monday at the Uni and everything is returning to the normal patterns of life. While summer is still another month long, like in the US it ends early.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>A New Year...to Some</i></span></span><br />
On Tuesday we celebrated Chinese New Years with a friend from our post-graduate office and his girlfriend. They made eight (EIGHT!) different dishes for us, all unique to China. We hadn't heard of most of them, though a few seemed familiar. The food was quite good and even I, who don't generally like Chinese food, found something to like among the dishes. Oddly the spiced pork bits were probably my favourite, despite there being two chicken dishes on the table. We stayed at his place until 10:00pm, mostly discussing China and the US, their differences and similarities. It was pretty fun. Chinese New Years is like Christmas to the Chinese, so it was fun experiencing this with some native Chinese for once.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;">REGULARS</b><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Burning Bacon: Blueberries Were Meant for Picking</i></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 22px;">Some fruits have thorns, others are notoriously difficult to pick and require cutters, and then there are blueberries. No fruit is more easy to pick than blueberries: they just fall off without a fight. On Saturday, Kara and I went to a local blueberry farm where we filled up buckets of blueberries at a cost of $14/kg. It was a good deal and didn't require that much work. The weather was kinda crappy, but since it wasn't raining, it meant we could peacefully pick without much fear of a sunburn. We got a ton of berries, almost 2kg worth. The orchard where they were growing had very few spiders or other bugs, so it was a fairly risk-free exercise. Although we were warned that one of the species of blueberries was already picked over, I filled half my bucket with that one type. There were some large suckers hiding deep in the bushes, but the lack of thorns or bugs meant I could reach as far in as I needed to to pull them out. It was a quite different experience from blackberry picking, where the fear of hitting thorns is constant and painful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Ups & Downs: Block Walk</i></span></span><br />
Sadly we did not find time over the past two weeks to go on any formal hike. We definitely tried, but we were just too busy. The weather wasn't really cooperating either. What we did accomplish was a 0.8 mile walk roundtrip to a local park. This might not seem like much but the park was actually surprisingly cute. It is tucked away on a few parcels of land that were converted into a crown park a long while back, I imagine. It is only accessible via two narrow paths beside homes, but the park itself is surprisingly large with a playground, gazebo for weddings, and even a small kiddy pool (less than a foot deep). It was surrounded by some poorly-maintained gardens and benches. It was nothing great, but its quaintness tucked away in the middle of a bustling neighbourhood was somehow reassuring. We'll probably go back and read there sometime, unless the kids are too noisy. Construction near the park makes it so enjoying the park is probably a weekend-only option.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>The Kiwi Way: The Anti-Australia</i></span></span><br />
One thing that is quite strange about New Zealand, placing it at direct odds with Australia, is the utter lack of poisonous or deadly creatures here. They just don't have them. Period. I've asked a number of Kiwi what they believe the most dangerous insect is here, and most couldn't give me an answer. Sand flies, which are a type of biting gnat, are quite annoying and can leave infected wounds for weeks (I still have some from Queenstown) are probably the most dangerous thing on the island. They have bees which can sting, but their largest variety are the most pacifistic things ever. If you've see <i>The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug</i>, the big bees that are in Beorn's house near the beginning of the film are about right for the bees here: large but certainly not in charge. I'm not even sure if they have stingers. There are no poisonous species of anything here, from what I can tell. No frogs, no insects, no spiders or scorpions, and no snakes. In fact, New Zealand customs authority works extremely diligently to keep foreign animals out of the country, even though the British brought dozens of species into the country in the 1800s. Thus fear not if you visit. Australia: well that's a completely different story.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish: Sudden Proposals</i></span></span><br />
After getting my first chapter done, I was prepared to spend the next few weeks reading peacefully, taking notes, and writing my next chapter. Unfortunately, bureaucracy stepped in. There is a requirement that ever 6 months a progress report is completed and filed. While the report is mandated by the school, the details of it are created by the department. Well, my department likes to be extremely pesky about things and decided to completely write new requirements for this year. I have to summarise my entire thesis into two double-spaced pages with citations and references, a timeline, and other details. It is basically an impossible task. Fortunately, they gave me an extension...the problem is I don't want an extension, I want to get the thing in on time and out of mind. But my supervisor is insisting on reading it first and providing comments, and the department head also has to read through it and comment. And since everyone's busy right now since the semester just started, I'm expecting this whole thing to take a month at least. It really is inefficient and does nothing at all. There is no grade attached to it, the post-graduate office doesn't need the 2-page proposal, and the department is going to just throw it away after approving it. It really is a huge waste of time. Welcome to academic bureaucracy, I guess.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;">DISCLAIMER</b><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.4;"><i>The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i> <i>Fortnightly </i>is <u>the</u> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></span></div>
Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-37583826715226658362015-02-07T20:32:00.003-08:002015-02-07T20:32:53.755-08:00The Khagan Fortnightly: Forgetful Since 2014 (2:4, 02/08/2015)<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-7466043763096062356" itemprop="description articleBody" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 728px;">
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">UPDATE!</span></b><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Change of Frequency</i></span><br />Well, Kara and I have been in Christchurch for over five months now and I've decided to reduce the frequency of these blogs accordingly. Our routine has become fairly standard with only some minor deviations that are not overly interesting, so I think a bi-weekly (fortnightly) periodical will suffice for the time being. Please direct your complains and concerns to my manager, Niko T. Cat, Jr. He will surely forward them on once he's eaten the edges and forgotten about them completely.</div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><i>Sparks!</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 22px;">We've been going every Sunday to a free concert series hosted by the City at the large downtown Hagley Park. It's been fun and has given a bit of much-needed relaxation time. We've seen bagpiper bands, synchronous dames, classic rock cover bands, and a Maori group. But the coolest by far was the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra's performance during Sparks. They played for two hours straight, generally covering famous film tunes. Still, it was very fun. It ended with a fireworks show to the theme song to Superman, which was fun. What wasn't quite as fun was the fact that it was heavily sprinkling most of the time and was quite cold for it being the middle of summer here. Also, about 1/4 of the way through the Superman theme, the fireworks stopped. Apparently there was some technical problem. After the song was done and after a brief delay, the fireworks resumed. The orchestra only jumped in near the end, but the spirit was there at least. This is the third fireworks show we've seen while here (Guy Fawkes Day, New Years Eve, Sparks), and there is another one in a few weeks. Seriously, these people need to spend less money on fireworks and more on repairing the city!</span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Goodbye, Sweet Roommate!</i></span><br /><span style="line-height: 22px;">Well, we lost our first and only roommate yesterday. Sam the Kiwi hasn't been doing well in Christchurch due to a bad job market and high costs and so he's decided to return to Wellington, where he worked for decades in the 1990s and 2000s. He was our first friend here and we're sad to see him go. He is a major boardgamer, which has been nice because he's always up for a game. We borrowed two of his games before he left and plan to return them to him whenever we visit Wellington (lookin' like April). We took him out to dinner last Monday to have one last outing before he goes. Then last Saturday, we had an all-day game day with him and a bunch of others. Kara and I played Eldritch Horror—it's conclusion was notably less than satisfactory—and then we played to games of CamelUp before leaving. We were there for six hours. CamelUp took no more than an hour in total to play. Do the math regarding the length of the other game. Yeah. And we lost. yay... :-( </span></div>
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<br /><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">REGULARS</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Burning Bacon: Sourdough Gone Right</i></span><br /><span style="line-height: 22px;">So apparently I've been doing sourdough all wrong. I finally had my parents smuggle in some San Francisco sourdough starter for me to use as a base, and it has gone splendidly since then. Right after I got it, I did one loaf of bread and it came out at least five times as good as my local loaves. Part of the reason for the success, though, is the manual that came with the starter, which teaches me right proper how to make a loaf in any condition. The next week, I made four smaller loaves, but the batch was twice the size. These ones I spiced with garlic and other spices and they came out great. Next, we move on to trying the loaves with spelt flour, which has much lower gluten content and is, therefore, better for you. I'm also excited to try the local sourdough yeast again now that I know what I did wrong last time. And finally, there is a recipe for making the sourdough bread in a bread machine, which would probably make the whole process about a million times easier...I may be too optimistic on that account. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 22px;">I also have been harvesting my jalapeños lately and have a whole jar of pickled peppers now. The bush, meanwhile, has like a dozen more peppers and they've been getting bigger than before before turning red. In fact, they aren't turning red at all. Red peppers are supposed to be hotter, but since they're all mixed, I don't know. I haven't actually used any of my peppers yet because we made a big batch of refried beans and froze them a while back, but I suspect we'll be making some more in a week or so, so we'll see how good these peppers are. Yum!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Ups & Downs: Hiking the Port Hills</i></span><br /><span style="line-height: 22px;">The port hills, which is the remnant wall of the Lyttleton Volcano, has numerous hiking zones on its sides and many state parks accessible to the public. A while back, we went on one such hike toward the Summit. My knee went out near the top, though, and we never got there. Two weeks ago, we tried a different route to the top, through barren brown grassland and a steep switchbacked track, and made it, exhausted, to the top at Summit Road. From there, we were able to see all of Christchurch and Lyttleton Harbour, which was really cool. The hike down was terrible, but my leg didn't go out.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 22px;">Last week on Tuesday, we went to a different, more remote part of the Port Hills called Kennedys Bush. There was an old slate and aggregate quarry at this site and a hiking trail that wrapped above and around it. The history placards made the entire journey much easier and the hike took less than an hour. Still, it was a nice day with scattered sunlight. The wind was fierce and clouds blocked the Southern Alps, unfortunately, but the view of Christchurch from the hills was beautiful. It was also cool to look over the edge of the quarry from the top. It was active as recently as twenty years ago, but was quickly converted to a park afterwards. We probably won't go back to the place but it was a fun little trip. We know of a few other Port Hills walks to try before we get tired of them and have to look for more adventurous nearby hiking areas. The next one will probably take us to the former gun batteries above Taylor's Mistake. That one should remind us well of the Cabrillo National Monument relics left behind from World War II.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><i>The Kiwi Way: On Less Interesting Holidays</i></span><br /><span style="line-height: 22px;">New Zealand lacks many of the creative holidays that Americans celebrate, but there are a few that replace them. One in particular was just celebrated last Friday called Waitangi Day. It is kind of the </span><span style="line-height: 22px;">equivalent</span><span style="line-height: 22px;"> to New Zealand's independence day, but with a very strange history to it and a lack of patriotic celebration. Here's the back story. In 1840, a treaty was signed between the Maori of the North Island and the British settlers (virtually no Europeans were on the South Island yet). This was kind of unprecedented because it gave the Maori more powers than the British gave to most other </span><span style="line-height: 22px;">indigenous</span><span style="line-height: 22px;"> groups. Its effects are still felt quite frequently today in many different areas of society. The holiday, therefore, recognises the signing of this treaty. But it didn't really bring peace and it didn't bring happiness. The Maori was classified as second-class citizens after it was signed and the British got free rein over much of New Zealand. Nowadays, the Maori use the treaty to stop construction projects, force dual language recognition of various things such as national parks, and halt the use of natural marine resources which the British did not anticipate in 1840 (like oil!). Thus nobody really likes the treaty on either side, and the day really isn't a celebration except for the businesses that decide to have sales during the weekend after the day. It's a very different feeling than with the US Independence Day, where patriotism is all played out—here, Waitangi Day is a solemn reminder of the divides that still exist between both ethnic groups and perceptions of New Zealand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><i>Thesis Shmeshish: The Great Paper Rush</i></span><br /><span style="line-height: 22px;">The last two weeks have been hectic, and I mean that quite literally. Two weeks ago was my writing week for the first chapter of my thesis, and it was a long and tough slog. I worked through the weekend. Kara had a similar project so neither of us took a day off until Tuesday. I had a ton of writing to do. The final first chapter clocked in at around 15,200 words, which is a sixth of my entire thesis. Granted it still is lacking many sources and needs massive clean-up, but my due date was February 1st and I made it, so I'm happy on that account at least.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 22px;">Simultaneous with the thesis writing was formatting for my train book. This took my evenings and late night for the first week; the second week I moved it into the day and forewent my thesis since my next deadline isn't until May. Formatting has taken a ton of time, with all the photos having to be Photoshopped for cleanliness and brightness, and captions have to be written. Plus little things keep coming up within the articles that require further work, such as missing citations, new information that needs to be added, and strange formatting errors. I've also had to add a few more custom maps to the mix, which just adds to the mess. I will certainly be happy when this book is off my plate. As it is, I just finished the third section (minus four photographs) and am ready to start the fourth. Fortunately the fifth and last section is smaller than the rest and shouldn't take more than a few days to finish.</span></div>
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<br /><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 1.4;"><i>The Khagan <strike>Weekly</strike></i> <i>Fortnightly </i>is <u>the</u> 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 China. In fact, if you are reading this in China, you are a bad Han! Blogger is blocked in China, don't you know? They have censors watching you right now. Democracy! Capitalism! USA! USA! Well, you must be using a proxy server, so right on! Go free speech!</span></div>
Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-74660437630960623562015-01-25T00:22:00.000-08:002015-01-25T00:22:23.184-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Winded Since 2014 (2:3, 01/25/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Into the Southern Alps</i></span><br />
New Zealand has a mountain range that runs the length of the South Island known to the world as the Southern Alps, mostly because they look remarkably similar to the European Alps. This last week, Kara and I traveled south to the small city of Queenstown tucked deeply into this range on the banks of a large lake. The glacier-covered peaks surround the lake, while more heavily glaciated mountains can be found at the heads of the major valleys. The lake radiates a foggy blue quality that is quite fascinating. What is more fascinating, though, is that the lake is actually drinkable. It is 99% pure, which is more clean than most bottled waters. We even had a glass of lake water, proffered by a tour boat skipper who took us around the lake with a large family of Chinese tourists and two confused Europeans of unknown origin.<br />
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The town of Queenstown is very much a tourist resort, though fortunately everyone has to work to get there—no cruise ships! In the winter, the town is a ski resort; in the summer, it is a backpackers' convergence. And it was busy. Despite raining for all four days that we were there (it wasn't <i>too</i> bad), every hotel, hostel, bed and breakfast, and lodge was booked full. Fortunately we got in when we did. Our hostel had a beautiful view of the city, the lake, and the nearby mountains, including the one that had a world-famous gondola ride up it. The downside was that parking was limited and we were up a steep hill, which meant unhappy hikes into town.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>On Glaciers</i></span><br />
The glaciers were amazing, and we got right up close to one of them. On a side trip on our first full day in the town, we traveled north to the Rob Roy Glacier. This glacier sits high above a steep gulch overlooking a narrow river flood plain. All of the waters were such a foggy blue that they could only be glacially-fed. In fact, glaciers capped all the surrounding peaks, but Rob Roy was one of the more accessible ones. We took a two-hour uphill hike through light forests in rain and heavy wind, finally passing above the tree line to find a spectacular view of the hanging glacier. Most of it sits atop the adjacent hill, but a part hangs over the edge and occasionally cleaves, falling into the ravine below (though not when we were there). It was quite a sight. The climb back was slightly shorter but felt longer since there was little to anticipate. The glacial creek that ran beside the trail was very loud, too, and the wind at the end of the trail was not so bad as when we began on it, but was still fierce.<br />
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The next day, we traveled north above Queenstown again, but this time following around the lake. The road became dirt and required a few fords, which we traversed, and a one that we decided against attempting. Again, high hanging glaciers sat in nooks and crannies among the surrounding mountains. On the way to this place, we passed through Paradise, our first <i>Hobbit</i> location in New Zealand. Paradise and the nearby Diamond Lake were the setting for Beorn's house in the second film.<br />
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Finally, on our journey home, we passed two massive artificial lakes that power most of the South Island via hydroelectric dams. These lakes, too, were glacial in origins and Mount Cook, the tallest point in the country, could be seen at the head of one of them, shrouded slightly in clouds. We last saw Mount Cook from the West Coast at Fox Glacier. With so many glaciers around, it is amazing to think how many more there once were. Photos of Rob Roy, Fox, and other glaciers that we have seen, taken in the 1800s, show much larger and more impressive bodies of ice than are visible today. A generally warming climate and the hole in the ozone layer above New Zealand have rapidly shrunk these ice age remnants to little more than snowballs.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Other Southern City</i></span><br />
On the drive down to Queenstown, we spent two nights at Dunedin (do-NEE-din), an old Scottish settlement that became famous as a gold rush settler drop-off point in the 1860s. The town is famous mostly for its heavily-photographed train station, which looks nice but is totally going to fall to bits whenever the city experiences its long-overdue mega-earthquake. The town sits at the end of a very long and deep bay which formed inside the mouth of an extinct volcano, much like Christchurch's Lyttleton harbour and nearby Akaroa. The high ridges along the side of the bay are beautiful, with trees, pastures, and crags. The beaches on the east side of Otago Peninsula are famous for their remoteness and their status as penguin breeding grounds, although only a few actually play host to penguins. At the end of the peninsula, albatross and seagulls also breed and raise their young. One such seagull, apparently quite happy with its newfound ability to fly, even graced me with some sample guano on my hair. So kind of it.<br />
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On the first evening we were there, we visited one of the remote beaches, located at the end of a long dirt road. A few fur seals were hanging out on the sands, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. A heavy mist didn't keep us there for long. The next day, the peninsula was so fogged-in that we couldn't see much of the beautiful scenery. Foolishly, we drove the top of the ridge and found ourselves with about 50 metres visibility. Not a fun ride, to be sure. The last day, when we left, it was perfectly clear and we finally got our wonderful views. We stayed on the peninsula at an AirB&B (i.e., private house) and traveled to the city during the day. We visited two wonderful museums, went on a tour of the New Zealand Cadbury factory, and contemplated climbing the steepest hill in the world—Baldwin Street, for the record, and no, we didn't climb it. Overall, we probably won't go back to Dunedin, but it seemed to be a nice city, if only the weather were nicer.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Great New Zealand Gold Rush</i></span><br />
It seems ever decent-sized newly-founded land gets its gold rush, and New Zealand had three of them. The most famous was the Otago Gold Rush, which lasted from 1861 to 1864. A few local farmers found the gold and tried to keep it a secret, but that didn't last long. 18,000 people came from all over the world to New Zealand, swelling the population of the South Island. Many of their descendant still live there today. Arrowtown, located about 20 minutes from Queenstown, was one of the biggest mining centers and still retains this lovely charm much like parts of Sonora, California, today. Many of the town's old buildings are still standing, used as commercial storefronts or private residences. The old bank has been turned into a relatively large and very impressive local history museum. The majority of the local mining was on the Arrow River at Macetown, up a steep gorge from Arrowtown. The town no longer exists except for a few preserved structures. It is inaccessible except to 4WD vehicles and hikers. At the start of this trek, one also encounters the site used in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> where Arwen halts and drowns the ringwraiths. Nearby, the spot where King Isildur is jumped by a band of orcs and loses the One Ring was also filmed. Fun times! Seriously, there is <i>Hobbit </i>and <i>LotR </i>stuff everywhere in New Zealand if one knows where to look.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Driving & Distances</i></span><br />
Let me tell you one thing after having read all this, distances are deceptive and never trust Google. Google says it takes 5 hours and 45 minutes to get to Disneyland from my parent's house. It doesn't ever take that little amount of time, not even if driving at midnight. There are always stops, traffic jams, signals, and just about anything else to stop you. That being said, New Zealand is just as bad. Most roads are two-lane but they are treated like freeways...except when they aren't. And they aren't quite suddenly. Twisting roads, narrow curves, occasional one-lane bridges, bicyclists, slow-moving vehicles, traffic stops and signals, and trains are all just some of the obstacles to make Google Maps impossibly inaccurate. Christchurch to Dunedin: estimated at 4:30 hours, actually took around 6:00. Dunedin to Queenstown: 3:30, actually took 5:00. Queenstown to Christchurch: 6:00, actually took around 7:30. Distance estimates are so terrible we no longer can rely on them after this trip.<br />
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Another thing, with all these obstacles and such, everyone still drives at just about 100k/hr (62.5mph). That is in all the conditions listed above. And, perhaps more freighteningly, trucks drive that fast too. In California, trucks can drive a max legal speed of 55mph; here, it is almost 10 miles faster than that on undivided, two-lane roads. It's terrifying! I already don't like driving, especially on the left side of the road, but after this trip I like the idea even less. Toss in steep hills, heavy rain, and wind, and it's just a recipe for disaster. Kara doesn't mind driving, but doesn't want to do it full-time, so buses and airplane flights may be in store for us in the future. We'll see. In any case, be warned if you visit us here that driving may not be the most enjoyable experience in New Zealand.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-17814778498033720892015-01-12T00:23:00.000-08:002015-01-12T00:23:05.183-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Asthmatic Since 2014 (2:2, 01/12/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Hay Fever of Bust!</i></span><br />
So, my allergies have returned with a massive vengeance. What did I ever do to cause such annoyance? Despite having industrial-strength allergy meds shipped in from abroad, my nose is itchier than ever, my throat is constantly sore, and my eyes are always practically tearing up. Really, New Zealand, for all your beauty, you've got to learn to control your dandelion populations. They are really upsetting to me...and my gardens...and your visual splendour...<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Phase II Afterword</i></span><br />
Last week I said that all I had to do this past week was input a bunch of quotes in preparation for writing my first chapter of my thesis. One week later, the task is done, but it took until Friday to complete. That's right, it took five days to copy/paste over 130 pages of quotations. On the plus side, my thesis is quite well organised now, with each of six chapters separated into five sub-sections based largely on my quotes but also my thesis demands. The only problem is that I've sort of lost sight of what my actual conclusion is supposed to be. I will have to rediscover that in the next couple of weeks. The historiography section, which is about half the first chapter, is a little light on the historiographical information, partially because much of the material is in French and partially because I haven't really been able to collect all the historiographical stuff I want to include (I mean, I have another 2.5 years of writing this thing, I have time, right?). I assume my supervisor is aware that this section is going to be incomplete, but I'm not certain. I've never written a dedicated historiographical chapter or essay before, so this is new ground for me and I am getting literally zero guidance at this point.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Loaves of Brick and Hardtack</i></span><br />
Two weeks ago I began a new sourdough starter and it came out great. The only problem has been that I can't possibly get the darn thing to work in any bread. I've been trying to make loaf rounds in the oven but the starter doesn't seem to be potent enough to get the yeast to rise. I'm not sure why, either, since it seems quite active when in its starter state. Yet once mixed, the bread just doesn't go up at all. I let it sit for 24 hours and it did nothing. Nothing. I baked it anyway and the bread actually tastes really good. REALLY good; not quite San Francisco sour-style, but it still has a nice tang to it. Unfortunately, the bread is so dense it's practically inedible. I'm working on improving the recipe, but the next batch will be using spelt flour rather than normal baking flour. This will add a negative element to the bread because spelt has much less gluten in it, which is what the starter yeast eats. Any advice from sourdough chefs out there would be greatly appreciated.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Lands Down Under-er</i></span><br />
This week we travel to Queenstown near the south of the South Island. We're going down there for a week and dropping Niko off at the Cattery first. That way we can ensure he is safe and eating and everything. Queenstown is a major tourist trap, as is Dunedin, which we stop at along the way, so we're expecting high prices for everything. Fortunately, petrol is extremely cheap right now—it just dropped to $1.799/litre. It was around $2.39 when we got here. We spent a small fortune today upgrading the car for the journey, though. We got the tyres replaced only to find that all four wheels were terribly out of alignment. We also got an oil change and had a number of other things checked out. It cost us a small fortune to do all of this, but we feel safer now with the car.<br />
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Obviously you'll hear more about these adventures next week. I plan to still do my regular train blog and the next Khagan Weekly while there, so stay tuned.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Uncertainty of Construction Work</i></span><br />
Lastly, I just want to gripe briefly about construction work. It is everywhere in Christchurch and it is awful. It is noisy, it blocks roads and makes people late to school, and it unpredictably resumes after extended holidays. All along our ride to school today, construction had resumed. Apparently all the local firms took three weeks off for Christmas and New Years and restarted their efforts today. Roads were closed everywhere, while elsewhere they were down to single lanes. On top of that, the neighbour decided it would be fun to remove his concrete driveway at 8 this morning. Because, why not? A large tractor was actively destroying his yard as we left.<br />
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If you plan to visit us, we'll probably try to take you elsewhere. Christchurch was once the garden city of New Zealand, but it currently is one massive construction zone. The country may be beautiful, but this city is decidedly not. I hope that changes in the next few years because it is starting to bother me.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-78583961619568868962015-01-04T18:44:00.001-08:002015-01-11T16:48:49.913-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Lost in a Volcanic Caldera Since 2014 (2:1, 01/05/2015)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Akaroa, or The Halls of Hell</i></span><br />
On Saturday this week we finally decided to venture forth to the south of Christchurch—an hour and a half to the south—to the picturesque tourist mecca of Akaroa. First, though, a bit of geography: south of Christchurch, there are a pair of extinct volcanoes that create a very odd protrusion into the otherwise flat Canterbury Plain. The northern caldera is the port town of Lyttleton, where Christchurch gets all of its goods from overseas. The town, though, got hit badly by the earthquake (it's the oldest part of Christchurch so had some 150-year-old buildings) and looks very industrial. Cruise ships decided after 2010 to redirect to the southern caldera with its more remote town of Akaroa. The town had been founded in 1840 by French settlers and a number of aspects of the town are decidedly French, including street names, but the British reasserted themselves pretty early on, so the town is still as British as ever. It also has become a magnet for tourism which, unfortunately, means there isn't a lot interesting there anymore. There are some hiking trails but they aren't that unique to ones located closer to the city. There are some cutesy shops, but I don't have any money and things are expensive here. There aren't, surprisingly, many things to do there except a few water sports and mini golfing. The town is split in two, with the cruise ship dock located on the opposite side of town from the commercial end. When we visited, a ship was in town and people were everywhere! Most probably thought we were with the ship. Ugh. All the fun stuff was near the terminal, but it was too far to walk to and all the parking spots were taken, so we simply left.<br />
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We may go back again, but it's a long drive to nowhere especially amazing. Perhaps that's one of the problems with New Zealand: there are so many awesome locales that they all get kind of watered down. It's unfortunate, but definitely true in this case. We did at least stop at a cheese factory and get some nice artisan cheese. Hmm...<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Fiery New Year</i></span><br />
New Years' Eve this year was celebrated at North Hagley Park, the city's equivalent (or attempt at) the huge parks in London and Westminster. They had a free concert series at the park that ran until 12:30 a.m. and most of the songs played were American-ish rather than Kiwi. The few Kiwi songs they played were not especially memorable. They did have a Celtic Rock band play us into the new year, which was interesting; they were almost Ska in their style, but not quite. They needed a bagpipe, though, to really bring it home. We were happy to see fireworks at the stroke of midnight, however. That was something we're not used to in California because of all the fire restrictions. And it wasn't a short show, either; they just kept on going. And they were very near to the ground, which was slightly scary but also awesome—it rained firework ash on us for the next ten minutes. Overall, it was a fun start to the year and we discovered in the process that there is a free concert series that runs every Sunday afternoon at the park, so we'll be coming back weekly, it looks like (we already went this Sunday!).<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>More Heat in the Underworld</i></span><br />
Speaking of fire, fireworks, calderas—it's been hot here. Easily in the 80˚s, which may not seem like much to some people, but without air conditioning in the houses, it's been a short-sleeves and shorts kind of summer. We still get the occasional cold spell or rainy day, but most days have not been very windy and have been much dryer than usual. I even got a little sunburn (don't tell Kara!). But it definitely helps in making it feel like summer here, and it also provides us with that strange feeling that something's not quite right. I mean, it's winter in the northern half of the globe, yet we're sweating down here. It's very strange. When I went to Australia and New Zealand when I was little, it was winter, which is mild here and in California, so it felt more normal. When we got here, Niko regrew his winter coat in double time only to have lost it over the past month (I think half of it is all over my shirt right now). Rain's on the forecast for a few days this week but hopefully it will be gone when we go on our trip next week. More on that to come in the next issue.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Phase II: Burning My Notes</i></span><br />
I (literally) just finished writing the notes for the eighth book I've read in the past week for my thesis. It's a tough process browsing through a ton of books but never really getting to <i>read</i> them. It's a wonder what I could learn if I could read everything I have to cite for my thesis. In any case, the writing of my first chapter begins this week which means I also need to get all my notes aggregated together, sorted into appropriate sections, and then organized. I still am missing <i>a lot</i> of necessary material for this 100,000-word monster of a paper but I've got to start somewhere and the first draft of my first chapter is due on February 1st. Since I'll be gone a week during that period, it doesn't leave me with much time to organize and write. On top of that, I have my book to keep working on and French readings, as well as other random tasks. It's definitely becoming a busy summer for me.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>On Capsicum</i></span><br />
I have chili peppers! Okay, you knew that already, but they've actually reached maturity. Hot, fiery jalapeño peppers, red as a freshly-cooked lobster. So far I have two fully-red peppers and a little baby one that really matured a bit too early to be useful. But three others are showing signs of maturing (red stems at the bottom signaling they are down growing out) and I have about six large dark green peppers that could be safely picked. I'm planning on picking them tonight and pickling the lot of them so they can be preserved better. I hope to use them in my next batch of refried beans, which may be a while since we have a huge batch still in the freezer right now. In addition to my large and successful pepper tree, I have about a dozen smaller plants growing quickly in this heat. They'll need to be transplanted soon so they can truly thrive, but a few of them may already be reaching a point where flowers may bloom and become peppers, which is really awesome. I'll save some for all of you when you visit. (You are all visiting, right?).<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-77888501649185342802014-12-28T00:23:00.003-08:002014-12-28T00:23:58.130-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Shaking Where I'm Standing Since 2014 (Issue 10: 12/28)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Fairy Tale Christmas</i></span><br />
Christmas was very strange this year. It was a hot day in the early summer. There was no tree. No decorations. Nothing really except a small pile of presents in a trio of stockings my parents sent us (Niko got one too). We made some ham (which tastes eh), we sat around and relaxed, and we generally tried to avoid doing anything productive. It sort of worked out. I mean, you can only be soo lazy, after all. One thing we did do, though, was watch <i>Shrek </i>and <i>Shrek 2</i>. We'd been planning to do that for a few days and Christmas seemed to be a good time to start. They both were as memorable as ever, but <i>Shrek the Third</i>, on Friday, and <i>Shrek Forever After</i> on Saturday were slightly different experiences. I'd only seen the first of those twice before, and I don't think I've ever seen the second since it was in the theatres, despite having owned it for half a decade. We both agreed that <i>Shrek 4 </i>was the better of the pair and wrapped up the series pretty well in new and inventive ways. We also watched all the shorts that had been made for the <i>Shrek</i> franchise, and some were better than others, but they were all fun. I now feel better about watching a movie marathon here, but I don't really want to do another one quite yet. We watched a bunch of Leonardo di Caprio movies earlier this week and that kind of soured me to longer films for a while. We did see <i>Big Hero 6</i> on Boxing Day, though, and that was quite good. I'll definitely be grabbing a copy of it when it comes to DVD.<br />
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Right, so Christmas. It went okay, but it wasn't spectacular. The gifts were great, though!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Great Temblor of 2014</i></span><br />
A few days before Christmas, in the late afternoon, the house shook under a walloping 4.0 earthquake (it got upgraded from 3.9). About two hours later, a second temblor came by and reminded us the earth wasn't finished yet. Neither of the quakes bugged me much: we're in a single story building that (mostly) survived the last three major earthquakes from 2010-11 so I feel it can hold its own at this point. Kara got a bit freaked out, though, even trying to sympathize with the people of Christchurch (generally not a good thing since the blame the earthquake for pretty much everything). Niko was the most freaked out, charging frantically into the bedroom and hiding under it during both shakes. Kara and I walked over to the door frame, where we are told it is safe. She doubts the sincerity of that thought, even though everyone always says it. Whatever. So earthquakes apparently do still happen here. Who'd a thunk it?<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Boxing Day: a.k.a. Anti-Black Friday</i></span><br />
There is something mysterious to the United States regarding Boxing Day. First, we don't have it. That's because we have no need to celebrate or even remember the Boxer Rebellion in China because, well, we weren't there or had anything to do with it. I don't think many Kiwis were there either, but New Zealand still celebrates it. That being said, it's mostly just a day off from work after Christmas. The much-hyped Boxing Day sales phenomenon has completely bypassed New Zealand for the simple reason that their tax period ends March 31st, which means businesses don't need to clear our their inventories after Christmas like in the US and UK. Thus, we were tragically disappointed that stores had hardly anything on sale worth buying, and most of the sales were sad. Really sad. Like, 20% or less. In other words, we have yet to figure out when the real sales season is here, if there is one. Kiwis! Pah!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Taylor and His Big Mistake</i></span><br />
On Christmas, we did take one detourous journey down the Canterbury coast to a hamlet known as Taylor's Mistake, which is little more than a beach with some houses nearby. Those houses, though, are the last remnant of a once-thriving beach cottage (called "bachws" here; pronounced "backs") tradition that once lined the Port Hills south of Christchurch. Storms, floods, earthquakes, and landslides have overwhelmingly destroyed most of these beach homes, but roughly two dozen still survive at this little cove. The homes were built in the early years of the century right above the high tide line on the beach, so they are truly beachfront property. But the county doesn't allow any more to be built because of safety and insurance concerns, so those that are left are highly valued and most are well-maintained within reason. Part of the allure of the baches are that they are a bit shabby. A few dotted the overgrown hillsides, probably still used periodically but an utter pain, probably, to access. The community is entirely seasonal there so in the winter the hamlet would undoubtedly be empty.<br />
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The name of the community comes from a a ship captain, presumably surnamed Taylor, who anchored in the cove in the 1850s thinking that he had reached Sumner, which is two coves to the north. In later years, the cliffs above the cove were reinforced with machine guns and artillery to defend Christchurch during World War II. Those are gone now, but the sites remain popular hiking destinations much like Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Washers, Dryers & Clothes Lines</i></span><br />
For our stranger aspect of New Zealand, I present to you the confusing state of the laundry industry here. Washing machines are the most logical requirement in a laundry scheme. They are generally straightforward devices, though the ones here are almost always top-loading, despite common knowledge in the US that front-loaders are better for clothes and more energy efficient (Kiwis don't really worry about water conservation much; water is everywhere here). Dryers are another matter entirely. They are all small, all front loaders, and all look the same. They also don't have a lent trap like in the US but rather have one installed on the face of the dryer, accessible from the outside by pulling off the front of the door. No joke! But it hardly matters since most Kiwis only use dryers when it's blisteringly cold, absurdly windy, and heavily raining or snowing outside (all three must be present). Whenever only two or fewer of those conditions are met, clotheslines are used. The clothes fly in all directions in the wind, getting wet in the rain, snow, and hail, while freezing in the bitter cold of the night. Why this archaic tactic is used is because energy prices are ridiculously high here and the cost to run a dryer, even during off-peak hours, is too much except in times of extreme necessity. While aspects of New Zealand are certainly of the first world, the laundry habits are lacking severely.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-29489038861147458882014-12-21T01:52:00.000-08:002014-12-21T01:52:10.601-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Breaking My Back Since 2014 (Issue 9: 12/21)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Week Without Motion</i></span><br />
Last Sunday, my back started hurting. It wasn't anything major, just a little ache. By Monday morning, it was hurting quite a bit. By Tuesday, it was unbearable. By Wednesday, I wanted to break my back permanently if only to end the pain.<br />
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Now mind you, this is in fact the second time my back has gone out in three months. First first time was sudden and painful, but resolved itself within about three days. This time was slow and steady, but by Wednesday I was walking with a shuffle and hunched over. I needed arm supports just to move around. We had planned to go to the Uni every day this week to do our usual research routine, but that just wasn't happening. Sitting hurt. Standing hurt more. Laying down hurt. We went home early on Wednesday and I stayed home all of Thursday, though Kara picked a few things up for me such as my French book (she had a meeting so was going anyway). I got quite a bit done over the week, but it hurt a lot more to do it. Thursday was the least successful day because there were a lot of distractions at home; it's one of the reasons why we go to school. Friday I insisted on going back, and I actually was doing okay in the morning, but things got bad again. We picked up some meds on the way back and Kara got some more on Saturday when I was still feeling like crap. We partially determined that sitting down in the morning doesn't work, so I need to move around and stand up to get the blood flowing. It worked better on Sunday and most of the day I was mobile, though that dull pain still permeated from dawn 'til dusk. Hopefully Monday will prove a return to normality, but I somehow doubt it. Plus, I need to sit at school; the desks are too short to stand beside.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Where are the Christmas Lights?</i></span><br />
Feeling a bit better on Saturday night, I agreed to go Christmas light hunting with Kara. It was mostly a success, but Christmas lights aren't a big deal in New Zealand. Now, before everybody gets all "Kiwis hate Christmas" there are two very logical reasons why lights are not as popular here: first, electricity is extremely expensive until 9:00pm; and second, it stays light out until 9:00pm. Considering a reasonable bed time is 10:00 to 11:00pm, that only leaves a few hours for ideal Christmas light time before neighbours start getting ticked at you for turning their living room into broad daylight.<br />
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Still, it is a bit sad. Besides it being so light out so late, there just is very little here to give that "Christmas-y" vibe that I'm so accustomed to around this time of year. Granted, we haven't been going out much either, so we miss the mall stuff, but still. The lack of decorations is a bit jarring.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>New Zealand: A Tropical Paradise</i></span><br />
Decidedly not. BUT, it does have its fair share of tropic-like phenomena. For example, today was a beautiful relatively hot day. Kara kept complaining that it was <i>too</i> hot (she's from Arizona, remember), especially when standing directly out under the sun. We've also had a lot of humid and muggy days, which were fairly rare in Santa Cruz despite the abundant sunlight in the summer and the close proximity to the ocean. In the afternoon, the rains came in quick and without warning. Everything just clouded up and got breezy and then it just came on <i>hard</i>. But even that had a tropical feel to it; it was moist but not cold. Almost like a rain shower in a tropical rain forest. It cut down on the mugginess, but in a strange calming way. It was very nice, actually.<br />
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That has been New Zealand for us, though. Unpredictable weather from day to day, hour to hour. Some days have been beautiful and become awful, while others start terrible but turn nice. Each day is a new meteorological adventure.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Apple Computers and How to Heck Them</span></i><br />
This week I was gifted with a loaner Apple iMac from the History Department. I had requested it five weeks earlier, but bureaucracy is slow. The good news was that it was a modern-style iMac. The bad news: it was admin-locked, lacks the RAM to run the current (or even a recent) operating system, and it doesn't have most of my required apps installed. That being said, the RAM is cheap and I have the installers for most of the apps I need. Now, I just needed to get around that bugger admin requirement...<br />
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Or I just overwrite it. Apples have nice backdoors, you could say, and I found one easily exploited that let me both override the two admin passwords and hard lock my own onto the computer. In other words, it's essentially my Mac now, which I figure it will be in all but name since I will have it for three years and by then it will be a decade old (it's a 2017 model). I don't think they'll want it by then. Anyway, the only problem I've run across since then is trying to get my Mac App Store account on the computer: currently it is locked to one of the random admins who set the computer up. That was probably a mistake on their part. I'll figure out a way, not that I use the App Store much anyway, it's kind of garbage.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Prioritising Trash</i></span><br />
Which brings me to my last point of the day: garbage. In privileged cities in the United States, people have three rubbish bins: recycle, compost, and everything else. We set these out on our curb on the day given for it to be picked up and it is emptied. In Christchurch, the city has the same three basic bins with one caveat, only the compost bin is picked up each week, presumably because it smells the worst. The recycle and trash bins alternate fortnightly, but it's kind of hard to remember which can to put out each week, so neighbours look to see what other neighbours put out...and pray they are correct. Apparently entire blocks put out wrong cans on a regular basis, but nothing is done about this. There may be a website that says or something, but who has time for that. Thus, each week we all hope and pray that the first neighbour to put out their cans put out the correct cans. We haven't missed yet, but we've only been here for a few months.<br />
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As a side note, the Uni has the same internal system for trash, but paper is separated out from recycle into its own bin, which would be fine except it rarely looks the same as the other three bins. In fact, sometimes it's nowhere near the other bins, if there is one at all. Paper recycle also is done not with a lid to lift but a slot to insert, thus all paper must be slotted into the large recycle bin. Perhaps this is to keep cardboard out or something, but it is very odd. Kara's been recycling her paper in the wrong bin since we've been here and I've done it wrong a few times too!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-78194727814031694102014-12-14T00:34:00.003-08:002014-12-14T00:34:42.678-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Smoting The Heathens Since 2014 (Issue 8: 12/14)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Takin' a Break for Five Battles of an Army...Wait...</i></span><br />
This Tuesday we had the distinct privilege of seeing <i>The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies</i> before most of the rest of the world. In fact, the United States has not yet been able to see it, at least not publicly. That was a cool experience all in itself, but the it also marked the first time we went to a movie theatre here. And let me tell you, it was HUGE! I mean, it was one of the biggest non-IMAX movie theatres I've been to, and it was bigger than even some of the IMAX. The sound was excellent, the screen quality great, and it wasn't even the largest theatre they had. That being said, the Kiwis do a few things differently than in the US.<br />
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For starters, you know those pre-show advertising blocks that intermix adds with short previews and other stuff? Well, here those begin at the time listed for the film to begin. They also intermix the trailers in with those, though there are fewer trailers (and they don't have the big green "preview" screen before them). Thus, if you get to a move early, there is absolutely nothing playing before it. No music, no pre-show, nothing. If you get to it on time, you still have to sit through 20 minutes of ads and whatnot, many of which are not previews for other films. It was a bit jarring, to be honest.<br />
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The second strange thing is that the seats are assigned here. That's right, assigned. We went to an 11:20 show on Thursday morning and found ourselves in someone else's seats. Once we relocated, we were crammed next to a smelly guy even though there were open seats literally everywhere else in the theatre. Now I understand some of the reasons for assigned seating: the perk of picking seats online, the ability to more adequately cram a theatre full, as a way of insuring everyone gets the best seats possible. That all being said, it was really dumb. As soon as the film started, we scooted over a seat where we were fortunate to find nobody sitting. But our first seats were amazing and we were slightly annoyed that some other guy, who arrived later, took them from us.<br />
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At least the movie was enjoyable, though not really on par with any of the other <i>Hobbit </i>or <i>Lord of the Rings</i> films except <i>The Desolation of Smaug</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Working For The (Kiwi) Man</i></span><br />
This week we also were accepted to our first jobs. We have training next Tuesday. We will be sitting in on College of Arts classes (our college) and taking notes for students that have some disability impairing their ability to take notes. That means we will get paid $17 an hour to go to lectures, learn, and not have to interact or do homework. Pretty good deal, I think. The hardest part will be remembering to look like an studious student rather than a note-taker, because it's all done hush-hush.<br />
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As a part of the employment process, we also discovered the depths of paperwork required to get a job in New Zealand. And I really mean depths. Even though we have work visas, we still have to get tax IDs, which won't be issued until after Christmas. Hopefully this won't effect our employment prospects. We also have to include bank info (all paychecks are direct deposit; no checks), drivers license info (even though we don't drive), passport info, visa info, and all sorts of other things. We didn't even fill out sections because we weren't sure what we were supposed to write. It's all quite crazy. I'll write more on this next week after we figure out more specifically what we're doing.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Goodbye to the Western Diet</span></i><br />
Well it has been two months now since we moved in and Kara began our new diet of low carbohydrates and high protein. And, despite my best efforts to the contrary, it is working spectacularly well for me. I have lost 20 pounds in the past two months and am still dropping. I doubt I'll get the abs of Chris Hemsworth, but I am the lightest I have been since 2011 and 2005, with better prospects for less weight in the near future. My diet has switched entirely to a lot more home-made goods using things like spelt flour and homegrown herbs. I am not joking, read <i>Why We Get Fat? </i>by Gary Taubes or his earlier and more technical book, <i>Good Calories, Bad Calories</i>. I'm not one to pitch things like this, so you know there's got to be a reason. It does take longer to make things each week such as cooking eggs for breakfast, baking bread and tortillas, and slow-cooking pinto beans and tomato basil soup, but it's worth it. Americans in general are on a diet funded by the Food & Drug Administration, a governmental branch largely funded and sponsored by Big Agriculture. Here's a suggestion to the government: end lobbying entirely and stop food subsidies. If you do, medicine will become more effective, food will become healthier, and people in general will become healthier. It's as simple as that. The food pyramid is an utter lie and, I really hate to say this because I feel ya, humans are omnivores. That means they eat plants <i>and</i> meat. And not all plants are healthy, including high-sugar fruits such as apples and bananas, but virtually all commonly-consumed meat is healthy. Buy the book. Read it. Learn from it. Lose those pounds you were never able to lose before and feel better while you're doing it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Dinner à la Carte</i></span><br />
Kara and I have not had a great time eating out here. Besides the high prices, the menus are generally short and the company is often decidedly lacking. So far we've gone out with a homestay and two separate groups of students. We also have gone to a few school events, such as this Thursday which saw us whittle away two hours doing little more than talking to people we already know. This isn't a terrible thing except we know relatively few people here, so talking to those few means there are tons of other people we aren't talking to. Humanities people generally lack initiative, myself included, but a forced mix-and-mingle at the event on Thursday would have been nice.<br />
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On Friday, though, we went out with a different group of Humanities students from various disciplines as a part of an agreed-upon campaign to revitalise the Humanities social environment. Or at least that's what we thought we were doing. Up until the very end of dinner, we were under the impression that our $50 meal was being paid for by the School of Humanities, mostly because that was the entire purpose of the dinner outing: to use up the funds that the school gave us when the Humanities social group first formed. Unfortunately, everything fell apart behind our back, sparking Kara into taking over the entire thing next year (the others don't know this yet. SHhhhh!). We had our hints, such as the fact that about 1/3 of the people there weren't students but spouses and partners of students. Also, when I asked the leader, or so we thought he was, he kind of laughed it off and changed the subject. Kara confronted him later and discovered that he had no idea that was the plan, despite he making that plan two months ago. See? A lack of communication here. Which brings me to...<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Tall Poppy Syndrome</i></span><br />
New Zealanders have a general aversion to standing out. They call it "tall poppy syndrome" and it is virtually universal here. It is one of the strangest problems ever. It makes the entire population of New Zealand seem like introverts. I'm an introvert. Kara's even more of one. Yet both of us find this concept ridiculous. People will literally look down on you if you try too hard or rise up above others. We realise now that this is the reason why the Humanities department lacks initiative to do events except those led by its British and American faculty (such as my advisor). It explains why Kiwis generally appear moderately jovial but overwhelmingly dull. It also explains why there seems to be a universal dislike for Peter Jackson, quite literally the world's most famous New Zealander right now. he's standing up high, which means nobody likes him. This is a real problem, though, because it is damaging the whole city of Christchurch. Everything is done slow and steady, including the reconstruction effort. Nobody seems to have original ideas and few try to express themselves in loud ways. And while in the United States I get really tired of people standing taller than they should be, here I wish a few more people would even be visible over the all-consuming crowd. Everybody seems to live their life in as normal a way as possible: it's like Pleasantville except with more swearing and modern conveniences. Kara and I are planning to stage a coup next year, overturning the Humanities School and the whole College of Arts, but we realistically fear that people may not be interested simply because they don't want to stand out.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-29684047834974703312014-12-07T02:03:00.000-08:002014-12-07T02:03:29.403-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Bakin' Bread Old School Style Since 2014 (Issue 7: 12/07)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Ill Effects of Gravity on Gardens</i></span><br />
About a month ago, we planted our first garden on a plot of land beside the house that had been set aside for that purpose. We bought a good dozen different types of plants, all of which have begun to grow (from what we can tell) except for the bell peppers and tomatoes. We put in fresh fertiliser and soil and stomped out a path all around it to make accessing the garden easier. It all went quite nice and since then we have also recovered about 15 thriving strawberry plants from a nearby plot and set them aside in their own area. Kara finished planting our flower seeds this afternoon so the whole garden is set.<br />
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That being said, we did not anticipate that the slight downhill slope of the garden would cause as significant runoff as it has. Since all of our plants were from seed packs, many of them have, well, shifted a bit. As much as a metre in a few cases. The path on the downslope side of things is completely overgrown and the area near the top is practically devoid of seedlings. It was a rather unfortunate and unexpected problem. We did get some decent rain in the weeks after we planted, so that probably allowed the soil to move while also mixing up the fertiliser. In any case, our garden is doing great but not in quite the way we had hoped. Maybe someday we'll figure out exactly which plants are which. I rather doubt it, though. On a sidenote: does anyone know how to tell when potatoes are ready to be pulled? Or carrots? We haven't the faintest idea.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Baked Beans and Toasty Bread</i></span><br />
We finally returned our first slow cooker a week ago after three failed batches of beans and a flop of a chicken casserole. Most places here don't actually accept returns, but K-Mart fortunately does. We bought a new, more expensive one at Farmers and have had much better success with it. After two tasty batches of tomato basil soup and Kara's beef and broccoli, we decided to give beans another try. Fortunately, it was a wonderful success. We woke up this morning to find a nice hot pot full of refried beans, just waiting to be mashed. And mashed they were! Now we can finally make more affordable beans here.<br />
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I've also been trying out my sourdough starter that I nurtured from some kefir yoghurt and whole grain flower. There is a constant problem with making low gluten bread: it doesn't rise very high. That being said, the first batch came out a bit dry, and the second one, finished today, came out very moist. Generally, I prefer moist because it usually takes longer to dry out, but moist also means it doesn't really rise even when the yeast is doing its job. So my loaf today was a rather flat and dense thing. I'm still trying different techniques but next week may require some more drastic measures. I've doubled my starter, which popped (fermented) in less than a day which is amazing, and there is hardly any kefir left in it, but it still doesn't smell even remotely like San Francisco sourdough, so that's something I need to try and remedy. Any suggestions?<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Cartography from the Other Side of the World</i></span><br />
With the writing phase of my book done, I took the opportunity this week to take a break from writing/editing and work on my book's maps. Formatting on Photoshop and Illustrator took all week, so today was the first day I finally was able to see results, and I am quite impressed with them, to be honest. I managed to make the full map of the entire railroad system readable, which I wasn't really expecting to work, and the two out of five close-up maps also look great. I still need to put in scales and compasses, which I forgot to do initially, but I think I can whip out the last three maps before the middle of next week <i>with</i> editing back in the game. Oh, and do I have some editing ahead of me! I've been getting reviews back from local historians with all sorts of edits to make, but my second article—SECOND!—needs a complete rewrite due to so many problems I can't even begin to state them. That is something I have been putting off since September, so I need to take care of it this week and send the article to its reviewers ASAP.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Christmas—New Zealand Style</span></i><br />
Christmas is a summer event here and it isn't as talked about as it is in the States. Stores have their advertisements and whatnot, but decorations aren't really a think both because it stays light until after 9pm and because electricity is so expensive here. Thus it is through local events that the Holiday spirit is really in evidence. Last week they had a Christmas in the Park festival, which I didn't go to, unfortunately. But today we got to visit the Dean's House at Riccarton Bush, which had a Holiday Market outside. Lots of arts and crafts and oh-so-good-smelling food. I wish I could have had some, but alas I could not. Still, it was the first Christmas-y feeling we've really had next to the Operation Friendship event from two weeks ago. It's still early, but neither of us are expecting much of a traditional Christmas here. It may be one of the sadder parts of our stay in New Zealand, but we do get reminded of the season constantly through our video streaming which include numerous Christmas advertisements.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Terror of the Digital Age</i></span><br />
I haven't complained much about digital media since I've been here, but here's a time to start. For years I have acquired my digital video content through less-than-proper means, but when we came to New Zealand, we agreed to stick to the law because of an acute awareness that we could be deported for any illicit hijinks. That being said, the world, or at least New Zealand, is still not ready for full-digital media. First, there is the issue of websites being "geo-locked", which means they can tell where you are and if you should be able to access their content. There are hundreds of sites that do this including Netflix, Hulu, Comedy Central, ABC, and even YouTube (on a case-by-case basis). Second, there is the fact that streaming requires a good internet connection from both ends and everywhere in between. We've been using DishAnywhere to stream shows from Arizona, but the connection constantly goes out without warning or simply doesn't work to begin with. To make matters worse, the Blockbuster Video option through DishAnywhere also doesn't work, probably because it, too, is geo-locked. Third, there are still restrictions between devices, which means some material won't play or stream to televisions because they are different formats (PAL v. NTSC, standard-definition v. high-def). We didn't think this would be a problem for us since everything we have is digital HD now, but our TV was in a different format than Kara's computer, and we had to reboot it for it to switch types. Very random and annoying. We almost gave up until I tried that.<br />
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Last, content providers don't really give a crap about anything. Period. So I bought a legitimate copy of <i>The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug </i>Extended Edition a month ago to enjoy before the new film comes out. Only the film, though, was downloadable. All the bonus content, of which there is a lot, had to be streamed. Apple is apparently incapable, however, of remembering playback positions, so whenever the video caught up to its buffer, the thing reset. Immediately! That is on top of the video cutting out all the time because it refuses to download more than a few minutes of video at a time. So we've been putzing around for a month now trying to watch all the videos before the new film releases but we've lost so much time it's amazing because of problems like these. To make matters a tad bit worse, <i>The Hobbit</i> digital version decided that fans didn't need the director's commentary. If you want that, buy the physical version. Conclusion: the world is not yet ready to completely convert from physical to digital media. It has a ways to go before I'm happy, at least.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-28389399152527804272014-11-29T23:06:00.000-08:002014-11-29T23:06:24.541-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Droppin' The Mike Since 2014 (Issue 6: 11/30)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>From Writing to Revising</i></span><br />
The process of writing is, in a sense, infinite, but that doesn't mean it can't have milestones. Today, at roughly 6:00 p.m. NZDT, I finished writing the first draft of <i>Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains</i>. Now, I still have A LOT of work ahead of me, including heavy revision of some articles; hundreds of photos to edit, crop, insert, and caption; and a fair amount of formatting and layout work. But being done with the writing is such a load off my mind it is amazingly reassuring. Here are some of the stats:<br />
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Current page count = 271<br />
Current word count = 121,160<br />
Total articles = 68<br />
Current cited sources = 120 (including newspapers)<br />
Total number of people I have to thank when this is done = Indeterminate<br />
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So stay tuned on my <a href="http://santacruztrains.blogspot.com/">santacruztrains.blogspot.com</a> blog for future updates about the project. I posted just this week an extremely popular custom Google Map of all of the railroad lines in Santa Cruz County. I recommend anyone even remotely interested to check it out at the link above. I also have been continuing my weekly articles, with Aptos and New Brighton the most recent on <a href="http://www.santacruztrains.com/">www.santacruztrains.com</a>. Lastly, if you live in the San Lorenzo Valley or Scotts Valley, I've had articles published in the <i>Press-Banner</i> for the past few months, so be sure to watch for me. I usually have an article every 2-3 weeks, and I had the front page about a month ago. So check them all out and keep new information coming if you've got it! This book is turning out to be great. I can't wait to see it with all the photos and station boxes. I'm sure it will be popular.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Two Dinners for the Price of Two</i></span><br />
Thanksgiving is not a thing in New Zealand, and because of that, Kara and I ended up going to two dinners this week with two different groups, both of which were somewhat Thanksgiving-y. The first was with Operation Friendship, which is a bunch of older folks feeding a bunch of college-aged folks from around the world. It was a potluck-style affair, but the guests weren't required to bring the food. We stayed quite late and were encouraged to talk to various different people. Kara was having a blast and I met a Kiwi guy who volunteers at a number of local historical associations, including a railroad one. They are working on making the New Zealand Railroad Museum in Christchurch, so I may get involved with that. We didn't get home until nearly midnight, which was something we haven't done in a very long time.<br />
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On Saturday night, we had Thanksgiving dinner with the Americans in Christchurch group and it was not quite as exciting. We hung out with two Brits who had lived in the US for years before moving to New Zealand. Their kids were there too and it was rather funny because both were raised in the US but trying really hard to adopt Kiwi accents. They were pretty good at it too, I must say. The event wasn't as well organised as that of the previous night but the food was good. They even had non-lumpy mashed potatoes, which is my favourite. We didn't linger, though, and came back to get some work done. What's Thanksgiving without doing chores, right?<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Growing in the Antarctic</i></span><br />
Plants grow surprisingly well in this land down under. Perhaps it's because it is always green here and rains at least once a week. Perhaps it's because the weather rarely drops below 0˚C. Perhaps it's because the soil is volcanic and generally rich. Who really knows, but virtually everything we're growing is doing well. Our little garden out back has a ton of weeds in it, but all our stuff is growing right beside them. We aren't even sure which is which entirely. Out front, the grass grows without every needing water and a row of purple flowers have never gone out of bloom despite us only tending to them recently. Next to our garden, a row of weeds have been cleared out revealing strawberry plants that are actively growing berries! Kara pulled about a dozen small red berries just this afternoon. And on our porch, my jalapeño bush has over a dozen fruits growing on it, some getting quite large, while everything else has also sprouted from its seed form into something noticeable. We fear leaving or going on vacation because of all these plants, but we are happy they are doing so well. Our mint bush is so big you can hardly tell it's in a pot!<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">The Campus of Loneliness</span></i><br />
Nobody is on campus these days. Uni let out about two weeks ago but we were preoccupied with various things during that time, so this is the first week where we've realised just how empty the campus is. Few lecturers are around, the library has reduced hours, the common areas are mostly vacant, and even the dining areas are mostly closed with just the deli and posh restaurant open. It is quite nice for getting work done—few distractions and all—but it also gives off this feeling that nobody works here. Kind of a ghost town vibe. Very off at times, especially when the weather is being weird. Like, there was a thunderstorm on Thursday morning and I thought it was construction machinery until I realised that nobody was working right then. Then a big clash woke me up from my confusion. Earlier in the week, we had horizontal rain that danced around with wind and clear skies. Then two days this week were super warm and nice. They call it a nor-wester, which means its comes from Australia. The combination of the ghost town environment and the weird weather will probably make the march to February, when school resumes, quite long and sometimes isolating. We'll make it through, though.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Red Friday, Confused Saturday, Utterly Lost Sunday</i></span><br />
Black Friday and "Gray Thursday" are big things in America, but in New Zealand there's isn't such a thing. Sort of. Shopping is more continuous but seems to begin at around the same time. One local store which has a red theme like Target decided to go all out and declare "Red Friday"! Apparently the "black" part of Black Friday is lost on them. But, if they want their business to stay in the red, they are well on their way to that. All their doorbuster sale items were right inside the store. No need to browse or go elsewhere, just grab and go. Convenient, but I think they missed the point: you are supposed to hide the prizes so that people will find other things not on sale along the way. Silly Kiwis. They'll figure it out someday.<br />
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Being 21 hours ahead is causing me my own problems, though. Like right now, it is still the Saturday night in California, but it's Sunday evening here. For Black Friday, all my times were wrong for trying to get stuff online. Target and Walmart were completely sold out of everything I wanted before I even had a chance to grab something on sale. Amazon just has its stupid hot deals all day everyday until about a week before Christmas. I can't be checking that all the time!!! I missed out on about five movies I had in my cart just because of bad timing (and a lack of other items to bump over my shipping). Christmas: sometimes you love it, sometimes it drives you nuts!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-30135620652829831742014-11-23T00:14:00.000-08:002014-11-23T00:14:01.591-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Pretending To Care Since 2014 (Issue 5: 11/23)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>French for Dummies</i></span><br />
Kara found a great little book on learning to read French for me. It only arrived on Thursday, but I quickly began working through it. There are countless problems with the book, especially since it is geared toward a science student, but overall it has a nice feel. The book focuses on learning the important aspects of reading, such as understanding which word types are which. It also isn't overly heavy on vocabulary. Did you know that half of the French language is composed of English cognates? That means words that look like and mean the same as English words. Unfortunately, the other half is a maelstrom of words, some of which are partial cognates (multiple definitions, only one of which is the true English cognate) or false cognates (looks the same, is totally different). The book focuses on the gendered issue of French a bit more than seems necessary, though I have partially learned Spanish, French, Latin, and German, all of which are gendered languages. Perhaps people unfamiliar with this concept will have difficulties. Honestly, it rarely seems to matter in trying to get the gist of something anyway.<br />
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Vocabulary is the thing I have the most difficulty with and this book throws new vocab around like I'm a sponge. Hint: I'm not! It also doesn't have answers to the section conclusions, which usually consist of reading a few paragraphs in French and then answering questions. How do I know if I got the answers correct? Who knows!? I certainly don't, and in the last two chapters I had some questions that I couldn't find answers to. I find this a bad thing. The book also doesn't always translate things into normal English, choosing to give as literal a definition as possible, which often sounds strange. Au contraire, some of the sections are so <i>not</i> literal that I have no idea how they even came up with that translation. Consistency is apparently lost on these guys. Oh, and this book could have easily catered to a more balanced audience. I know Marie Curie and Pierre were great and everything, but let's pick some examples of sentences that don't involve math and science terms I don't understand even in English!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Public Speaking Tips</i></span><br />
We went to the Postgraduate Showcase on Wednesday, which was a meeting of postgraduates from Canterbury, University of Otago, and Lincoln University (all in the general area). We were decidedly not amused. It was a 8-hour day of people giving 15-minute speeches and some of these people truly need help in delivering their information. The full gauntlet was here, from people that didn't even seem to understand their topic to people that knew it so well they forgot we don't. From people that are so afraid of public speaking that I think they wet themself to people so confident that they seem to have forgotten to stay on topic. Some speeches were decent, but none were great. At least none that we saw. And the Humanities were not at all represented. No English, History, Political Science, Law, Language, Music, Drama, etc., student bothered to show up. The two History students that I knew who were going dropped out at the last minute. While Humanities is definitely suffering at the Uni, this is a bit ridiculous. At Point Loma, this speech was required to earn your honour's stamp on your diploma; it should be required here too. Academia in general here is rather lax on a number of things and participation, even when required, rarely has a major impact if you don't do it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Defining the Objective</i></span><br />
On Thursday morning, I met with my PhD supervisor for the fourth and last time for this year. He is going on an extended two-month vacation/work trip to Europe and will be out of contact for most of that time. He has a habit of getting off track and I had a long agenda to cover, so naturally only about half of it got done. After asking him about various things, we got into the meat of the topic: my timeline. Apparently I hadn't given myself enough time to work on each chapter, so he suggested I spread it out more. That brought me perilously close to the end of the third year, though, so I'm going to have to try and keep my own schedule that is more abbreviated. Hopefully I can stick to it.<br />
We weren't able to cover all topics that I wanted to touch on, but we made some good progress at least. I had to write him a follow-up email later just to cover the last few points. At least he liked my genealogies I wrote for my PhD. I'll post them up here at some point for all your viewing pleasure.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Cooking The Hard Way</span></i><br />
After weeks of difficulty, Kara and I are finally managing to make some foods successfully. Last Sunday night, we made a scrambled egg casserole for the entire week and it worked magnificently. We dropped bacon from our diet and switched to two eggs per morning. We toss some nice mozzarella and Colby cheese on top to add to the flavour.<br />
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On Saturday, I successfully made my first batch of sourdough here, using the bread machine for the actual cooking cycle. It let it rise for 24 hours without adding any sugar, which means only the gluten in the wheat was there for the yeast to eat. In the end, it may have been too much. Low gluten bread doesn't rise as much, which means the bread is much heavier. But the lack of gluten makes it quite a bit healthier overall. The next thing I am trying to fix is the sour quality of it. Even after 24 hours, it isn't sour enough and doesn't taste very...San Francisco-y. So I tried adding a special type of yoghurt instead of water to my new starter to see if that works. Fingers crossed!<br />
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On top of those, last week I made my first home-made salsa. I used bottled jalapeños because my own aren't ready yet, and food processed them with onions, vinegar, and a few other bits. It really needs cilantro but we haven't found that here yet. It came out less flavourful than I was hoping, and our food processor is not very good, so we may buy a Magic Bullet blender and try again with that. The price of the Magic Bullet, though, is a fortune and they only seem to sell the large box version here, which we really don't need. Regardless, we have enough salsa to last at least two months, I think.<br />
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Finally, we made a batch of tomato basil soup today from scratch-ish. We used tomato paste as the base and just started mixing cream, water, basil, pepper, and salt until it tasted good. It wasn't perfect and it may need garlic and onions to really bring out the flavour, but it was quite tasty with my new sourdough bread.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Boxing Day vs. Black Friday: Fight!</i></span><br />
Christmas is coming and in New Zealand, there is no Thanksgiving/Black Friday to flag the start of the race. Instead, it just starts. Slow at first (Christmas stuff has been in stores since mid-October) and eventually taking over (Santa started at the mall today). Sales are not as spectacular and there is not much to say about door busters, but Christmas music is playing at the mall and you can feel the spirit growing in the air. One thing that is strange, though, is that everyone keeps talking about their Christmas barbecues rather than their Christmas roasts. That is something we're still getting used to.<br />
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Instead of Black Friday, there is Boxing Day, a national holiday the day after Christmas where all the stores try to clear their remaining inventory by the end of the year. It is apparently just as big or bigger than Black Friday, and we've never experienced it because in Wales, we went home for Christmas. This year we'll be here and we are waiting to see if we want to try it out. It may be a good chance to get some needed things, but do we want to go into that chaos? We'll see. As it is, I have already been buying stuff online for Black Friday week even though I won't see most of it in three years. Do I have the money for this? Probably not. Do I need it? Probably not. Can I refuse such discount prices? Absolutely not!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-32110935673999827822014-11-15T21:18:00.001-08:002014-11-15T21:18:11.685-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Ignoring Road Signs Since 2014 (Issue 4: 11/16)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Working Hard & Hardly Working</i></span><br />
This past week marked our first full work week. Like 9-5, five days a week. It was pretty intense. My schedule most days was:<br />
9:00 – 9:30 — Email, Facebook, troll the internet<br />
9:30 – 10:30 — French Reading<br />
10:30 – 1:00 — Book Reading<br />
1:00 – 1:30 — Lunch<br />
1:30 – 4:00 — Academic Journal Reading<br />
4:00 – 5:00 —Train research<br />
Yeah, so a lot of reading was involved and it will continue to be involved until I start writing, which will probably begin around the end of December. French is going okay but I am waiting for a how-to manual on learning to read French. Right now, Google Translate is being my good friend in helping me get past the harder passages, which is most of them.<br />
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On Monday, I spent most of the day also working on my timetable for my PhD to discuss with my advisor next week when we have our last meeting of the year. Then he's abandoning me for two months while he goes galavanting around Europe. Psh. Meanwhile, Kara and I just hope to go anywhere this winter.<br />
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Next week: more work!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Gifts from the New World</i></span><br />
We received in the mail on Saturday a special treat from my parents. It was a packed-to-the-brim US Postal Service box with NZ Inspected stamps all over it. Yeah, they aren't our best friends right now for multiple reasons. When we opened the bowing and warped box, we found the goods in shambles and the included letter (that Kara knew about) buried in the middle. New Zealand Customs had found it necessary to confiscate all but one of the seed packets that my parents had so lovingly included, with a proviso that we could either pay $55 NZD to have them shipped back, or customs could destroy them free of charge. Sheesh, what an offer. They let us keep a packet of parsley seeds...because they actually sell those here. Freaking customs. We were really looking forward to growing our own Romaine lettuce here since they don't grow or sell it in New Zealand. There were some other fun foods in there too. Word of warning: don't try to import seeds to New Zealand. They won't like it.<br />
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The package also came with a bunch of other treats that did make it through including Kraft Mac & Cheese packets, pumpkin bread ingredients, Christmas stockings and gifts, and assorted gardening accessories. My sister also sent me allergy meds and a ceramic sheep that had been occupying the back-right seat of my parent's SUV since time immemorial (c. 2000). Oh, and best of all, they sent me a packet of sourdough bread thereby completely destroying my gluten-free diet for the week. I made that bread ASAP and have been eating it a lot! It came out really good in our previously-unused bread machine. Note to anyone visiting us, bring Krustez Sourdough Bread machine mix and I'll love you even more (yes, that is possible. I will love you <u>even</u> <i>even</i> more if you also bring Pasta Roni White Cheddar Shells). Thank you Mom and Dad for a great gift box!!!<br />
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Kara is scolding me for that last comment, but I'm not removing it. We're still waiting for a big batch of vitamins and whatnot that we bought nearly a month ago now, but we assume customs is thoroughly inspecting it for...something. Kara's afraid we're on their watch list now.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Dining in Vietnam, Kiwi-style</i></span><br />
On Wednesday night, we went to see a lecture by a Cambridge professor and were invited to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant afterwards. Neither of us had ever gone to a Vietnamese restaurant before and I generally am really picky anyway, so finding anything on the menu worth eating was a huge challenge. To make things more difficult, the faculty host was pushing for us to buy a 10-course meal at $30 per person. Neither Kara nor I wanted anything in that meal except the rice, so we tried to back out, with the group eventually choosing a slightly cheaper 8-course meal and the two of us ordering separately. Did I ever mention I hate eating out in big groups when I have to pay? The whole concept of group meals just goes against my style in general, but my pickiness makes it impossible. Add to that the high cost of meals here and I just wasn't playing that game. Our combined meal ended up costing $6 less than an individual meal would have, so I'd say we won that contest. We also may have lost future networking opportunities with that specific faculty member, but you win some, you lose some.<br />
<br />
The meal itself was fun. It was a group of history faculty and students (plus Kara). There were only eight of us total, so the group was manageable. I history/law master's student was beside me while Kara sat on the other side. The guest professor began the meal on the opposite side of the table, so Kara and I talked with the host faculty member who had some very interesting insights in general. We switched about half-way through and Kara ended up monopolising the guest, asking him all manner of questions. I decided to network with my colleagues and peers instead, which may work out in the long run. We'll see. Near the end of the meal, it began hailing REALLY hard outside, a surprise considering it wasn't supposed to rain until the following day. That's New Zealand for you.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Hiking in Scotland in New Zealand</span></i><br />
I've mentioned before how New Zealand resembles the highlands of Scotland at times. Well that is especially true in regard to the Port Hills just south of Christchurch. A long time ago, a pair of volcanoes erupted creating two beautiful bays—Lyttleton and Akaroa—surrounded by relatively high crater walls. The northern crater is flanked on the north by what have since been called the Port Hills. Sheep and cattle roam these hills that are green year-round. A dirt service road between the city and the summit road acts as a popular trail for hikers and bicyclists, despite the fact that sheep wander through it incessantly.<br />
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We took our first hike through there today and made it nearly to the top of the grade (the road) before my left knee decided it wanted a rest. I hobbled back from there. The walk was very beautiful and except for the occasional views of the city or the beach town of Sumner, you wouldn't even realise you're in New Zealand.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Confusing Words for Everyday Foods</i></span><br />
New Zealanders don't like to call things what Americans (or even Brits) would call them. Instead, they make up fanciful names for them that are either absurdly simplistic or just plain confusing. Things such as:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>"Tomato Sauce". This is not Ketchup, but it is pretty much Ketchup. It's kind of like a light Ketchup with a bit more tomato and a little less spice. Australia has something similar. Oh! You wanted actual tomato sauce? Like a puree type thing? Good luck, mate. We ain't got that rubbish here. We only 'ave the good stuff.</li>
<li>"Courgette". Want a zucchini? Good luck with that, but they've got amazing courgettes here. You'll never know the difference (because there isn't one).</li>
<li>"Salads". A descriptive term defining a meal food or a general description of items that could go in a salad? Your guess is as good as mine. They call everything from lettuce to broccoli to salad dressing "salads". A BLT does not have bacon, lettuce, and tomato, it has bacon, salad, and tomato. Who woulda thunk it?</li>
<li>"Noble". A type of reduced fat cheese. Apparently the more noble among us are the ones that eat it. It does mention that it's cheddar somewhere on the labelling, but it's not obvious.</li>
<li>"Trim". <i>See</i> Skim. Refers to the fat content in milk. However, Trim ≠ Non-fat. Just as with U.S. skim milk, there is actually a little milk fat still in "Trim" milk.</li>
<li>"Chips", "Biscuits and Crackers", "Lollies" — <i>See </i>"French Fries", "Cookies", "Candies (all varieties)". </li>
</ul>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-17057912462876931402014-11-08T17:57:00.001-08:002014-11-08T17:57:33.586-08:00The Khagan Weekly: Snoozing Through Alarms Since 2014 (Issue 3: 11/8)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Last Train to Midnight</i></span><br />
These past weeks have been quite busy for numerous reasons, yet I have not slacked once on my duty to complete my book, <i>Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains</i>. 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Final Bout of Classes Before the Long Slog</i></span><br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <i>Santa Cruz Trains</i> 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.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Guy Fawkes and His Attempt to Blow Up New Zealand</i></span><br />
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.<br />
<br />
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!<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Making It Count: Gardening For Dummies</span></i><br />
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.<br />
<br />
My jalapeño 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!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Giving Up Is Hard to Do!</i></span><br />
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.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-54774646816889470852014-11-01T21:09:00.003-07:002014-11-01T21:09:37.975-07:00The Khagan Weekly: Educating The Old Fashioned Way Since 2014 (Issue 2: 11/1)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Classes for the Weary</span></i><br />
This past week, a three-day series of lectures was run by the Postgraduate Center called Surviving Your Thesis for primarily new PhD students. It was quite interesting over all. There were people who came to talk about careers, writing theses, researching techniques, ethics, the Kiwi culture, and just about everything else. And anything they missed will be covered next week by a similar series called the GradFest, which runs lectures Mon-Thur next week.<br />
<br />
That all being said, much of what the speakers discussed regarded the sciences with only one other student there who was a College of Arts student. That was a bit disappointing and next week should be better in that regard since they have some Art-centric sessions. It was a bit surprising how little people seemed to know about ethics concerns with their science projects, even though almost everyone admitted that it will be an issue at some point. Another win for Arts: no test subjects, only reading and writing. Woot!<br />
<i><br /></i><i><span style="font-size: large;">Learning French Is Not All Crème Brûlée</span></i><br />
As a part of my thesis, I have to learn how to read French. I took a year of modern French back in 2008-9 but haven't touched the language since then. And, to be quite honest, that immersive environment from five years ago did little to prepare me for this. I have no class, now, no direction, no motivation except I need to learn the language. <u>NEED!</u> Yeah, with the ALL CAPS, I know. My thesis topic is about England and France in the late Middle Ages, and the bureaucracies of both countries were French at the time. My supervisor, thus, handed me a book entitled <i>Les Temps de la guerre de Cent Ans</i> by Boris Bove and told me I should just start reading it regularly. Like every day. And I've done that ever since. Each morning I grab the book and open my browser to Google Translate, and I start reading. Whenever I don't know what a word means (or, more likely, have forgotten), I look it up. Sometimes I have to type in entire sentences just to figure out what is being said. It's long and tedious, but it is slowly working. I began doing this at the beginning of October and haven't missed a day since except for two days while we were on vacation, and I read twice as much the following two days to make up for that. I don't read much, usually no more than two full text pages per day, but I'm catching on.<br />
<br />
For those that think that this material can just be taught in a class, though, let me clarify some things for you. In cultural-emersion courses such as those that are taught at virtually all secondary and tertiary places of education, they focus on the present tense first, then the future tense because it's easy, and then the various forms of the past. They also teach simple everyday words, only adding abstract words later. None of this will prepare you for a history program, I guarantee you. If you want to read history books in modern French, you probably need to do four years of French and then some. The material I am reading right now is literally the end of the teaching spectrum for French courses, and it's my initiation. And it's hard. I've wanted to give up at least twice each week. Some sections of the book are also not nearly as interesting as others. That affects your reading ability as well.<br />
<br />
The bottom line: learning to read history in another language is perhaps the true test of reading a language. It's not for the faint of heart.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>This Is Halloween, This Is Halloween</i></span><br />
New Zealand is not a Halloween-friendly country. People just don't seem to like it very much. Sure, some of the kids like the concept, but people just aren't game. There's no decorations around and few trick-or-treaters. Downtown is a bit more rowdy than usual, but that's not too surprising, especially since Halloween was on a Friday this year. We bought some candy ("lollies") for the kids but only ended up with one group, so we went over to Sam's and dropped off some for his two kids. They appreciated it greatly, though they already had had quite enough candy, to be honest. His daughter was bouncing off the walls!<br />
<br />
We did manage to carve two pumpkins, butternut pumpkins since the traditional huge yellow type weren't available here. Kara bought some seeds to grow her own, though, so we have a chance. Next year may be different, but I doubt Halloween will be any more pronounced.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Do It Yourself Mexican Food</span></i><br />
Mexican food is quite expensive in New Zealand, mostly because everything comes in from the US from Old El Paso brand. Refried beans are around $4.50/can, sauces taste like crap, salsas are very thick and need to be blended (and are also expansive). Only tortillas really maintain the same value, and that is just barely. There also is little variety. Thus we've been attempting, at least, to make some of our own Mexican food. Whole-grain flour tortillas are easy enough to make, though trying to make them roundish is <i>really</i> difficult. Salsa isn't too hard, though you have to use pre-sliced jalapeño peppers (until our home-grown peppers are edible). The refried beans seem to be the problem. We perfected a slow-cooker recipe a while back and tried it twice when we were at our first home stay. But since we got here, we haven't been able to replicate the results. The first batch hardly cooked despite sitting in the slow cooker for over 12 hours. We decided the beans were just too old. Today, though, we made our second batch and a similar thing happened. We ended up cooking the beans on the oven for nearly an hour until they finally were smooth enough to eat, though not nearly as smooth as our other batches. On reflection, we think our brand new slow cooker just doesn't get hot enough to properly cook the beans. We had hoped it was something else, but this has happened twice now and the results have been the same (different beans, too).<br />
<br />
The lesson: budget wisely for your food and don't expect everything to be makable at home. Sometimes, the store is the best solution even if it seems to cost more. This is a sad truth, but one I think I'll have to accept. Or we need to buy a new slow cooker.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Niko Report</i></span><br />
Niko has settled in to his new environs with the speed of a hungry cheetah. The very first day he started exploring every nook and cranny. He began almost immediately sleeping under the covers during the day, which he's never done before. When we got our new couch and lazy chairs, he moved into one of them, sleeping there most days now. But that doesn't mean he's not active. He loves the increased sunlight he gets here and also loves the hardwood. Most nights, he runs back and forth around the house, galloping like a freaking horse. Seriously, you'd think the place is haunted. And as soon as we go to bed, he hops on and sleeps...well, until he feels like waking us up at around 7:00 am most days. A bit earlier than our alarm, but better than 4:00 like the first few days we were here. In any case, he is doing well and he appreciates all the people who have asked about him.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-65674059753213363742014-10-25T13:48:00.001-07:002014-10-25T13:48:53.420-07:00The Khagan Weekly: Harassing the Peasants Since 2014 (Issue 1: 10/26)<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">NEWS BRIEFS</span></b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Format Changed—AGAIN!</span></i><br />
The format of Khan Adventures has changed again, this time to a weekly digest entitled <u>The Khagan Weekly</u>. It will release weekly on Sunday (or Monday) and summarize the week in more interesting ways.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Americans In Christchurch, Myth or Reality?</span></i><br />
Despite living in Christchurch for two months now, we have met only a few Americans. A Uni professor in the history department is from New York while we met a random Ohioan working at a Mexican restaurant at the mall. Americans have been scarce. Do they even exist here?<br />
<br />
Of course they do, we're here after all. But we discovered that the term "American" is more vague that we'd previously though. A Canadian at a game day a month ago identified herself as American first, Canadian second. Similarly, a Guatemalan we met at a postgraduate event was clearly embracing the term American to refer to her small Central American country. Clearly, the term is more fluid here. Thus, we found ourselves not entirely surprised at an "Americans in Christchurch" gathering on Saturday night to find that most of the "Americans" were only barely that. One couple were, in fact, British, but had lived in Michigan for twelve years. Another was from Arkansas and Oregon, but moved here nine years ago and is not attached to a Kiwi. Her daughter even has the accent. There were some true Americans on-site, though, but even they were raising their children in the Kiwi manner, accents and all.<br />
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Do Americans exist in Christchurch? Not for long. New Zealand takes your soul, and gives it an accent and ambiguous sense of nationality. Personally, I blame the Brits.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Carbs–The Devil's Food</span></i><br />
For the past two weeks, carbohydrates have been decreasing from our diets, being replaced by meats. The book <i>Good Calories, Bad Calories</i> is the root of this craziness. The book states in not-uncited terms how terrible pretty much any carbohydrate is for you, and how nothing else, not saturated or unsaturated fats, cholesterol, or preservatives, even come close to the evilness that is grains. While I have partially embraced the diet, Kara has gone full blown gluten- and grain-free, or at least as close to it as she dares. Will this diet last? Who knows, but it certainly is an interesting change for me, who has been reduced to eating fish for dinner and quesadillas (heavy on the cheese) for lunch every day. The fact that Mac & Cheese tastes like crap here helps a little.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Food Costs Soaring!</span></i><br />
Food costs in New Zealand are easily double that of the United States, especially when you're trying to stick to a meat-rich died. A regular shopping trip to the discount food store regularly surpasses the $100 mark weekly, and the monthly total is around $500 for a couple with a cat. Prices are already double and factoring in an exchange rate of 75¢ NZ to $1 US does little to improve the situation.<br />
<br />
A fair warning to those planning to visit in New Zealand, all food, from grocery stores to restaurants, is expensive, and petrol is also twice the cost. Plan accordingly. And the exchange rate is getting worse.<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The Semester's Over, And Other Facts That Don't Concern Me</span></i><br />
The undergraduate students at the University of Canterbury finished their school year a week ago and are now busily getting drunk while pretending to study for their final exams which will begin on November 3rd and continue for two weeks. However, postgraduate students of all levels generally don't much care unless they are getting taught degrees. Kara and I came here in September, mid-way through the spring semester, and plan to graduate at the end of the 2017 academic year (i.e., December 2017). At least that's our goal. But we have to work year-round, with no official breaks. So congratulations to the 2014 students, I'm going to keep learning French.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">DISCLAIMER</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Khagan Weekly</i> is <u>the</u> 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.</span>Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-5510382177647391172014-10-18T18:39:00.000-07:002014-10-18T18:39:37.313-07:00The Sign at the End of the RoadWe have a house! Oh, wait, that's out of order. Let me start again...<br />
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<b>12 October: </b>We have a house! Okay, we've had a house but we couldn't move in until today. That being said, we really didn't move in today, we just unloaded the junk in the car (and there was quite a bit in there) and started packing back at Sam's place. We also went to K-Mart (yeah, they have those here) and spent a fortune on household goods. We also picked up a mattress from nearby and then spent some more money on stuff for the house. That evening, we played a game with Sam and watched <i>Hannibal</i> before bed. Not an overly exciting day, but at least we have a house now.<br />
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<b>13 October: </b>So we got everything moved out in two runs today, with the second after we said our goodbyes to Sam. We'll still see him for gaming events and whatnot, but we had to leave still. We got our refrigerator in the morning and moved in all our Kmart goods then went back out to shop like crazy. That evening we brought our last load of stuff over, mostly clothes and whatnot, and then picked up a few snacks for home. The refrigerator was in desperate need of cleaning and the doors had to be reversed, so we did that before grocery shopping the next day. I honestly can't even remember everything from this day because it was just so busy.<br />
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<b>14 October: </b>Tuesday was the most exciting day of the week because we finally liberated Niko from his cattery! But first, we spent another fortune at the Pak 'n' Save buying groceries for the now-functional fridge. And there were a lot of groceries to get since Kara's switched to an all-protein diet and I've half-switched to one. Things are not cheap here. After all that got worked out, we got Niko and brought him back. Let's just say he's acclamated well. In fact, he doesn't even seem to remember his traumatic trip in the plane. He cried a bit in the carrier but did fine once we got to the new place and he's done fine ever since. Which leads me to...<br />
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<b>15 October: </b>Wow! I forgot how annoying Niko can be at night. He didn't let us sleep. He was purring like a lawn mower all night long, which was apparently shorter than we planned for since he got us up at around 4:00 a.m. The house has some decent damage from the 2011 earthquake and as such many of the doors don't shut properly (or at all in one case), so he naturally discovered that he can get back in if we boot him out. We're going to be talking to our landlords about that one soon. Groggy, we crawled out of bed and went to Uni where we listened to a lecture on something-or-another—it was out of my field and I just don't remember it much. I think it had something to do with Ireland during the 1800s. We'll go with that. I read some. I wrote some. Kara made up most of the house. That's Wednesday.<br />
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<b>16 October: </b>Another night with little sleep. Niko is a bit of a pain. We also are trying to get him to eat a raw-meat diet, which is healthier for cats, but we have to kick his addiction to cereal-based kitty chow first, which he clearly doesn't want to do. We have this big old meat log in the fridge for him, but he only will eat a little bit of it at a time. Ugh. Kara had a training session in the morning so I did my French and started working on my book article while she was gone. She came back in time to help with some new furniture we bought for the living room—a sofa and two recliners, win! That mostly wraps up Thursday.<br />
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<b>17 October: </b>Friday was my turn to wake up early, though Niko still beat me to it. I met with my advisor, Chris, today to discuss my proposal. Did I say that I got accepted to present a paper at the biennial ANZAMEMS conference? Yeah, I did. It's pretty awesome. On the not so awesome side, Chris says I need to have two chapters done by the time I present and before I can student teach a class, which is a real pain in the neck since I still have my book I am writing until the end of February. The due date for my first chapter? February 1st. Ugh. I seriously am failing this whole PhD thing. I have had this little book by Geraeme Small that I've been reading for almost a month, and I'm not even halfway through it yet, but somehow I need to have my first chapter done in three months. .:.sigh.:. And on top of that, I'm dead broke and federal loans to New Zealand have been stopped over some stupid political issue about nuclear-capable submarines in NZ water.<br />
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Anyway, after a brief gap, I went to hear Kathleen Neal speak about medieval lettres and the Kara and I both went to a Q&A session with her about careers in the humanities. Both were very informative and, I believe, are the last research seminars of the year since the academic year ended today. Back at the house, we finally started settling in, though French and book writing are still taking precedence over everything else.<br />
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<b>18 October: </b>Garage saling. They have it here unlike in Britain where it is called "Car Boot Sales". In any case, we found a bunch of books and random other things, which was good. Kara also got us a washer and dryer which have both been installed. We'll do a load of laundry tomorrow to test them out. Other than that, it was a fairly slow day with mostly French and research taking up my time. Woot.<br />
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<b>Crossroads:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Intersections in New Zealand are quite odd. Roundabouts are common, though not the norm. Traffic signals are also quite common in the city, though not elsewhere. Stop signs are rather infrequent and mostly at major non-sigalled intersections. The big sign here is "Give Way" which is a rather clunky way of writing "Yield". In residential areas, virtually all signs say "Give Way" rather than "Stop", which is great because it means rolling stops are perfectly acceptable here. A line on the road usually shows drivers where to give that way, but you really just drive to it slowly and then roll through when nobody's around.</li>
<li>However, left turns are not allowed at a red signal. Drivers must wait for a green before they can turn right, which is a bit of a pain sometimes when no traffic is coming. The American in me wants to go, but that's not allowed.</li>
<li>Right Turns, which are the equivalent of left turns in the United States, are very odd here. They are usually not protected at all, so you just drive out and wait for an opening, which can sometimes be hard to see when the car right in front of you is also trying to turn right in the opposite direction. When the turn is protected, it usually only is for a few seconds before turning red. Then, it will just disappear entirely, which means you are free to try and turn right again. That's right, the signal protects you, stops you, then allows you to try. Very weird and slightly confusing.</li>
<li>Lastly, speeding tickets are sent to the registration addresses and people rarely are pulled over for a speeding violation. Tickets are a set $150 for every violation, though I'm sure penalties start applying after multiples. There is no traffic school to opt out of the insurance violation, either, and the points go on your record immediately. Oh, and how do they discover if you're speeding? Cameras, of course, often hidden in unmarked cars sitting on streets. Didn't I mention that at least half the police cars in New Zealand are unmarked? Yeah, it's that creepy.</li>
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Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9167328678382477610.post-80909761859214206572014-10-11T22:27:00.002-07:002014-10-11T22:29:25.223-07:00There And Back Again: A TranzAlpine Tale<b>October 7: </b>Tuesday was a lazy day for me. I spent much of the day writing my article on the Summit Tunnel and reading French. Kara had a bunch of meetings, but other than that, we mostly planned for our end-of-week trip to Fox Glacier. We bought a bunch of food at Countdown in the afternoon to stock our suitcase for the trip, but otherwise the day was quite slow.<br />
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<b>October 8: </b>Wednesday had a very early start as we had to be at the train station before 8:00. From there, we headed to the West Coast city of Greymouth on the TranzAlpine Railway, something that my railfans would definitely enjoy. Just for the record, the train was once a part of a much larger network of 3' 6" narrow-gauged tracks that once criss-crossed New Zealand supporting its various industries. Politics over the past fifty years have shut down virtually all of these, leaving just the TranzAlpine, an East Coast excursion train, and a North Island track in tact for passenger use. All other remaining tracks are freight-only.<br />
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Anyway, so we headed west from Christchurch Station, passing through the Canterbury Plain and all of its cattle and sheep farms. There are relatively few crops grown in New Zealand these days, but cattle are a huge industry, replacing sheep since the 1980s. Above the plain, we passed through a series of beautiful gorges with fifteen small tunnels hopping between gulches. Below, a beautiful river ran beneath the cliffsides. Lots of photos along this stretch, to be sure. We finally went through a slightly longer tunnel and entered a much more mellow area within the Southern Alps where the wind blows strongly, rains scour the pastures, and few people can be found. At the top of this valley, we briefly stopped at the settlement of Arthur's Pass. From there, we then descended into the heart of the mountain, a tunnel stretching over 5 miles and requiring five diesel engines to ensure that the train does not run away. It took nearly 30 minutes to make it through this tunnel. On the other side, we entered the West Coast region, which is a temperate rain forest. The variety of trees increased exponentially from the other side of the mountains, while the temperature rose slightly as well. After another hour, we made it into Greymouth and quickly shuttled off to the intercity bus that was waiting for us.<br />
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The last three hours of the trip were less than ideal. Rain was lightly falling the entire trip to Fox Glacier village obscuring the views and the bus driver was an absolute speed demon. We made it to our first stop in what had to be record time and got a 25 minute break there. We then had a long haul to our final destination, which was also the last stop for the bus. We got in just before 6:00, finishing 10 hours of transportation. Too late to do anything, Kara and I took our room at the Glacier Inn and ate dinner from supplies we took with us, since restaurants are a fortune normally and especially when there are few options around. We went to bed early for the journey of the next morning.<br />
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<b>October 9: </b>Fox Glacier village is, naturally, named after a glacier, specifically one named Fox Glacier located just above the town around a bend. We joined a guided hike on Thursday morning and bussed to a parking lot just outside the glacier confines. From there, we hiked to an overlook above the glacier. The glacier had receded a lot since it was first discovered around 1850. In the 1890s, its end still peaked out around the bend and could be seen from the plains below the mountains. It receded continuously until the 1980s, when it began to grow again, albeit slowly. The group in charge of the tours once had a path that walked up to the top of the glacier via stairs, but now that stairs hangs overhead, hidden in trees, abandoned since the early 2000s when the glacier backed too far into the mountains. A landslide finally took out the access route to reach the stairs earlier this year. With the glacier retreating so quickly now, the tours are getting longer and going further up into the valley. But slides are also becoming more frequent and unpredictable, so government survey crew are constantly out there, ensuring the paths are safe for guided groups (non-guided groups are discouraged from hiking most of the trails).<br />
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After we returned from the glacier and had lunch, we hiked A LONG WAY (around 10 miles) to (and back from) Lake Matheson, a natural glacial lake that has long since become the home of eels and reeds. The lake is famous for its beautiful reflective surface, but a light rain storm in the morning mixed with wind in the afternoon made the lake murky and decidedly not reflective. The lake, though, was surrounded by a nearly-tropical rain forest that was beautiful, though lacking in a sounds since only a few species of birds live in the forests here. Our walk back to the village was quicker than our walk there surprisingly, but we were disappointed that the reflection was so poor. We spent the evening watching a few TV shows and eating from our cache, anticipating the long day on Friday.<br />
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<b>October 10: </b>Friday was a beautiful day—a rare thing on the West Coast. Even the locals and bus driver noticed it. Unfortunately, we had another long bus ride back. We planned better, taking copious amounts of Dramamine. We also took a lot of photos on the way back since we passed various mirror lakes (that actually mirrored) and the ocean on our drive back to Greymouth. At our lunch stop, we had about 45 minutes to wander around a town that I can't for the life of me remember its name. The last leg of the bus ride was quick afterwards. In Greymouth, we got another hour of free time since the train arrived late to the station. We wandered the streets of the small city and checked out a few stores. We'll probably visit the place again when we tour the South Island later this year or early next year.<br />
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The train ride back was much the same as the ride there, except in reverse. The better weather meant that we got some more photos on the west end of the route, and the views of the river valleys were beautiful, as before. We got in late and picked up some battered fish from a local market. They were very good. I had to read some French when I got back because I'd forgotten the book on the trip. Oops! Otherwise, that was pretty much Friday.<br />
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<b>October 11: </b>Saturday was a breathing day where I mostly wrote my article on Wright & Sunset Park for my book. Seriously, this bugger took all day. We got fish again because Kara has gone crazy insane thanks to <i>Good Calories, Bad Calories</i>, a book I highly recommend it you never want to eat carbohydrates again. In the evening, we also finally got to see the first <i>Marvel's Agents of SHIELD </i>episode, something I'd been eagerly waiting for for about three weeks now.<br />
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<b>More Musings:</b><br />
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<ul>
<li>It rains constantly on the West Coast, like buckets of rain. In an average year, it rains 200 days and the rain is measured in metres rather than centimetres. Specifically, 9 metres of rain compared to roughly 1.5 metres on the East Coast.</li>
<li>Cows have overtaken sheep in New Zealand over the past thirty years. The sheep industry apparently just doesn't do as well as the cattle, so farmers have been slowly phasing one out for the other. There are still sheep everywhere, though, just not as many as there once were. Cows now outnumber sheep in increasing ratios. I don't mind, though, because New Zealand cheese is tasty!</li>
<li>Speaking of which, there are four primary types of cheese here: Colby, Edom, Mild, and Tasty. The latter two are a type of Cheddar while the first is well-known in the US and Edom is similar to cheddar but slightly softer. Other types of cheeses are also available here, but these four are the staple cheeses. None of them are offered in low-fat varieties, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to have them that way—they just wouldn't be the same.</li>
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Derek Whaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17715926686413316877noreply@blogger.com0