Since (I) Been Gone

I know, I know, I've done a sort of poor job posting for the last week, so I trying to make up for it now by annoyingly posting a couple times in a row. Ryan's a bad blogger.

First things first, I wrote my first essay this week. It was for my Human Geography class - a class I actually enjoy, but apparently not enough to actually begin work on my paper much ahead of time. It actually came out pretty well; the title of it was The effects of development and marketisation on the subsistence-driven culture of rural, mainland Southeast Asia. Makes me sound smart, eh? Essentially, I wrote that the culture of mainland rural SE Asia - one in which families practice slash-and-burn farming and use the nearby forests as a food resource - is actually being degraded by attempts at development, in which families are relocated from the mountainous interior to low-lying regions. In fact, the rural way of life appears sustainable, even with the slash-and-burn farming (swidden agriculture). It seems to me like the best parts of sociology and economics combined.

In other, more fun news, yesterday Annie, Laura, KC, Page, Andrew and I went to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory for a tour of Cadbury World. The factory is only a ten minute walk from my flat - on the same street no less! - but I never noticed until yesterday that as you walk by on the sidewalk, you can smell the chocolate in the air...I felt like I was going for a tour of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

The moment I stepped in the door, that feeling was more reinforced. In fact, I felt like I was in that happiest place on earth. This was only added to as we were given hairnets and snoods (to cover beards, clearly not a problem I have) to wear on our way through the factory. Normally, I would have taken a ton of photos, but like other factory tours (Ben & Jerry's comes to mind) we weren't allowed to. Regardless, the tour was great - we saw the process of making chocolate, and even better, got tons of candy for free! Among others, I got a couple Moro Bars, Dairy Milk, and Crunchie Bars. Naturally, not many will know what these delicacies are, so basically it's like Milky Way, Hershey's Chocolate, and Butterfinger (but way more rich and not sticky), respectively. Not only that, but after the tour I bought about $15 worth of chocolate, including kiwifruit-filled, three layer (milk, white and dark all together), and blackberry-filled. Oh, and a bunch of creme eggs. It's lasted 24 hours so far, and if I care about my health, I'll make that 2 kilos last at least a week. We'll see.

Today, Annie, KC, Laura, Andrew and I went down to St. Clair and St. Kilda beaches, ironically, to go ice skating. That was fun, you know, except for how I suck at skating, and all of the stupid little kids zooming past me (or across me) made me want to smack them...I'm really grown up, obviously. Anyway, tomorrow Butler is taking us on the Taieri Gorge Railway, which goes into Central Otago. Some curling will be in order, and beyond that, I'm not sure. Free dinner though! Well, that probably covers everything...cheers!

Cadbury Chocolate Carnival

Beautiful day for a chocolate festival, eh? I think it got as warm as 45 degrees today, and it may not have even gotten to freezing last night. I could get used to this. Anyway, the shot above is from about halfway up Baldwin Street, which, I'll mention again, is the steepest street in the world. At its steepest, for every 2.86 feet you walk horizontally, you'll go up by a foot. That's a 19° slope (35% grade). Here's one way to get an idea for it:

That's more or less the steepness of the street. It feels way steeper than it looks in these pictures, though. There was a pretty big crowd there, too. And who wouldn't want to be out on a day like this to see 20,000 Jaffa candies bounce and roll down the street? Down at the bottom of the street there, they had some vendors, but strangely no Cadbury vendors. Now if you were to have a chocolate festival, and particularly an event which promotes a particular candy, wouldn't you want to capitalize on the cravings that all the spectators are getting from watching the festivities? Sad times for me.

Anyway, you could donate $2 to charity in order to have your own Jaffa ball in the 'race.' Each ball had a little numbered piece of paper attached, and I guess that whoever owned the ball that made it to the bottom first would win some sort of prize. Having a ball make it to the bottom, however, is not as easy a task as one would assume. This isn't exactly the smoothest of streets (how often would you want to resurface something as steep as this?), so there are plenty of treacherous cracks and bumps that made the Jaffas bounce into the fence (and spectators). There were a lot of dead soldiers, too. And little kids ate them. Gross (apparently dead soldiers taste like chocolaty orange). If you want to see a crappy video I shot of the whole spectacle, go here. Don't worry, it's only sideways at the beginning.

The festival isn't only the Jaffa race; it actually goes for a whole week. Unfortunately a lot of it is paid stuff, but it's all kinda cool. On Saturday the festival kicked off with a free street concert thing at the Octagon with a chocolate fountain (Death by Chocolate, anyone?) and music and best of all, heat. It was pretty great, and below you can see St. Paul's Cathedral on the left and the Dunedin Municipal Chambers on the right. Until next time...