The Final Countdown

I'd link to a video of GOB on Arrested Development, but apparently it's been deleted. I'm actually shocked that I didn't use that as the title for this post - it would probably have made more sense to switch titles. It's funny how much someone changes the music they listen to over time - back in the middle of June, I was obsessed with the Traveling Wilburys. The last couple months though, I've listened to a lot of reggae, and most recently, OK Go, The Strokes and Nirvana.

Anyway, this will be my last post from New Zealand. I take off roughly 12 hours from now, and my packing's pretty much all set, thankfully. The flat inspection went off without a hitch (and damn well should have, compared to the state some others are in), leaving me home free. I couldn't possibly begin to wrap up my feelings and thoughts about leaving here and now - I may try to think about that on the plane from Auckland or later - because trying summarize now would be too short-sighted.

Here are two things that I know I'm going to miss. First off, jazz night on Thursdays at the Robert Burns Pub down on George St. Every Thursday, me and some friends converge on 'the Burns,' or 'the Robbie,' as it's called, to enjoy a nice pint of Monteith's Black or Emerson's Pilsner (one of NZ's best beers) and some conversation. The Pub is full of Dunedin's history - mostly from the list of owners dating back to the mid-1800s etched in the mirror above the bar, and the presence of poems written by Robbie Burns, Scottish poet, on the walls. The Quartet is fantastic, particularly the drummer, who'll make you do a double take when you see that old white guy sing just like Louis Armstrong.

The other thing? The culture of hospitality surrounding Pat, Rob and Xander's flat. I'd mentioned it before in passing, and really, it became an institution. A sunny blue sky was our Bat Signal for barbecues, and every Monday was Poker Night, where 8-16 of us got together to play some Texas Hold 'Em. Their end-of-finals barbecue was the perfect send off for the semester.

Alright, that's it for me, for now. Next up on my plate is a 5 days in paradise - also known as Pomona College. I'll try to check in from there if I can manage it between the laying around and doing nothing and the running around catching up with friends.

My Life Right Now

The Queenstown post is coming soon - I'm just waiting for pictures from Andrew. Needless to say, it was great. More importantly, in my remaining two or so weeks here, here's a look at my daily routine:

• Wake up around noon; shower and make eggs for breakfast.
• Head to Gardie's, a sports bar near campus, at 1; watch the Red Sox dominate while having Speight's and wedges.
• Walk down to Pat and Rob's flat on Castle St. (middle of the student flats); have a BBQ with a bunch of friends, enjoy frisbee and Speight's.
• Play poker, win my $5 buy-in back.

Now I'm sure maybe a few of you are wondering, 'Wait, that's too specific to be a routine!' Well, it's what I did today, and will do tomorrow, so that's enough to me. Also, you may claim, how is this experiencing study abroad culture at all? Well when you're a 'Scarfie' on a beautiful spring day during finals, this is what you do. And it can't be beat.

I could get used to this.

Not a news-maker, by any means, but I just felt this little trembler - it's the little blue scribbles in the middle. That makes two in a week - not bad! I'm really lucky too, because it was a tiny earthquake, barely registering on any other drums. I doubt it'll even get a mention on the website, but my guess for magnitude? I'd say it was a magnitude 2.5, 100 km away. Alright, sleep before an exam is a must.

Final Frontier

On Friday, I took my first final exam for the semester, for my Metamorphism class - although I suppose it could have been my second, since I took the lab practical exam for the same class just a week before that. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that it went pretty damn well - they have a great system here where they (meaning every class at the University) provides at least the previous final exam for the course, if not several. Knowing the format and style of an exam ahead of time makes studying so much better, especially when you get four of the previous exams, like my Metamorphism one.

Anyway, I came away from the exam and the week or so of studying previous to that realizing that, yeah, I've actually learned a lot from that class. I guess it's a little surprising, given how little I thought I had done here, but both and Andrew and I were pretty happy with the outcome.

For now, I'm going back to my typical study routine - watching the Sox clamber back into their series and listening to Car Talk podcasts - until my Human Geography final Tuesday. After that, I have two and a half weeks until I get to take my last final for Māori Society, which means lots of backpacking for me. More on that in days to come...

Earthquake Weather

If you don't care for geology-obsessed rantings, you may want to stop reading here. However, if you like the rantings of someone who is completely and utterly, head-over-heels for his major, then this might be quite the thing to witness.

I'll set the mood for you first. It's late - about 1:30 am, to be precise - and I'm just minding my own business, sitting on the couch, browsing Facebook (are you really surprised?) while KC and Page are watching Troy. Then, all of a sudden, it happened: an EARTHQUAKE. Well, I couldn't be entirely sure at first, because I'll admit, it was hard to tell if I really felt it or maybe I was just woozy from being tired. It was (and still is) late, after all. It felt like the couch was gently oscillating below me - a little bit of a rolling motion, while moving side to side, for about 6 seconds. What's that, you say? Sounds just like Rayleigh and Love waves? That's why I thought too! Goodness, we sure know our seismology, don't we?

Naturally, I asked KC and Page if they'd felt the shaking too, even mentioning that it could have been an earthquake, but I think they were too engrossed in the death of Achilles to have noticed. Their loss! At this point, though, I was getting excited about the possibility of having finally felt my first earthquake. For a long time, I've always wanted to feel one, even before I went to college, just because it would be cool (ironic for someone interested in hazard management). Honestly, the only reason why I chose to go to school in Southern California and the South Island(PDF) of New Zealand is because both of these places are really prone to earthquakes. I mean, really, what else is there to care about?

Being the investigative person I am, I immediately went to the USGS Earthquake site - nothing there. Frustrated that I might have been thwarted once again (by a large passing truck, perhaps?) I tracked down the NZ version of the USGS, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS). Quickly navigating through the EQ site, I found a fantastic page with the seismic readouts of a set of 15 seismometers throughout NZ - just a representative sample. There weren't any readings on them, but it was also at least 6 or 7 minutes old, before I felt anything. My thoughts were confirmed, though, when I saw the individual readout of the WNZ (Wanaka) drum - one I knew would be close to any EQ action, which went up to 1:30 am, showing a solitary, large, red line. That was it! Within a few minutes, all of the stations' drums were showing this (huge) blip. Money in the bank.

Still, I didn't know where this happened, or even what the magnitude was. It was about this time that the USGS world EQ map updated - this time with a satisfyingly large, red box over Fiordland (map). Clicking with anticipation, I clicked and was blown away to see a big, bold '7.0' on the EQ page. And there it was. Of course, I knew that this would probably change, since most magnitudes are revised with time, after a lot of different seismometers have been analyzed, so in the mean time I went to the GNS and USGS sites, filling out 'felt reports' like a good little geology student - after all, these are important in calculating things like the Modified Mercalli index of the quake. It came out to pretty much a III. Shockingly, within 45 minutes of the quake, there had been well over 200 felt reports from all over NZ - that's by 2:15 am. Well done, Kiwis. Dunedin, for those who don't know, is the concentration of dots in the center-right of the above map.

To get a little more into the geological nitty-gritty of this quake, at this point, the magnitude has been placed at 6.8 - a pretty decent showing. It was centered just off the coast of Fiordland (maps here), clearly along the boundary between the Pacific and Australian Plates. This fault, the Alpine Fault, runs from here and forms the nearly linear western boundary of the Southern Alps - see some fantastic evidence of this here, here and here. It's a right lateral fault, but with a lot of oblique motion - the Pacific plate is essentially being thrust over the Australian plate (45 degree dip in places), hence the Alps. It's also the reason why we see these two moment tensor solutions - both indicating convergence along a SW-NE plane. Hmmm...funny how these things have a way of working themselves out. It's a good feeling, really.

Alright, that's enough from me. The USGS page on this quake can be found here, and the GNS one here. Check out some of the accompanying maps and other goodies - they're good times. Also, more on the Alpine Fault from our friends at the Otago Geology Dept. Alright, now I really need to sleep...being able to study for my final on Friday - for my metamorphism class, no less - would probably be a nice thing.

NZ Tunes

First off, I should probably say that overall, Kiwi music isn't all that extraordinarily different from what you might see in the States - in fact, American music is really popular here (sadly, they like a lot of the same crap we do, too). Some New Zealand music has had success in the US, too - you may recognize 'So Bizarre' by OMC, which was a hit in the mid-90s, and 'Walkie Talkie Man' by Steriogram was used in an iPod commercial, obviously the epitome of success. You may have even heard of the Rocky Horror Show - that was written by a transplanted Brit. Close enough. And most recently, if you watch HBO, you'll know about Flight of the Conchords, 'the almost award-winning fourth-most-popular folk duo in New Zealand." They're the best.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about being at a big university (for those not in the know, Otago has around 20,000 students) is that there's a pretty good music scene around here, and more importantly, it's a real draw for a lot of Kiwi bands - and that's great news for me. Back in September, I had a three week run of going to some pretty cool shows:

The first one was for Shapeshifter, a drum and bass act from Christchurch. I'm not the biggest drum and bass fan, but for what they are, I think they put on a pretty good show. The concerts here are put on by ReFuel, the on-campus bar, but are actually held in a gym-like concert hall, which works as a pretty good venue. This was by far the biggest show I've been to here - the entire place was packed and really bumping, and the entire place basically smelled of sweat, weed and beer (not to mention the beer cups and puddles on the floor). An entirely classy concert. Overall, I just find their music hard to listen too (music videos here, here and here), especially because it feels like you're at a rave and need to be on ecstasy to enjoy it. Not my thing, man. Crazy concert though.

Next up, a week later, was The Black Seeds. They were just awesome, and I loved the whole show, even the opening acts. One of them, Dubwize, was a Kiwi reggae group whose lead singer had the longest dreads I have ever seen - they literally went down to his feet (far left in this pic). Insane. The Black Seeds, however, were the main attraction, and with good reason. They're a reggae/dub band from Wellington with some great music - check out two really good songs/videos here and here - and see if you can find Bret from Flight of the Conchords in there, too - he's a former member. This wasn't as huge a show, since it fell on a Thursday, but it was just very well done.

Finally, we saw Katchafire, another pretty popular reggae/dub act from the North Island, south of Auckland. This was by far my favorite show, for a couple reasons. First off, they started out as a Bob Marley cover band, so they played several great covers, the best one, I though, being Iron Lion Zion. Secondly, they played was must have been at least a two hour set, if not longer - major props to any act that can play that well, for that long, in that hot a venue. Anyway, you can check out a couple videos here and here. Good stuff.

If anyone's still reading at this point in the post, I'm impressed. But if you are, I just have to end this with some FOTC stuff - they're a Kiwi version of Tenacious D (with more musical variety), and their show is like Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Napoleon Dynamite. I can't really get over them. This one here's 'Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.'

Dunedin Shenanigans

So I thought I would keep up with more of the Dunedin cultural stuff with a couple other interesting things going on in these parts.

First of all, the bi-annual Cookathon was on Friday. It's held at the Cook (it's that student bar I mentioned way back in July), which is conveniently close to campus. It's a great place to go hang out, especially when it isn't crowded (i.e. not Thursday-Saturday nights), and me and my New England friends even went there at 1:30 on a Tuesday afternoon to watch the Pats on MNF, which was pretty awesome, obviously. Lemme tell you, Kiwis sure do look at you funny when you're cheering for American football.

Anyway, steering back to the Cookathon, it's an all-day party, basically, where you pay $20 at 10 a.m. and you get a pint, 3 meals and a t-shirt. That's quite a deal, and the scarfies (Uni students) gobble it up, and go all out with costumes themes. It's really hard to get in at all on those days - the picture of the people outside is from 1:30 pm! Note the cop. I would've loved to go to this - Andrew and I had even been planning on it - but it's pretty hard to convince yourself to wake up at 10 am just to pack into a bar to drink and eat questionable food all day when the payoff is just a (reasonably cool) t-shirt.

SPEAKING of t-shirts, here is one the funniest comeback fads that I've seen in a while. I know that I'm not one to judge - not when I wear my 'I'd hit that'/'Erotica Tectonica' t-shirt - but holy crap, you'd think that Wham! reunited and re-released 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' as a hit iTunes single/ringtone/dance remix/mashup/charity work.

Considering the typical wearer of said costume - high school age girls (17 and under here) - you have to wonder if they even know who Wham! was, let alone their songs. Hell, I wasn't even alive when they existed - the duo broke up in June of 1986, 6 months before I was born - but at least I was a teenager (16) when I Love the '80s came out (they were 12). Clearly I am justified in my argument. Sane, too. Anyway, these shirts are pretty popular here in Dunedin (I'd take the photos on George St. to prove it, but that would be pretty creepy), so now I'm just waiting for the day when cutoff denim vests are in fashion, because then I'll be in business.

Best. Billboard. Ever.

I've never been the biggest billboard fan. After all, I grew up in one of four states that prohibits them - Alaska, Hawaii and Maine are the others - and I was pretty glad that the gaudiest sign I had to look at growing up was this one, but mostly just because it meant I'd crossed the river into West Lebanon, a bastion of congestion and commercialization.

Anyway, I've had to change my ways since going to school in L.A., obviously, and I can appreciate good advertising, which leads me to this incredible billboard. It's just two blocks south of my flat, on the side of the main northbound road through Dunedin, outside 'The Bowler,' a bar, and Video Ezy, a movie rental place.

I love this sign for a number of reasons, but it's mostly because it just has so much going on, on either side. The older ad on this sign is for Tui, a brewery from the North Island that makes what's probably the second-most popular student bar beer here, next to Speight's (a Dunedin brew, see more here). As a beer, it's alright, although I've got to admit I've never seen anything other than their East India Pale Ale. It doesn't matter though, because they've got the best advertising campaign I've seen - the left side of the ad has some 'rational' phrase or declaration, simply white text on black, and to the right, 'Yeah, right.' It's hilarious, simple and effective, especially since they cater to the area they're in - hence the flatmates statement. To add to the greatness, don't miss the graffiti below it too.

The newest addition to this board is on the other side. Actually, it's more of an alteration, but an extremely timely one that gives it a whole new dimension. For some more back story on this, go here, but just as soon as the riots happened, the Bowler plastered this gem up. Not really much more to say about it, but for those here who know about the riots (that would be everybody) it's fantastic. Doesn't make me want to go to the Bowler any more than before though - it's probably the #1 or 2 destination for Dunedin high schoolers on weekends. Blegh.

Our Spastic Weather

I'm not totally sure if I've ever really conveyed how ridiculous the weather can be here, but man, it can be really crazy - especially in the spring, like it is now. Take last Wednesday as a pretty good example.

The morning starts off chilly and gray, and soon enough, it's raining as I head off for my 8 a.m. class. Lovely, really. The weather clears up while I'm in class, and by the time I'm out of geography just before 10 a.m., it's only cloudy. No less than 45 minutes later, we hear the sound of banging on the roof, but much louder than rain, and it turns out it's hailing out - a lot. Incredibly, I leave for my 12 noon class, and it's sunny and beautiful out, almost as sunny as you'll see in Dunedin. Of course, I got too excited about this, and once I got back to my flat in between class and lab at 2 p.m., we got even more hail. Top it off later that evening with rain, and you'll have a complete day of weather in Dunedin. Nice.

Also, I've gotten some feedback about my post, 'Geology Escapades,' about my field trip down to Nugget Point, and apparently the geo may have been a little much. No worries, though! This isn't a geology blog - I just wanted to give a little taste of what I was learning, particularly for those who have a geo background. I have given a lot of thought to maybe writing a geology blog next semester, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Anyway, back to hoping for the wretched high winds that've moved in to blow away to sea.

(Not a) Quiet Riot

This may be about 6 weeks late, but it's definitely worth it. I guess a little back story is in order, though. And you can check out news stories here and here.

So every year for the last five years (at least) the University of Canterbury Engineering Society has been organizing this event called the Undie 500 (Wiki link). That university is in Christchurch, about a 5 hour drive north of Dunedin. So what is it? A race, of sorts (hence the similarity to Indy 500), although it would probably be better characterized as a rally. Here are the rules:

1. Your car must be purchased for under $500 - think about that; in US terms, that's around $380...
2. It must be registered and have a warrant of fitness - like a US inspection, but you get them every six months
3. You have to have a sober driver - sensible, no?

After they've met these rules, they decorate their cars in any number of manners - and there were definitely some creative ones. Then they make (or attempt to, considering how cheap their cars are) the drive from Christchurch, with a long pub crawl along the way. You might wonder, how many people are going to spend $500 on a car, hundreds on repairs and fuel, and even more on lots of alcohol - and that's just on the way to Dunedin? Well, the number of cars has been limited to 150, so several hundred, at the very least.

Okay, let's get more specific here. This year, the Undie 500 was the last weekend of August, the same weekend we were leaving for mid semester break, so I wasn't around to witness this firsthand, but there were plenty of news cameras. Here's why.

First of all, last year after the Undie 500 was completed, a lot of the participants, and their comrades-in-arms here in Dunedin, started burning various cars (presumably the Undie 500 entries) and couches, with some general rioting, too. Arrests were made and North Dunedin (where the student flats are) was a mess, so this year an alcohol ban was placed on the area, so no one could walk around with open containers. Didn't make any difference though.

I don't really know the sequence of events here, but it doesn't particularly matter. Despite limiting the number of cars to 150, imposing a liquor ban and city's riot police being out in full force, some crazy stuff went down. Emergency crews had to respond to more than 70(!) fires, many to piles of trash, but a sizable portion of couch and vehicle fires too. Bottles and other trash was thrown around, particularly at the police, so what happens? 69 people were arrested - 54 of them students.

And I'll be honest, I kind of wish I'd been there to see it. At the time, I was having a blast caving in Greymouth and seeing the pancake rocks in Punakaiki, and I wouldn't have missed that for anything. But what a thing to see - hundreds, maybe thousands, of students acting recklessly and irresponsibly - actually rioting; this is something I'll never see in Claremont. I'm not saying I like that or would have taken part, but it would have been pretty sweet to sit on the roof of my flat and watch the chaos go on below me.

...and I'm spent

Hey hey! So as you, my many faithful readers, may have noticed, I never really got around to posting at all while I was out on MSB (that's mid-semester break, for the uninitiated) since I was busy having the time of my life. Because of that, I've got heaps of stuff to say/show from break, but obviously no one wants that in one post, so I'm going to post stuff about break in chunks, maybe one for each stop or two that we made along our epic journey.

I'm working on sorting through my 400-plus pictures that I took too, and will be putting them up as my time, bandwidth and patience allow. I've got a couple papers due in the next week, so obviously I'll be procrastinating by putting up as much stuff as I can.

In other news, I'm fighting the urge to be jealous of everyone going back to Pomona, and seeing everyone again...then again, it's a lot easier to do when the highs have been 110 degrees. You read that right.

Mt. Cargill

You may remember that back at the beginning of the semester, me and a few of my friends thought it would be a good idea to summit Mt. Cargill. Of course, it drizzled all the way up, and provided the lovely view from the top that you see to the right.

Now that was fun enough--we had a good time trying to solve stories about how/why people died. My favorite: there's a man (dead, of course) sitting at a table, surrounded by 53 bicycles. What happened? You get to ask the person telling it yes or no questions. I'll write up the answer to it next time.

Anyway, it was nice and sunny out, and 50 degrees seemed warm enough to head up Cargill again. The best photo of the day would be below (so you don't just look at the photo above and think that was what it was like), showing the entire Otago Peninsula and Dunedin, but Blogger is being sketchy, so I'll pop it up below once things decide to work. You can still check the pics out in my Picasa Web Album.

This is why we conserve...

A $357 power bill.

Okay, here's the situation. We live in a flat that's about 80 years old, but was probably renovated in the last 15-20 years (or so it appears). It's winter here, with lows in the 30s and highs in the 40s. Given that, does a $357 bill seem reasonable?

I really don't know. This isn't a cry for help either - Butler gives us money for our share of power bills, and it should be fine. In fact, it's a $387 bill, but we get 10% off if we pay by a certain date. That equates to $282 US, by the way, or $70.50 US per person for the month. I guess I never really realized how much power costs? Maybe 14.664 cents per kWh (10.7 cents US) is normal...I can't say (and my appreciation for my parents paying the bills has certainly grown).

Anyway, I've already looked into more energy conservation strategies. By changing all of the 100 bulbs in the flat to their CFL equivalents, we would save about $30 a month alone. There are possibly other things we could do, but the weather is a real bitch as far as energy-saving alternatives go. Line drying would be a big help, but it's too cold and damp at times for that to be efficient (I've succeeded once with it). With more sunlight, of course, we wouldn't need to use the heater as much either - despite the fact that it's pretty efficient (6 kW of heat per 1 kW of power) which we set at about 64 degrees when we're in the living room, something that could be lowered I suppose. We already wash our clothes with cold water, which is good. Besides these things, there's not much else we, as temporary flatters, can do. Efficient, quality insulation and good seals around doors would do wonders, but we have little control over such things.

I know this may have turned into a disjointed rant, but in short, I suppose I don't understand why people won't try to conserve energy, if not for the environment, then at least for their wallets.

The weather gods have smiled upon us...

Finally! A beautiful, gorgeous, warm day! I couldn't believe it. Of course, everyone took advantage of this fine weather to go outside and generally enjoy life.

Without Friday classes, I was able to wake up at the crack of noon, go outside and take my laundry down from the clothesline (my clothes smell great, but I think maybe the soap or the sun made them a little starchy). Then Andrew came over and we went to the Dunedin Botanic Garden, which is just a 10 minute walk for me, but is right out Andrew's back door.

It was a little windy out, but still not enough to deter me from wearing just a t-shirt and shorts, along with flip flops, for the first time since I've been in NZ. The gardens were great, with a ton of trails through different types of forest, an aviary, rock garden (not a garden for rocks, apparently, but lichen and moss - sadly all the rocks were the same), and a fantastic sandwich place, among other things.

With any luck, it'll stay this way tomorrow, and I'll maybe get another change to hike up Mt. Cargill...the same place where a bunch of us hiked up a few weeks back, only to get to the top and be in a rainy cloud (as opposed to a dry cloud?). But with the nearly unpredictable weather we have here, I can't count on it; I'm enjoying the warmth while it lasts, because next week it'll just be in the 40s and cloudy again, no doubt.

Dunedin photos up, first time driving

Yes, Dunners means Dunedin. That album title may change, though. Check them out below or to the right.

From Dunners

Other random things...

• The weather's been teasing me. I bought a used tent from someone in the Tramping Club after Bushball, which was almost a couple weeks ago now, and it was a little wet after the tramp. Every time I go to the backyard to set it up or hang it to dry, though, it'll be nice out for about 5 hours, then promptly rain. My luck may be changing though, since it looks like upper 50s and no rain for the next few days...but weather forecasts here are notoriously awful.
• I drove for the first time here! It was totally bizarre. KC and I borrowed our friends' Pat and Rob's car (a beat-up Honda named Pam, after the ubiquitous supermarket brand) to drive to South Dunedin to the cheapest supermarket around, Pak 'n' Save. Staying to the left wasn't the weird thing though...the pedals are actually even the same setup. The hardest part was the directional signal lever being on the right and wipers on the left (I don't think washing your windshield means 'I'm turning left') and I barely even used my mirrors - especially the rear view - because I couldn't find them quickly. Also, there's no turn on red and if you're turning left while oncoming traffic is turning right (onto the same road), the oncoming traffic gets the right of way...weird, I know.
• There are some extraordinarily bad American shows on Kiwi television. Among other shows that don't air in the States anymore (and I hadn't heard of before anyway): Medical Investigation, Summerland, Love, Inc., and Dr. Phil - it should be off the air, anyway. Of course with just 4 channels, there's not much else to watch during lunch...
• Speaking of, I made the best lunch ever today: ham, egg and grilled cheese. I wish I were this motivated at home...
  

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!

Scarfie Life

It's been a bit since I last posted, but as the title suggests, I haven't been up to too much...just living life as a scarfie, which is a university student. Basically all that means is I've been saving money as best I can - especially on food, poorly on alcohol, going to classes, studying and checking out on-campus clubs. I've actually joined the Otago University Tramping Club and gone to several of their meetings.

It's a pretty well-organised bunch - fairly similar to OTL (if you're lucky, or unlucky as the case may be, you can see me on the front page 'jumping off a cliff' at Big Sur during Spring Break 2006) - who run trips every weekend, have a good gear room and a lot of good outdoorsy-type leaders. I get a ton of emails from the mailing list (like OTL), too. There are differences though. First, I think OTL is fortunate to be either way more subsidised than OUTC, or costs are just much higher here. I'm not sure which one it is, but I do know it cost me $30 to join the club, and trips here run for a lot more than at Claremont. At the same time, it seems like there are a lot more club meetings - two per week, plus Happy Hour at The Cook on Tuesdays, Jazz Night at The Robbie Burns on Thursdays, and a weekly walk every Wednesday night.

Anyway, I'm going to be going on my first tramping trip this weekend, to Mt. Aspiring National Park, in the Southern Alps. I picked quite a good first one, albeit an unorthodox 'tramp.' It's called Bushball 2007, and it's part of a 30 year tradition of going to the beautiful views of Aspiring Hut for what is basically a formal party out in the bush. I won't waste any more space on the particulars, but suffice it to say it should be spectacular; expect a post recapping it next week.
On Saturday we finally had our long-delayed bus trip to the Otago Peninsula, put on for the international students at the uni. It's ironic that the last trip was canceled due to poor weather - it had snowed the night before it was scheduled - because the weather couldn't have been much better this time. At times it was quite nice - temperatures in the mid-40s and calm, but when we were at the beach, searching out seals and yellow-eyed penguins, the rain, and wind especially, could really kick up. We did find some nice moments though; you can see me at the albatross colony with Annie, Laura and KC, from left to right. They had some pretty cool exposures of basalt flows down the cliff too, and since I can't help myself, I might as well throw in a picture in hopes that some budding geologist will find it as cool as Andrew and I did. We also went to the Glenfalloch Woodland Garden; above is a panorama taken from there. Looking across the Otago Harbour, you can see Dunedin off in the distance on the left.

In other news, I lined up early, before going on the peninsula trip, to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. KC and I were really surprised to trek into The Warehouse, where we had reserved our copies, and find that at 9:30 am - 1.5 hours before release - we were 7th in line for the book! We'd thought we'd be lucky to be close enough to get the book and run off to catch our buses for the trip, but we actually were able to grab our books and get out of the store by 11:08 am. Of course, we proceeded to hurry back to our flat and do a mini-photo shoot of us with our books. Why? Well I guess a simultaneous, worldwide release isn't really worldwide. As bookstores in Britain opened at 12:01 am, 21 July, at 11:01 am New Zealand stores did the same. In the New York, though, it was only 7 pm on the 20th. Naturally, KC had to take advantage. Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and without spoiling it for those who haven't read it yet, I think that it did a really good job wrapping things up.


Also, for those wanting more pictures of my exploits here in NZ, I haven't really decided if I'll open up my Facebook albums for the public to view, or if I'll throw up an album or two on Picasa web albums or something like that. Obviously I have a lot more pictures than the ones I've put up on this blog, and as you can see from how many cameras Andrew here has (I hope no one thinks they're all his), everyone has a ton, so I may try to get some of my friends' pics too, just so they might see the light of day. Until next time, I can only recommend you to my new favorite website of the moment...I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? Be sure to hit 'random.' Brilliant.

1st Week of Class = Done

So I've just begun my second week of classes at Otago, and I'm still getting used to some of the differences. The classes I'm taking are Maori Society, Human Geography (both are intro level) and Metamorphism, which is an intermediate course.

Among the differences:

• You only take 3 classes per semester - and university is only 3 years here! In fact, I've heard one kiwi girl comment about how she's jealous of the American system, with its breadth of study requirements, because you're forced to focus almost immediately upon getting to university here.
• A class is actually called a paper, and a course is known here as your major.
• Classes don't meet as often - only one of my classes has 3 hours of lecture per week (which is the norm in the States).
• My two intro-level classes have 200+ students each in lecture, so to get more 'small-class interaction,' they each have tutorials, which are 15 or fewer students from the class who usually meet once a week with a tutorial leader (a grad student) to go over class material.
• Grading is COMPLETELY different. Final exams make up from 50% to 70% of your grade. Holy crap. I feel lucky that I have two that are only 50%, with essays and tutorial participation making up the rest of the grade.
• Kiwis are apparently really anal about citing your sources and how you make your bibliography - every department has its own style guide for how you have to cite material in papers, and you get heavily penalized if you don't follow it.

That said, I say that in a few weeks I'll be into the swing of things - although it remains to be seen how I'll do when I have to write essays again; I haven't really had to write an expository essay since freshman year. Yipes. The classes themselves are pretty good. Geography's a lot like a mix of sociology and economics, and right now we're learning about development in Southeast Asia, just to give you an idea of what we've been learning so far. Maori Society is interesting so far (we're learning about creation) and finally, my metamorphism class looks like it will be a lot like the petrology course I took last semester - and it uses the same book! Glad I lugged that stupid thing over with me, since it actually paid off.

Anyway, the weekend was pretty good. It started off with an all-day Harry Potter movie marathon - we watched all four movies on DVD. On Saturday, me and some other Butler kids went for a hike up Mt. Cargill, which is the tallest hill near Dunedin. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to walk all the way there and (pretty much) all the way back, which ended up being around 12 km (7.5 miles for you Yankees). It was a fun walk though, except for the part where it was raining on the trail and the top was shrouded in cloud. Obviously the pictures weren't too spectacular... That night was the All Blacks rugby game, against the South Africa Springboks. We got to The Cook with the game tied 6-all, then the All Blacks proceeded to beat up the bloody Springboks, winning 33-6. Then on Sunday we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie. What could be better?

Pride of the South

We had our Butler catch-up dinner Thursday night, which included a little sightseeing tour around the city and a tour of the historic Speight's Brewery - the 'Pride of the South.'

The first stop on the bus tour was at the top of Signal Hill, just north of the city.
Looking out to the left and across the center is the Otago Peninsula, just across the Otago Harbour. Over the peninsula is the Pacific Ocean. The city itself is in the right-center of the photo. After this stop, we drove out and around the city in the hills, getting a few more nice views as it got dark.

Next up was the Speight's Brewery. It's pretty old - it's been in the same building since 1876. It's what they call a 'gravity brewery,' so they take all the raw materials to the top floor and they get processed more and more as they move down, until you get the finished product at the bottom. One of the cool things about the brewery is that they only make one beer at a time, starting a batch at 2 am and finishing it in one day. The next time, they can make one of their other 5 beers.

Of course, the best part of the tour was the sampling. We went into a room on the ground floor (which would be the 1st floor in the States) and basically formed a loop circling around a small bar with 6 taps - one for each of the beers that Speight's produces. And as long as a DVD of Speight's played in the background on the TVs, we were free to refill to our hearts' desire. So in the span of just a couple weeks, I've learned how wine and beer are both made, and how to appreciate them. Life is good, eh?

Even better, after the tour, we got free food! At the same time I signed up for a couple trips that Butler is doing for the students on their program here, so in August we'll take the Taieri Gorge Railway to Central Otago (Dunedin is in the eastern part of the Otago region), where we'll do some mountain biking and also play the most exciting sport known to man, curling! In September I'll be going to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park for a weekend cruise and kayaking, so that just may be the best thing ever.

687 Cumberland St.

So here are some photos of my flat. Here's a picture of it from the outside, and I'd say it's a pretty accurate picture, except maybe the hills in the background shouldn't be quite as green. No worries, though.

On the inside, there are four bedrooms, two on either side of the hall as you walk in. My room's pretty good sized, definitely bigger than my room at school last year (or freshman year, for that matter). In fact, my room is about 192 square feet, according to the handy tape measure left in my room by whoever lived here last semester. I got a double-sized bed (everyone has them here), a desk, dresser and closet. Oh, and a space heater. Essential stuff. Of course I don't have my precious posters with me here, so I brought my Vermont calendar and tore out the pages and put them on the wall. Just above my bed, on the right, are pictures of Hartford and Hartland. Nice.

Also in the flat are two bathrooms (one shower) and the best part, a big living room/kitchen. The living room has a bunch of seating (great for movies and stuff).

The funny part about the flat (which is about 80 years old, apparently) is that it was once retrofitted to be handicap accessible, so in addition to ramps in and out, the kitchen counter is lower than most in order to allow wheelchair-bound people to get to the oven and sick. Ironically, the counter is too low, so wheelchairs can't even fit. The other oddity is one bathroom, which actually has the flat's second shower - the bathroom is the shower. The whole thing is tiled, there's a drain in the floor, and it has a removable shower head. Naturally, the shower isn't functional. Instead of water going down the drain in the end of the room, it goes all the way across and under the door to the hallway. Genius post-grad engineering students, apparently. Who cares though, it's home sweet home!

And for inquiring minds, that's my mailing address. The addresses are simple here, but if you're mailing overseas (I'm not begging, just informing) try:
Ryan Frazer
687 Cumberland St.
Dunedin
New Zealand