In which Ginger goes to a wedding, and doesn't get a sausage

via We Heart It

I went to a wedding in Auckland on Saturday - literally a whirlwind weekend, as we flew up on Saturday morning and down again on Sunday night. It was tiring but it was great travelling so lightly and really, an hour flight is a pretty quick commute. The wedding was as weddings always are - bits that you like, bits that you think are strange and horrible, and that are quickly followed by strangely emotional moments where you cry despite your cynicism and desiccated heart. Yep. Wedding.

The day after the wedding, Shannon and I met up with Shannon's friend Callum who is in the process of moving back down to Wellington. We had a meal with him and a friend of his, and the woman who owns the house where he is staying during the moving-back-down period - who is, apparently, the mother of another friend who is presently overseas.

However, I was too hungover to take in any of this in at the time. At the time I was 100% focused on eating sausage and bacon, so imagine (quelle horreur!) when I discovered that the cafe Callum had chosen was vegetarian. Shannon thought I was going to cry when I discovered that the cafe was meat free, given that I had been talking about pig the whole way there on the bus. BUT, rather than Close to Tears, I was consumed with a Carnivorous Rage that made it damn near impossible to communicate with any degree of civility with the (aforementioned) very nice but rather batty middle aged woman that I'd just met. She had a puppy with her - which would have been easily the best thing about the entire experience, were it not for the fact that the puppy was a trainee guide dog and thus wasn't allowed to be spoiled and cooed over and patted lots like other puppies. Sad for the puppy, and most importantly sad for ME. I hope that some blind person is really pleased with themselves one day for contributing to the horridness of my horrible hungover breakfast.

The food itself, while totally edible and made of impeccable organic ingredients, was almost completely flavourless. At any rate, my jaded palate was unable to discern the delicious taste of gruyere that I was eagerly anticipating in my very boring omelette. I was sad and angry and unable to be sociable because of a distinct lack of both pig and cheese. BUT NEVER MIND! Because two hours later I shared a lovely plate of kidneys and bacon with Shannon, and the day was saved!

Cycle Rant

Check out this article published in the Dom Post yesterday about a proposal to make lower Cuba Street a pedestrian zone. This extract especially had my blood boiling

The Automobile Association's Wellington spokesman, John Christianson, said 5kmh could not be shown by most modern vehicle speedometers. 

"It's difficult to enforce if you can't tell what speed you're going." The mall could be dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists because Kiwis were not used to driving in public malls. 

"We have a very poor culture of compliance of the road rules. We kill a lot of cyclists in quite large numbers. The planners love it but unfortunately the cyclist pays the price."

My interpretation of this argument is that as New Zealanders find it difficult to follow the road rules we should cater to drivers' lack of abilities, as oppose to encouraging them to comply to rules that would require them to take into account the needs of other road users. Damn the consequences to pedestrians and cyclists! Cars need to drive places and people need to drive the cars!

As a city, it sometimes seems as though Wellington is anti-cyclist. Our traditionally narrow streets are hellish, and the hills are a pain in the arse too, to be frank. I’m not advocating a massive bulldozing of the city’s roads and hills; merely that there is an increased effort in the city to acknowledge the needs of other road users, and make an attempt to accommodate them accordingly. There needs to be a paradigm shift away from the idea that cyclists are second class citizens, to respecting cyclists as legitimate road users.

This isn’t just about the attitude change of individuals but of the City Council itself. For example, the development of Adelaide Road in Newtown was curiously cycle-lane-less. The footpaths here are too busy and not wide enough to act as dual cycle/walk ways. The road is multi-laned and extremely busy, with a bunch of car parks along the side of the road. Riding this road is freaky as all hell, and the simple addition of a cycle lane to the road would have made a huge difference to the usability of the thoroughfare to all users: motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

Such an age-old rant, I know. I've always been pro-pedestrian and pedestrian-based city centres - cities are for people, not cars! - so this isn't a new position for me. However, as a newly-fledged cyclist (and admittedly, not an awesome one) all of this seems even more apparent to me than ever before. The presence of cyclists in the streets of Wellington is only increasing, and it seems that it's never to early to start making some changes to the city that will benefit all users.

In which Sarah discusses two things that have disturbed her this week

1. Reports from Baghdad about the recruitment (ie: massive exploitation) of people from psychiatric hospitals as suicide bombers - particularly disturbing was the description of two Downs Syndrome women who were strapped up with remote control bombs, led into the markets and blown up. That's fucking revolting. On so many different levels. I read about this in a newspaper in a cafe and my stomach churned and I felt like crying - another way to exploit people's trust in their caregivers. As tho' the recorded rapes and beatings worldwide weren't enough.
2. And I just read something upstairs in the ATL in a 1969 tourist/history publication, about re-burying Maori dead - moving bones from a burial cave where they had lain, undisturbed and protected by custom and tapu for hundreds of years. Because the author believed that they should have a European-style Christian burial - reburial from a culture and religion completely alien and meaningless. And why? Who knows. Cynically I suspect in order to use the caves as some kind of marketing prospect.

Good good day!

Everything's falling into place... super. Lots of achievement at work, feeling much more on to it than I have the last week or so (really, since I've been back). I harassed an elderly Northland woman into showing me her collection and felt really in touch with the retail bitch within. Deliciously pushy.

I can't wait for my flatmates to move out and for Bella to move in. I swear, sometimes I just want to shriek they are SO FREAKING DULL. Dull-ness is THE Cardinal Sin. I think I could excuse nearly everything else, but people who are so wilfully boring... I could be using that patient tolerance, you know? For someone who is more deserving of my patience and tolerance, and would be more appreciative also. Honestly, I really have tried... but in the weekends, when the weather is amazing, and they'd rather sit inside and watch some absolute fucking drivel of an American movie... all the tolerance and the patience in the world is necessarily put to the test.

Dull, dull, DULL.

And the white bread that turns into powdery orange mould before it's used up freaks me out no end.

And they eat canned fish. EWWWWWWW.

And when they "cook" they mix two cans together. And we share food, so I have to partake in the resulting slop.

And when one of them eats anything I make the first thing he does is smother it in tomato sauce, and then he thrusts it between two of the six slice of white papier-mache-esque bread that he eats at every meal.

And he uses metal instruments in the pots and pans and it makes a terrible screeching sound.

And he unplugs the router and decoder all the time so it is always a huge, massive mission to access the internet.

Enough. I was actually having a Super Day before I started on this rant. Now I am hungry for salad and blue cheese. YUM.

More Nausea in the Library

Very twitchy, anxious restless today. In the Dominion Post social pages: Taylor the Corgi's fifth birthday. He won Dog of the Year 2006/7. I sat down to watch Sir Ed's funeral for about five minutes and was filmed by some tv station, I think, watching tv (strangely referential, that). There was four of us, they asked us to sit still while they were filming, and the moment they announced they were done we all stood up and buggered off. So fake and posed and stuff. Bizarre. Hillary's death is a media free-for-all, difficult not to be cynical under the circumstances, and this despite the fact that I recognise the contribution of his achievements to the construction of the New Zealand National psyche. Aunty Helen is very sad.

Pre work - Nat Lib Blog

At the National Library - really an experiment whereby I post the first pictures from my new camera - downloading was an experiment in itself.

So, this is my Mum and me at her place for dinner. I'm not sure what she's telling me but it was bound to be fascinating, intelligent and witty.

These are a bunch of photos from Victoria's barbeque...

Kate, left, wearing my sunglasses.

Hamish, below, wearing a beautiful piece of pounamu and clearly talking about breasts.....

And something shocking and horrifying happening between Victoria and Katie.

 

 

 

 

Some time later... post Lunch, back in the Nat Lib, reading texts about farming in Northland and feeling less apprehensive and anxious than I have over the last few days... calming tea/good energy at lunchtime from Boy. Bought Jessica something beautiful as a wedding present, quite pleased with myself there.

Amazing sense of dislocation; reading these texts and the optimism of mid 20th century New Zealand. While the Average Kiwi was raping and pillaging the soil, setting up environmental and cultural disasters, the Press sent out relentlessly (government encouraged) Positive Pro-Development spin - Add THIS newly developed chemical fertiliser to your soil! Reclaim mudflats for agriculture! Plant exotic forests! I just read a history text which mentioned the nineteenth century  introduction of European weeds like dock and Scotch thistle: No words.

Ha! Sarah laughs with cynicism.

Favourite headline for today: "Enough tuna for everyone claims fisheries spokesman; Whakatane tuna fishermen are worrying needlessly about catches by American tuna clippers depleting the local resource, if what Assistant-Director of Fisheries Mr V Hinds says is true." "There is more than enough for both." Mr Hinds told the Beacon in a telephone interview from Wellington yesterday. "In fact, there is enough for more American boats." - Whakatane Beacon, Dec 16 1975. Oh, the irony.

There are no terrorists in New Zealand

So, apparently NOT terrorists after all; conclusion of police after 25 day of holding activists in jail. Quelle surprise. And now, Iti's lawyers announce that the police should prepare themselves to be sued... The police are constantly under fire, criticised for the way that they deal with things... And all in all, this does seem like the remarkably far fetched and lurid dreams of someone, high up, who hopes for something more exciting in the day to day execution of his job. But over the last few years I've worked hard at trying not to have too much of an opinion - hate being wrong - and so I'm reserving a fair amount of judgement. I met the Boy for coffee and he was in a terrible mood. I have no idea why he decided to subject me to his sulk. He wouldn't let me touch his ratty little dirty Sanchez Movember moustache either. [I just Wikipedia-d the term "Dirty Sanchez" and I'd like to clarify that this is how the Boy refers to it. I am merely referencing him verbatim here. And, I'm quite disturbed personally. I'm a nice girl. I don't know anything about that kind of behaviour] Those things tickle too. I remember being a little girl and getting a kiss from my Uncle Clive who had a big fuck off moustache and a mullet and always smelt like cigars and never wore socks. It tickled my cheeks. Kind of itchy, makes you want to sneeze.

Will he find her?

His NY Girl of His Dreams? Mark twitters with cynicism, and yet I'm strangely caught up in the romance of it all - like a romantic comedy. You don't suppose that it's actually a promotion for a romantic comedy? Hm.

Yesterday I quit my job and then had Reiki.

I may not have mentioned that I have taken on a job recently. This job was in fashion retail – despite the fact that I didn’t want to work in retail or really any kind of customer service for a moment longer. I seemed to have about a thousand interviews through which I could feel myself lying neatly and enthusiastically and eventually I ended up with the job. It’s a sure sign that you’ve made the wrong decision when you feel a sinking sensation when you’re told you’re employed, rather than the elation that you would expect. My first few shifts (trial, and then three “actual” shifts) confirmed my misgivings. When I was in the swing of things, everything was fine, the banter came easily. However, I had absolutely no enthusiasm about the clothes whatsoever. I found it difficult to relate with my coworkers, and with the customers. Why did I persist? (Why?) I imagined things would get better, that I would enjoy it more once I was better established in the store. I knew that I didn’t want the job at all – I would tell people I didn’t want it. Expressly. In those words. At the second interview I was asked if I would mind working at a big soulless Department Store (not in those exact words, obviously). This is actually my idea of hell - the whole concept of a chain of department stores goes against everything that I believe in and value. At this point I did say that I would prefer not to, but I was persuaded to work maybe one shift a week. She was very persuasive. Curses! Last week I sat through a day long “induction” (read: brainwashing) session in aid of preparing me for my Department Store related doom. I told all the people I sat with at this session that I had no desire to work at the Department Store. After I finished the session I physically ran from the building. Imagine me scouring myself in the shower, hoping the hot water would cleanse the grubbiness I felt after sitting through such an evil, evil tutorial. Tutorial of evil! Maybe three days later I was asked to work, not one, but three shifts at the Department Store. How did I feel leading up to this? A sense of impending doom. By the time Wednesday rolled around I felt sick to my stomach and vagued out on anxiety. I almost missed my stop on the train. I imagined turning around and going home while walking to work. The concession had been moved a floor and nobody had bothered to tell me. I was busting to pee and couldn’t find a toilet. I had forgotten about the uniform code and was wearing a pale pink blouse. When I did find the toilet I realized I had my period and no tampons. I had to find a way out of the building and find a pharmacy in a city I barely knew. By the time lunchtime arrived I was at a point of intense agitation – I had been on the verge of tears for about three hours. I was bored and had no ID so I couldn’t log onto the system or process any sales. I rearranged all the clothes in the concession three or four times – first by size, then by colour, then by story. I intended merely to call Andy and let him know how wretchedly my day was going, but it turned into a major hysterical anxiety attack on my cellphone in the middle of the CBD during the lunchtime rush. I was shrieking “I can’t go back! I can’t go back!” Andy advises me not to go back. I ring the Regional Manager and tell her I’m not going back, I’m quitting, I’m having a nervous breakdown (all this in the middle of town. On a park bench). Anyway, I’m sitting at home writing this secure and safe in the knowledge that I may be jobless but I’m also happy. And, having learnt the importance of listening to my intuition (so Polly Anna right now). If every bone in my body is screaming for me not to take a job, I shouldn’t take it. Ah, and I did also end up with a fantastic therapist who practices reiki. Hurrah for reiki!

Don't Catch the Train

If only I had such words of advice before I boarded the Hell That Was the Indian Pacific. It's like the Hotel California of the rails. There was no escape. The food was awful, overcooked and congealing, grey watery flavourless overpriced. Worst of all, the seats were uncomfortable beyond comprehension, and we were expected to sleep in them for two nights. As a result, nobody slept for the two nights but rather spent thirty eight hours fitfully dozing, firstly chilled to the bone by the artificial air and then sweltering stickily in the Nullarbor glare as it heated up the metal carriage and cooked us through the windows. Andy and I theorised that it was all part of a sort of conspiracy to keep us sedated; constantly lethargic and lacking in energy from the ghastly food we were unable to complain about the fact we were treated like cattle. As a result, arriving in Adelaide was incredible and the twenty four hours we stayed made me have a whole new level of respect for the place. We ate fantastically well, drank awesome coffee. Slept. Today we drove nine hours to Melbourne and we fly back to New Zealand tomorrow evening. There is a German couple behind me giggling and its making me rather paranoid. Its 10.30 but it feels as though it should be a lot earlier. I've crossed three time zones in four days and my body clock is a little confused.

Odd. Really.

I'm blogging in a internet kiosk in a dodgy pub in an obscure surfing fishing community somewhere in WA, about 200km north of Perth. I am drinking cheap beer and eating deep fry and watching a group of weather beaten fisher types watch Jaimie Oliver on the TV behind the bar. Two boys are playing Midnight Oil and Guns 'n' Roses on the Jukebox. We've sorted ourselves a dingy little room but its clean and it has a shower. Hard to believe that only this morning we were waking up in a beautiful farmhouse and being fed fruit salad, sheep's yoghurt and wheatgerm for breakfast! Up and down really. The whole travelling lark. UPDATE: lapsed on the swearing front already.

• 5 January - Clarification: You may ask how exactly I ended up in such a godforsaken hole as Lancelin. I had my little heart set on visiting a historical oddity - a Benedictine Monastery that was established during the mid 1800s and produced its own flour, woodfired bread, olive oil and wine. We rocked up to this town and it was dusty and hot and miserable and not at all what I had imagined. There was no room at the inn (a biblical irony?) and thus we were forced to drive for an hour to the first place marked with accomodation on our map. Lancelin. Home of desperation.

Shopping on Pension Day

Last week Andy and I decided that the lack of food situation was in fact completely untenable. Thus, we bit the bullet and went to the supermarket. Little did we know that it was in fact, PENSION DAY. Thursday morning in Port Adelaide sees us driving around and around a carpark packed with elderly drivers that insisted on stopping in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. After looking for a park for something like fifteen minutes, we admitted defeat and decamped to West Lakes... where we found a park but had to contend with thousands of elderly people milling about the supermarket, Christmas shopping. I don't know if mere words can express how intense this experience was for us.

I am bored

Oh how bored am I. I've been given the day off because my boss is worried about my health, I shit you not. Andy is working a split shift today... I've already gone out and had my breakfast. I've gone for a twenty minute walk in a freezing gale. I've researched term deposits. I've bought skincare products online. I've read news bulletins from home. I've emailed my mother. I've even finished my book... Gabriel Garcia Marquez. How literary am I today. Apparently the elections in New Zealand are going scarily pear shaped... the racist underbelly of middle New Zealand is rearing its ugly head again, as it invariably does around election time (why else would Winston Peters ever have had the balance of power?). I didn't enrol to vote, and now I have no say in the elections which are taking place on Saturday... which by my own rules means that I have no right to gripe about the government. Perhaps I could be one of those lame asses that rephrase their laziness to exercise their voting rights in terms of a political protest. Here I am politically protesting! Grrr! Hate all the parties! (VOTE GREEN). This is brain rotting stuff. I'm going home now.

The ongoing saga of He That Shall Be Known As "S&M Man Mountain"

Because he talks about his S&M propensities and is a big boned lad. You may recall that he was mentioned not so long ago... his "wild sexual tastes" a cause of much discussion at La Factoire. An ongoing cause of discussion. A nausea-inducing cause of discussion. Ugh. I always imagine a leather g-string and studded collar... on a man well over six foot and definately larger with it. Hairy too. (Scots Liz recommended that I place a gimp mask on him as well, as it would be the only way to look him in the face. And its quite effective really. Perhaps, if fearing public speaking, instead of imagining everyone naked you could imagine them all in gimp masks.) S&M Man Mountain (or, for brevity's sake SM3) is classic geek Australian. He is moving to the East Coast with some girl that I suspect he is stalking; imagining marriage, harmony, ten children (his words) and, of course, having lots and lots of stuff. Because, to consume is good! We must have the latest things... the most expensive phones... a dishwasher for a single man! "What do you mean you don't want or need anymore things... things are what I live for!" What a good little consumer he is, buys all the lines he's fed and passively absorbs whatever he is told is good for him. Hence the fact that he eats crappy food constantly, drinks coke instead of water, mainlines greasy canteen food. He lives across the road from his mother and father, in a house that they paid the deposit on. They have a key to his house and come over and do his dishes, regularly. When he is sick, his mother tells him that he has to go to work (and make everyone else ill) or she refuses to talk to him. He has recently set up a gym in his house, and is jogging in the back garden to get fit. Surely the point of jogging is to get fit while seeing stuff? I have a thing about being forced to see other peoples photos. If I ask to see them, sure, fine, that's cool. BUT - being forced to see a certain someone's lame-as-fuck photos of their Kontiki tour of Europe FIVE YEARS AGO is enough to drive me, screaming, from La Factoire. Or sulk. Yes, these photos were a veritable celebration of all that is good about being an Australian geek on a Kontiki tour where - guffaw - "Fifty people drunk enough alcohol for a hundred!" What a cultural achievement! These photos included a series of three shots of the hand of SM3 - someone took his camera on the last night and he didn't want his photo taken. And a picture of him dipping Pringles (good consumer) in beer. He follows up this photographic extravaganza with the comment "these are my favourite photos from the trip". God spare me. I am trying to meet people and make friends, but THIS is what I have been given to work with.

In which Sarah raves about: The Festival of Ideas

I was really keen to blog today: I had decided to close everything down because I hadn't been able to maintain it for so long... and then I read comments from my adoring public and saw the number of posts at the nicely round number of 50, and I couldn't. Sad really, isn't it? This weekend just passed I went to my first festival event in the city. Adelaide calls itself the "Festival City" - a strangely self-fulfilling prophecy as the name results in lots of festivals being held here. This particular festival was the "Festival of Ideas". So, imagine me if you will, terribly excited by all the talky-thinking that I was going to see. Lots of people ranting indefinately about postmodernism and the endless play of meaning inherent in (insert subject here). Unfortunately the majority of the lecture series were full of middle aged left wing intellectuals congratulating themselves on their left wing-ness. Don't get me wrong, I'm as much a raving leftie as the next post graduate, but these people were smugly preaching to the converted, anti-War and pro-Reconciliation. The theme of the Festival was "What is to be done?" and apparently the answer was "smugly sit around and recommend changes to society that will never impact on our way of life". My favourite part of the whole thing was when a "famous Australian" by the name of Bob Ellis stood on the stage during a panel discussion entitled "Making sense - representation and misrepresentation" and told us that there WERE facts, there WERE true and accurate representations - we just needed to find them. We needed to look in the right place (we needed to listen to him?) Que? There are NO accurate representations.... only endlessly different representations that play off one another, accurate for one reason or the other, but never whole and truthful in themselves. To think that this man was blindly preaching that we go out and find The Truth...? In defense of the Festival (or perhaps, in defense of middle aged left wing intellecuals?), I went to see Germain Greer speak and she was INCREDIBLE. Her topic was "Hunter-Gatherer values and the 21st Century State." The one and perhaps rather major thing that was negative about her concept was that in theory at least it had the danger of sliding into the kind of "noble savage" ideas that Rousseau amongst others ascribed to, and which helped to perpetuate the kind of oppression through representation that we still live with today. But I think that this is my inherent uneasiness rather than anything specific that she said. Essentially the argument was that Australia should stop fighting against it's environment and its extreme conditions and instead embrace the way of life that it necessitates. But it was much better, more elaborate, more entertaining than that sentence suggests. And: it appears that Andy has a job. No more house husband for me. And: I envisage my next post as a series of character sketches of the people that work around me. Oh, the banality! Oh, the irony!

Rates Rises in Auckland and the People who Care.

(Rates rises in Auckland constitute a major headline on the 6 O'clock News tonight).

Sure, a third of the country lives in that godforsaken place, but there is another two thirds who emphatically do not. And have to pay for their roads. And hear about their rates increases. And their inability to secure an international car race ("...will really put Auckland on the map!").

The question is, do they hear about our bypass? The fact that a motorway is being built over the most creative and community based area of our city? Te Aro (my Valley) has always been a working class area... unlike the efforts to stop the demolition of Thorndon in the 1970s, there was no doctors and dentists and lawyers to stop the bulldozer of Kerry Prendergast's bureacracy. The only time this devastation was reported nationally was when some "crazy hippie types done chain themselves to a fence"
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