endless summer

Chris Carter reveals all- scratch that- nothing, about the new X-Files movie

The past couple of days involved me alternately wandering around the city and happily Skyping away with awesome people (and listening to Spoon!) Yesterday I saw this downtown, it made me smile:



I walked around a bit more and came home, where I took a picture of my apartment, looking from the direction of the art school and the rest of the university. I live in the short white building past the two large buildings in the foreground but before all the highrises in the background. Yep, that's home for the next few months! It's a nice place.



I'm looking forward to classes starting, but I'm enjoying the seemingly endless vacation while it's here. Can't argue with the summer, either, ay! Megan and I have taken to calling it the year of endless summer, and it rather is, isn't it?

technology and such

Remember this?

Reminds me of my family when my dad first bought a computer some ten years ago or so. It looked something like this computer, too. It's amazing to realize that the children currently being born will grow up knowing what a computer is, experiencing the world enhanced by virtual reality... People my age grew up in the border between the age of computers and everything that came before, a cusp generation, I suppose, but aren't they all, in some ways... We are always changing society, the way we live our lives, and will keep changing.

Here are my favorite pictures from the road trip I went on to the South Island of NZ. These are the ones I'm thinking of submitting to the photo contest that our study abroad program holds every year.



This one was taken on the island Tiritiri Matangi, an open bird sanctuary north of Auckland. There is a large hill with an open field that one must cross to get to the lighthouse. There is an excellent view to be seen from the top.



Here are some sheep dining amongst interesting-looking, craggy rocks, with the mountains in the background. This is to the west of Christchurch, past vast tracts of farmland and entering the foothills.


I believe I took this on the road from Greymouth to Haast, on the day we saw the glaciers.


This photo and the next are my favorites, and the ones I will likely submit to the photo contest. I'm not particularly set on winning the contest, but I was happy with how these turned out and would not be unhappy to win something (I'm not really sure what the prizes are...) This is Theora, one of my fellow road trippers, standing next to the milky blue water of the Whataroa River. The color of the water comes from the tiny particles of glacially-carved rock suspended in it.


In Dunedin we took a tour of the Speights Brewery. This was our tour guide, who was very entertaining and nice, standing in the room where water for brewing beer is held in large tanks. We got unlimited free beer at the end of the tour. I had three glasses of an apricot-flavored summer ale, very very good stuff.

morning hair, sheep

I promised Megan a photo of what my hair (in it's most recent cut) looks like in the morning:





For comparison, this is what it looks like after I've had a chance to tame it:



Not as wild this morning as it sometimes is, it's basically a new head of hair every morning, and sometimes it looks very... interesting. That's what I get for showering at night and not owning a hair dryer.

Here is an animated sheep that I found while looking for pictures of sheep to reference for drawing:



I also found an article that brought up some interesting points about science and sexuality- click for the NY Times article...

I'm not sure what my entire stance on the issue is yet. The research itself is interesting, I am always intrigued by information about how humans work, what our inner mechanisms do every day and how that affects our lives. But I am also wary of the way such knowledge can be wielded. Sci-fi and speculative fiction have dealt heavily with the concept of and issues surrounding genetic engineering, movies like GATTACA and Bladerunner, myriad novels, etc. We are rather fascinated, as a species, and have always been, by the idea that we may control what occurs naturally, alter the basic components of an organism so that it better fits the role we want it to. We take the seeds out of fruit, make plants bigger, smaller, make rats that glow in the dark and microorganisms that can do things like produce antibodies or cancer cells, parents can even chose the gender of their child and have it screened in advance for genetic abnormalities. If we knew the specific genetic mechanisms that influence sexuality, what would we be driven to do with that knowledge? The drive to understand is one thing, and that to control is another. It is the latter that frightens me the most, and I can only hope that knowledge with such a potential for misuse will be used wisely, that is, to understand and not to control.

living spaces

Reporting live from my apartment, Auckland. I figured I'd upload some pictures of my current living space, it's nothing much, and probably won't get too fancy as I'll only be here for four more months, but I've put up some maps and cards and things to make it feel more comfortable.


I will neglect to post a photo of my desk, because it is a mess right now.




But here is a photo of the push pin board above my desk. I like that I have two cards with cemeteries on them, one is a print of The Jewish Cemetery
by Jacob Van Ruisdael. The painting resides at the DIA, and is my favorite one there (it is also my dad's favorite painting, goes to show that what they say about great minds is true!). The other is a lovely drawing, of Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, by most marvelous Megan. A few maps of the part of New Zealand I live in, and a brochure from the island Tiritiri Matanga outside of Auckland. It's an open bird sanctuary with takahe and fantails and other NZ native birds.



That is a picture of the view out my window towards the school of fine arts, with is to the north of my apartment building but to the south of the rest of the university. This building is aptly named the Mondrian building.



Here is a photo of my bed and the wall behind it. I've haphazardly pushpinned several objects of value to the wall, where they comfort me while I sleep. Not much on the bedside table: a shopping list, a book, pushpins, a pencil, a
cellphone that I use as an alarm clock and some hand lotion.



And, finally, a picture of my meagerly stocked bookshelf. If I had it my preferred way it would be overflowing with books, but it is hard to have millions of books in a temporary living space, so I'll make do with the few I have. I already have more than I started with, as my used book buying habit has supplied me with several of the ones pictured.

Thus concludes the short tour of my living quarters. I'll take some pictures of the rest of the apartment for another post, perhaps. Until then, cheers!

the namers- 1 (to be added to, perhaps)

The days grew long at Liralen. The manor house sweltered in the summer heat, and as the morning drew on, windows were opened wide in hopes of catching a sea breeze. The house rested atop a tall hill, but the sound of children's voices and the smell of baking bread wafted down towards the road that lead to the capital in the north and a scant distance down to the southernmost peninsula of the island. Gurmet the groundskeeper had just returned from a short ride to Sanden, and was driving his cart lazily up the lane that lead to the yard at the top of the hill. He tethered his horse, grabbed a large sack from the cart, and limped, grumbling high-spiritedly, towards the house.
"Miz Paprel, something for you!" he rumbled as he knocked on the door and drew a parcel from the bag.
Paprel, the Lady Holder of the manor house, smiled at the grey, gruff Gurmet and beckoned him into the entryway.
"Why, a parcel, a delight, a lovely delight for a day like this, who from, dear?"
"Avner, Miz, from the Council City, looks like a gift for Alva's birth day, yes," he replied, holding the package out to her. It was wrapped in brown paper but tied with yellow satin ribbon.
"Lovely," she smiled and took it from him gracefully, turning and heading into the study where she placed it upon an oaken table amidst stacks of books and cups of cold tea.
"A sandwich for you, some iced tea? The girls were just down in the kitchen making them, probably about half-dozen that need eating, here," and she hurried off down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house where a plate on the counter was piled with ham sandwiches and a jug of ice tea sat glistening in the afternoon light.
They sat around the kitchen table and spoke of the politics in Sanden, where Gurmet had been that morning. The local council had budgeted an amount smaller than expected for the new primary school in favor of a road-building project that had much support amongst the merchants and business people of Sanden and Tildon. Tildon members of the council had votes equal to those of Sanden's representatives, and the reverse was true for the Tildon council. The two cities lay only twenty kilometers apart on the southwest coast of the island. Liralen, the Manor House of Paprel and Von, sat roughly halfway between the two cities, in an area occupied mostly by farmers of livestock. Paprel and Von were scientists, well respected in the community, who studied coastal erosion and had made a comfortable living consulting on coastal engineering projects and publishing maps. Their eldest son Avner was a politician, now a member of the High Council in the capital, where he acted as a representative of the Dolemen region. Alva, the middle daughter, was now nineteen and attending the university in Tildon, and Aven, the youngest son of the family, was now eleven and prone to a state of constant mischief and rambunctiousness.