Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

After an incredibly long and detailed nightmare about missing our flight, I woke up at four in the morning.

Went back to sleep. Woke up again an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave – still enough time, if we rushed – only to find Sam sick. (She’s a vegetarian; she had chicken last night; that’s never a good combination.)

Air NZ doesn’t let you change bookings the day of, so we’ve just gotten an evening flight. Which means that now we can actually spend the wee hours of the morning asleep, as nature intended.

The Golden Hall

The Lord of the Rings tour! (Was it really a month and a half ago? Time is flying.)

The shuttle actually left the pickup place (at Cathedral Square, the general pickup spot for just about every touristy thing the city does) before I arrived. I asked a standby attendant for help; he pointed me to the info center, where I spent a couple of anxious minutes waiting in line before he jogged in: “It came back!”

As we pulled away to make a couple of other hotel pickups, one of the guys up front asked his companion, “Has there been just the one movie?” So much for my dream of being surrounded by ubergeeks.

On the other hand, the scenery was pretty awesome.

Snapshot

1) I think my sleep schedule may be just wacky. I had one day recently where I slept for twelve hours, but last night I got four, and I wouldn’t be typing this if my efforts to have an afternoon nap had been successful.

2) Part of that lack of sleep is because of Proposition 8 being upheld in California, and nationwide state of gay rights that goes with it, which makes me angry in ways I have not yet found a way to express without making the people around me feel awkward, so I will not try here.

3) Left late for class the other day. Was chastising self for it until I walked past the daycare playground in the middle of campus, just in time to see a ball go flying over the fence and a gaggle of two-year-olds run up to it in dismay. Retrieved the ball; tossed it back into the playground; there was much rejoicing. If I had left earlier, never would have happened. I think it was a sign.

4) Will be spending this weekend in Wellington with one of the flatmates (Sam). We won’t be there while Parliament is in session, unfortunately, but there should still be plenty of touristy things to do.

(Final countdown: Two tests, one presentation, and 5000 words remaining.)

Bad sign.

Sleepiness hit hard this afternoon, in the middle of my 2:00-4:00 paper. Eye-closing, head-nodding, fighting-to-pay-attention type of sleepiness.

It faded by the end, so I made it through the 4:00-6:00 paper just plain tired.

Either this is a relapse of mono, or it’s something entirely new which just happens to behave exactly like the mono did.

(Insert muttered-under-breath cursing here.)

I’ll get around to blogging about Edoras (and the picnic, and the beach, and watching The West Wing with the family down the street, and reading to their kids) eventually. Figure I should save my energy for essays at the moment.

Created equal

Today in class, one of the female students said, “We’ve only had the vote for a hundred years. We don’t want to rush this equality thing.”

I think she was serious.

—

In the same class, one of the Pakeha students questioned the point of having Māori seats in Parliament, pointing out that there aren’t any Pakeha seats. (Māori = the indigenous people of New Zealand; Pakeha = the white people.)

The instructor mentioned that, during World War II, the Māori Batallion was sent out first and into the worst situations. Which means (though she didn’t say it in so many words) that part of the reason Māori today don’t end up getting elected on their own merits alone is because their best and brightest were systematically sent to their deaths by a Pakeha administration.

I managed to speak up with a brief outline of the idea of privilege [link is a PDF], but class ended before we could really get into it.

—

Not quite about NZ, but worth mentioning: Just recently, a famous published white author asserted that sci-fi fandom was limited to white people until the Internet came along.

The PoCs/non-white folks in sci-fi fandom beg to differ.

All of which is to say: History is important. Get to know yours better.

Kiwi traffic jam

(Final essay countdown: 2000 words down; 1000 to write by Friday; 6000 left to write in total.)

Roots and stems and plants and words

1) Four essays to write. One for New Zealand Politics, which is a first-year course, for which I keep trying to write a third-year essay. One for Political Psychology, for which I will probably end up writing on one of my pet topics (PTSD as related to veterans, or the 2005 Danish Mohammad cartoon controversy). Two for Hindu Goddesses, both twice as long as the polisci ones, both of which I am rather lost on.

2) Have been sleeping a lot. Nine hours last night, and was still drifting a bit by the end of my last class. It’s not the sinking, heavy exhaustion of mono, just general tiredness, but this is still not a great time for it. (See point #1.)

3) I got a plant! It’s a tiny zebra plant, and it was only about US$1:

It’s grown noticeably since I brought it home, too. Look closely, and you’ll see the next pair of leaves starting to sprout from the top:

They’re even larger now – I swear I can see this thing growing by the day.

(I have no idea whether Customs will confiscate it. I sure hope not. Should probably sort that out in the next few weeks, or at least before I get to the airport.)

Essays for papers

Power went out twice this morning, but for shorter intervals. I’m going to take that as a good sign.

In the downtime, I’ve been working on research. Finals aren’t for another month, but there are a couple of essays due in two weeks.

I hate the Intro to New Zealand Politics one already.

Anyone remember five-paragraph essays? From, oh, say, middle school? That’s basically what the guidelines are describing.

And we’re taking large chunks of tutorial time to explain this complex structure. As well as other subtle nuances of essay-writing. (Did you know that you should double-space it? And use black ink? Really!)

A cultural quirk: length is discussed in terms of word count, rather than pages. This one is supposed to be 1500-2000 words. (Comes to ~5-7 pages double-spaced.)

The lower bound of that isn’t going to be a problem. The upper bound might be: I have 1800 words in notes so far. What I don’t have is a coherent argument. Much less a way to hammer out anything interesting in five-paragraph essay format.

(I also don’t have any sources published after 1997, but I figure that’s on the library’s head, not mine.)

(Footnote to various family members to whom I owe emails: I’ll get back to you once I figure this out. Also, Mom & Dad, you should totally come visit. When’s the next time you’re going to have the excuse?)

Long dark night

The power went out twice last night for a big chunk of Ilam Village. The streetlights were on, but about half the apartment blocks went dark in one fell swoop.

The first outage, I went off and took a walk. Ran into the two other Wheaton students at the nearest store (me looking for shampoo, them picking up groceries). Other people trickled outside; someone took up guitar on the nearest lawn.

After maybe half an hour, the lights came back on, followed shortly by the Internet. An hour or so later, everything went out again. There was this mass outcry – you could hear the uproar from the next building over.

This round actually got me to (gasp!) interact with my flatmates. The guys were both out, but Sam and Nicole were still around; Nicole had been hanging out in the living room with a couple of candles. After the lights came back (for good this time), they mixed up some drinks (I passed) and we talked. Around midnight we migrated to one of the flats next door, for company, more drinks, and increasingly incoherent conversation. (Not that that’s a bad thing: I was increasingly exhausted, so Intelligent Discussion would have flown right over my head. We didn’t stumble back to our building until after two.)

Sam’s from Massachusetts; she’s actually been to Wheaton for athletic events. Also a Twilight fan, studying chemistry, and early in the night got into an impassioned rant about how put off she was by homophobic slurs she’d heard around town. Nicole’s an NZ native, into psychology. (As you might have guessed, Sam carried a lot of the conversation.)

So! Thanks to the power failure, a good night. Though I may need one more nap to fully recover.

The Canterbury Grand Tour

So apparently I’ve been so busy vacationing, I haven’t had time to blog about it. Eheh.

Here’s that first tour. Executive summary: Huge gardens; random umbrellas; themed cocktails; left behind; stupid clouds; Obama is everywhere; beach!