Surviving History

the year in review

2011-12-31T13:46:00.008+13:00

I really don't feel like writing a "Yay 2011!" blog post because it just wasn't that kind of year. I am fervently wishing for a better 2012 and happy to see this year slide into history in about 28 minutes, NZ time.

The year for me was dominated by the earthquakes.

February 22 was a horrible, dark day, one of the worst days of my life, and it threw everything into its shadow for a while. I couldn't even imagine feeling happy or carefree again for quite some time. I've always been a let's-fix-things-quickly kind of person, and it's been a hard adjustment to start thinking in terms of the years it will take before things come right in Christchurch. And then there's the fact that, whenever it feels like things are starting to be happier and more positive, another large-ish earthquake comes and knocks us over again and we're all Over It with a capital O and I.

So this year has been pretty sucky, to use the technical term.

And yet ....

1. I (finally) finished my thesis. Now that I've had a chance to sit back, breathe, consider it - I'm proud of what I produced. I was so dazed and confused by it all by the end of my part in the process - it shows in my face, in the photo above - that I'm amazed, looking back, that the thesis made sense at all.

I don't know if I mentioned this before but the process still continues. You may remember I wasn't particularly over the moon with my results... and it turned out in the end, after I inquired further into the rationale behind the grade, that I may have grounds to appeal it. The university's academic committee will be considering the issue in January, but it may mean another marker is appointed and my grade will be reconsidered. So I feel happier about the situation.

2. It took me some months to find a job after uni. It was difficult to see if everything was going to work out, but I'm glad I hung in there. I got to do some short-term work that was very interesting and very different, for me, and I even got to be published for my work on a book about a robot language as a result!! It was hard work making ends meet with no long-term solutions in sight, but it was truly an exercise in learning to trust God, trying my hand at new and random things, and learning to live simply and frugally.

3. I got my first "proper" job and am now a member of the public service, working in the recovery effort for Christchurch and its surrounds. I absolutely love my job and this has been the true highlight of 2011. I am so grateful for a job that allows me to use the skills I've been trained in, challenges me, and allows me to help in the recovery from the earthquakes - this is something I'm passionate about. I can't believe I've been so lucky.
With the career came the car, which I can finally afford to keep, and independence!

4. 2011 gave me a new niece who is now six months old, incredibly cute, and a blessing to our family.

5. 2011 also gave me new flatmates who became some of my best and closest friends, and consolidated my strong friendships with the flatmates I had lived with previously. Something about going through the earthquakes together brought us closer than ever before, and I am so grateful for the lifelong friendships I believe we have formed. It's so great living with people with whom you can laugh, cry, support, be supported, philosophize, play the clown, understand. Again, I've been very lucky.
Here we are, above, at my flatmate A.'s wedding, earlier this month, which was another highlight of 2011. R. and I have seen the whole story of A.'s romance with J. unfold, and it was so special to be at the wedding and celebrate with them, if also slightly bittersweet because it is the end of three jampacked years of flatting with A. who is a wonderful, crazy friend!

6. The final highlight of the year for me was escaping to Dunedin with the family for Christmas and to Mt Cook, above, for a few days afterwards. More on this later. Suffice it to say it was a healing and happy time!

And as I finish this blog post it is two minutes past midnight. Happy new year! Please, 2012, be good to us.

suddenly I am an outdoors person

2011-12-28T19:34:00.003+13:00

I write from a camping ground in Mt Cook National Park where, for the first time in my life, I have successfully put up a tent all by myself and am planning to spend two whole nights in a row sleeping outdoors, by myself.

The weather is surprisingly warm and I am looking forward to a few days of walking, kayaking, exploring, adventuring, relaxing...

I came from a jampacked family Christmas in Dunedin - four days, three of which were spent at the beach, all of which almost seemed clichéd in their perfection, spent with my entire family which now numbers 25 including my parent, my siblings and their spouses, my nieces and nephews, and me.

More on this later. I plan to fill you in on all the details of my summer holiday, along with copious photos.

The day I left Christchurch (December 23) there were more earthquakes - a 5.8 followed by a 5.3 and a 6.0. I was in a little old secondhand book shop when the first one hit, kneeling at the bottom of a tall bookcase. The whole store wobbled around me and I could feel the earth rocking and all around me books were falling down and narrowly missing me. It wasn't pleasant, and was probably the least safe I have ever felt during any of the earthquakes. I was supposed to be leaving the next day but I ended up going home, packing my things in about half an hour, and driving to Dunedin.

I think I'm a little shell-shocked by it because for the last few days I have constantly, inexplicably, felt like bursting into tears at odd moments, even though I've been having a great time. It's not rational at all and I don't understand it so I'm putting it down to shock, and to frustration that just as everything seemed to be improving the quakes have hit us again.

lightning and rain

2011-12-08T23:07:00.003+13:00

I was on a trip with my music group when I was 13. It was one of those surreally cinematic moments, and the first time I'd ever seen a REAL lightning storm like fireworks across the sky. It was also probably quite dangerous, but who cares? I'm here to tell the tale.

I am glad I did this because it's the sort of thing I would totally put on my "Things To Do Before I Die" list if I had not in fact already done it. It's going on my "Things To Do Again" list now.

farewell

2011-12-05T21:19:00.002+13:00

Our December issue of Halfway Down the Stairs is now out!

As usual, I get all giggly and proud of it and keep sneaking online to look at it.

If you like writing or reading or both, you should also sneak online and look at it. And if you like writing in particular, you should submit your work to us - we love to receive submissions. Check out our submissions page for information.

Some of my personal favourites this time around:

Salt Stain, by Zoe F. Gilbert

Hades Landing, by Rebecca Burns

Dominion, by Cristina Vega

Her Story, by Marjorie S. Thomsen

and 1941, by Kyle Hemmings

But really we wouldn't publish anything if it didn't come with a "Recommended" stamped across it. I hope you enjoy "Farewell" too!

western australia

2011-12-04T07:32:00.001+13:00

Honestly, is there nowhere I can escape the constant horde of men pursuing me? ;)

st stephens

2011-11-30T19:13:00.003+13:00

[original photo]

My friend and I were taking an elevator down from the roof of the cathedral, crammed into this tiny little room with about ten other people. The elderly man in charge of the lift was holding his transistor radio close and as he turned it on started nodding his head to the beat: "I will survive... oooooooh, as long as I know how to love I know I'll be allright..."

My friend and I looked at each other and almost collapsed with laughter.

It was one of those moments I'll always remember and will never quite be able to explain how funny it was, because the juxtaposition in that grim, sweeping cathedral was just so stark. You had to be there.

singapore

2011-11-28T22:31:00.002+13:00

[original photo]

It's illegal there - gave me a little thrill!

I'm such a rebel.

poolburn

2011-11-27T17:21:00.002+13:00

[original photo]

It was really unexpected.

the soundtrack of my year

2011-11-25T22:49:00.003+13:00

My year started out with this song. This was a real feeling of congratulation that Christchurch had made it through a massive earthquake in 2010 and, though some buildings had fallen, the city remained intact. No one died. There was a tremendous sense of togetherness. I remember sitting in a pub at the Arts Centre with a cold Pimms and ginger ale on a summer evening looking around me and feeling so lucky to live here. I also remember playing this song to myself and thinking, I'm almost feeling this good, all I need to do now is finish my Masters and I can really feel it:

Then there was the earthquake on 22 February, and I remember wondering if I'd ever have a hope of listening to that song feeling good again, let alone not feeling sick.

For some time afterwards, I listened to this song over and over, and I'm not exactly sure why, but it captured how I felt without actually being at all about earthquakes:

A few weeks after the earthquake, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami happened, and in Christchurch there was this horrible realisation that we weren't as badly off as we could be, and what was happening to the world? And all I could listen to was this song and feel very dark and desperate:

Maybe it was the following songs that pulled me out of this a little bit... they're not particularly positive either but they helped:

I don't know when the turning point came, but during the remainder of the year I came to love Ella Fitzgerald:

... and Mumford and Sons:

Maybe I had calmed down a little? Probably it had something to do with finishing my Masters and learning to think clearly again.

And now it's this:

I'm sure I'll do a "summing up the year" blog post in a wee while so I don't want to steal all my own thunder... but it has definitely been a year of learning to rely on God. Did you know that we can't even rely on the ground beneath our feet? So I've learnt and I'm still learning to put them elsewhere, and I'm happy with the song my soundtrack finishes on.

west virginia

2011-11-20T09:16:00.004+13:00

[original photo]

On the monorail, to be precise. That is why I chose this photo.

It was actually quite scary and I burst into tears. (I was 12, separated from my mother, had no idea where I was, and no idea how to make the monorail take me where I wanted to go.)

Then I collected myself, found some coins in my pocket and figured it out.

rat race

2011-11-19T07:23:00.005+13:00

So it turns out that I really love my job! I've been there four weeks now, and not once have I felt at all unhappy with it.

I won't explain what it is again here, but will point you to this post, as I probably should be discreet and avoid easy google searches - not that there's any level of special, mysterious knowledge about my job, but it's in the public service and there's a lot of public interest in this organisation and I'm still a little unclear about where the boundaries are when it comes to blogging about it.

All the same, I can happily say that I love working there!

It totally suits me. I get to research and write letters in response to letters that come into the office. The original letters are often angry or complicated or sad, and I find the necessary information online or by talking to people throughout the organisation or in different organisations, and then draft a response. The best of it is when someone is in a really difficult situation, and you can provide information that will benefit them enormously.

The atmosphere is really exciting, because the pace of change is FAST. Since I've been there, there have been two major public announcements that have had a huge impact in the recovery effort. There are opportunities to stop your normal work and go help out at a community meeting, or take a bus trip through the central city, because there's a recognition you have to stay connected with what the organisation is doing on the ground, and with the people who are affected by the decisions coming out of this organisation.

My colleagues are wonderful. We get on very well, share a similar sense of humour, and there's a culture of helping each other out. We're a very small department and have a huge backlog of work but we're attacking it together and it's very satisfying to see the numbers on the "to-do" list falling.

Often, when I remember to think about this, I love the feeling that I am in the midst of a historical moment, a juncture in my city's history. I'm learning so much about what is going on here - it's a really valuable perspective. You can see things from many angles. I know that I will be looking back in the years to come and be able to say that I was involved. There's a strong feeling at work that, although we will probably make mistakes, everyone is there because we really care about our city and we really want to serve its people.

I also have to say that I love earning a regular income. The last few months have been really, really difficult money-wise. I had to stretch out any money that came in as long as I possibly could, as I usually had no idea when next I would be paid. It was a revolutionary feeling to get my first paycheck as a full-time worker and to know that another would be coming in a fortnight and so I could actually buy the things I need!

Oh. Two not-so-good things.

1. I don't like uncomfortable work shoes.

2. I'm not so keen on the fact that I am writing a blog post at 7:00am on a Saturday morning, because I am now incapable of sleeping in.

krabi

2011-11-15T20:42:00.001+13:00

[original photo source]

... but at least I did it in an exotic, beautiful place, right?

brighton

2011-11-12T14:46:00.000+13:00

I think it wanted to eat my fish and chips.

Weirdest feeling ever.

manderley

2011-11-11T19:37:00.002+13:00

Last weekend I went out to Little River for the Manderley Festival. Little River is some forty minutes from the outskirts of Christchurch, and Manderley is an old homestead with beautiful grounds, where every year they hold a market of artsy-craftsy-foody type stuff and open up the house, etc.

We stopped on the way out there at Birdlings Flat, which is a wild beach with millions of pebbles, which is exactly what my flatmate A. needs for the decorations for her wedding in December. So we were equipped with several buckets, but I have to admit I kept getting distracted from pebble-gathering and taking photos. Not many turned out very well but here are a couple.

Then to Manderley itself:

Here is the house:

The stalls:

Cool things for sale:

Swing dancers:

It's difficult to recreate for you, but it was such a beautiful day and there were so many interesting things to see and/or buy! I ended up buying a hippie bag and a beautiful little old hand-painted china vase, but also got to try out cheeses and salamis and chutneys and cupcakes and more, and I would heartily recommend the Manderley Festival to you - yes you - if you happen to be in Christchurch next November!

london

2011-11-07T21:07:00.001+13:00

[source of original photo]

Well, I wouldn't blame him for being confused, really - not all that many people ask to have their photo taken with Karl Marx's grave.

vienna

2011-11-02T07:15:00.004+13:00

It's Austria's turn...

He sauntered into our hostel with a friend. He had a splendid moustache and a tan-coloured suit. I was waiting for my friend to finish using the internet.

While his friend argued with the proprietor, he approached me and asked me something in another language which it was convenient not to be able to understand precisely, although the meaning was pretty clear. I'm pretty sure it began with "How you doin'?" Then there were the gestures.

"Ah, I can't understand, very sorry!" I chattered politely.

"Gypsies!!!" hissed the proprietor as they left.

(By the way - I know that gypsies, or Roma, or wanderers, or whatever you like to call them, are quite a normal part of the community in parts of Europe, but to a 23 year old from New Zealand they sound like they come out a fairy tale. That is where this bumper sticker has its novelty for me.)

love and marriage

2011-10-31T22:49:00.004+13:00

My next bumper sticker...

[original picture source]

He was a recent immigrant. I was a fresh-faced but mature-looking twelve year old. He thought arranged marriages were the way to go, and were my parents interested?

Once he found out I was only twelve, he wondered if I had any sisters?

My parents politely said they thought they would let us choose for ourselves.

And then we got to the train station.

windscreen emptiness

2011-10-30T08:19:00.002+13:00

I'm going to pick up my new car today!

This got me thinking: for the first time in my life, I will be allowed to use bumper stickers in the purpose for which they are intended. But which bumper stickers to use?

Some people like to use the back windscreen of their car to boast about the interesting places they've been and the interesting things they've done.

And so I bring to you a series of my own bumper stickers, based on my exotic life of travel. And it's all true. Here's the first:

Feel free to print these out and make up your own bumper stickers if you too swallowed a fly in Western Australia. It's not difficult to do.

graffiti

2011-10-29T22:24:00.000+13:00

Graffiti in Christchurch - photo borrowed from a friend with permission:

"Christchurch - destined to rise"
"Ikarus"

Look, the thought's very nice, and his/her talent with a spray can is prodigious... but Icarus? Destined to rise? Really?!

Perhaps they started reading the story and got tired before the middle or the end.

Perhaps it's the name the artist uses on everything s/he does and my snark is pointless.

Either way, this made me giggle.

a week of firsts

2011-10-28T20:05:00.006+13:00

1. I started my first proper grown-up job. Tried not to refer to it in that way at work and instead look professional and seasoned... well, perhaps not, but contrary to all expectations I did not get horribly nervous. I did not make horrible mistakes. I'm slipping into the work much quicker than I (and they) expected. I'm learning lots. I'm feeling quite privileged to get paid to do something that seems actually important and to work in something so closely associated with Canterbury earthquake recovery - pretty cool, really. Take that, all the people who said But what are you going to DO with a BA/MA? Future Arts grads, don't listen to them!

2. I bought my first car. !!! Rockin it in a Mazda Demio... okay, so it doesn't have that kind of a ring to it, but I'm pretty excited! I'm not actually picking it up until my birthday, as in NZ you pay less insurance after you're 25, so it made sense to wait a week.

3. It was my niece's first day at school on the same day I started work. She's five and very excited!

4. This week the buses started going through the city again, instead of around it, for the first time since the February earthquake. This may not seem that significant but the city has been like this big black hole in Christchurch where only people with hard hats and orange hi-visibility vests are allowed to go. The buses have been stopping on opposite sides of the CBD. This leads on...

5. The shopping district of Cashel Mall has all but disappeared. As you can see in the photo above, so much has been demolished while it's been cordoned off that it's barely recognisable. This goes for much of the city.
BUT! For the first time since February 22nd, they're opening up Cashel Mall to the public for shopping in shipping containers! See below.

Behold: the "pop-up mall".

It's not quite finished in the photo, but it's finished in reality, and tomorrow afternoon we'll be allowed into this part of the CBD once more to shop in this pop-up mall, eat and drink in pop-up cafés, et cetera.
I was a little sceptical until I saw the report on TV tonight about it, and it just looks so cool. It's very exciting to see the central city opening up for the first time, even if it's only a little bit, and in such a creative and fun way. Hurrah!
I will also be able to wander down in my lunch breaks on work days, as I work right on the edge of the CBD. Eating options have been limited, so this is also exciting.

It's SO GOOD to see Christchurch recovering little by little. There's a very long way to go. This has been something I've learnt even more this week as I've started my new job. It's easy to forget that things are crazy when you live in a fairly unaffected suburb and no longer visit the CBD. Now I'm there again, my work station reflects the buildings that are destined for demolition in its glass, and it seems ghostly. But life is returning slowly.

hunting of a different kind

2011-10-19T07:21:00.003+13:00

So it's been a while since I updated you. Last time, I almost had a job. This time, I definitely have it, and I'm starting next week! Can't deny I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm also looking forward to it. I will be working in a research and writing capacity for a government department concerned with the consequences of the earthquake in Christchurch and the rebuild. Doing what I love (research, writing) and feeling like it's actually practical - a winning combination for me! I just hope I don't make any really stupid mistakes in the early weeks.

In other news, we are spending this week flat-hunting - my last week of freedom plus my other flatmate is on holiday. We will be leaving our current flat when the lease ends in a month or so as it is quite big (5 bedrooms to fill) and some of us are keen for a smaller place in a different part of town.

We visited a potential flat yesterday that has so many flaws but I am addicted to the idea of it already! I will explain.

It's on the hills overlooking Christchurch.

After parking your car, you need to walk up a little path like this one, for about a minute. (So yeah, it is inconvenient when moving in, or at night, et cetera - but oh so romantic!)

The house is a 1920s villa a little like this one (but it is almost entirely white).

It is surrounded by trees and bush like this one. There is a little grassy area at the top of the section, with a clothesline and sweeping views of the city, and it feels like you're in an oasis from the modern world, even though you're actually surrounded by other houses.

There are bay windows throughout the house.

There is a sun room and a lounge, dining room and bedrooms with amazing views.

This would be the view during the night.

This would be a view during the day - except that it would be much more sweeping, and you could see all the way to the sea.

It might be cold in winter. The kitchen is quite dated. It's an old house and is likely to have mice. But on the other hand it's affordable, there's HEAPS of space, the landlord seems excellent and he seemed to like us, there will be a new kitchen, and despite the fact that the weather was horrid yesterday the house felt warm, even though its new owners have not yet installed any heating. (They will be doing so.)

We left the house so excited. But completely aware of its problems. Are now waiting for a quote from a moving company for our bigger items, as we have no hope whatever of moving them in ourselves. We think we'll have a cooling-down period and see other houses before we apply... but I can't imagine feeling quite as much in love with any other home!!

positivity

2011-10-01T14:48:00.004+13:00

I am having a great weekend so far, and it's only Saturday!

1. I almost have a job! Just waiting for them to speak to my referees but basically as long as my referees say nothing horrible about me I am going to receive a job offer soon. It happens to be a job that I really wanted and I am very excited about it - so very grateful, relieved and happy!

2. I got my thesis markers' comments back, and was surprised to read some really lovely, positive, genuine feedback from the external marker who happens to be an historian I really respect. Recovered some of my confidence in my own work as a result.

3. Googled myself this morning (oh, don't laugh, I bet you've done it too) and discovered my thesis is now online - I'm famous! Hmm. Yes. Of course.
You can read it here or here if you like. But don't worry. I have few illusions about how widely read this thesis will be.

4. Had an excellent night with some friends from church last night, sitting round eating dessert and sharing our stories of how we discovered faith in God. It was really fantastic and a little emotional at times and there were a lot of smiles and laughter.

this is one of my favourite things

2011-09-30T10:37:00.006+13:00

When I was a very little girl, at some point before I can remember, I had my first boiled egg. My father would have drawn a funny face on it, like he did for all my siblings and me. If only we had a photographic record of all the faces, over the years, about to face doom through a sharp whack to the head.

I would have doused it in salt - because I'm sorry, but there is no point in eating a boiled egg without salt - and I would have eaten it with great pleasure. I love eggs, and I love boiled eggs especially. I think I particularly like that they are so personal - everyone has their own preferences when it comes to eggs. For myself, I boil an egg for five minutes precisely in quickly boiling water. Any longer, and it's too solid for me.

Anyway, I would finish the egg, already longing for more. At this point someone would have played a trick on me by turning the larger half of the egg shell over in the egg cup, to look as if it hadn't been eaten yet, and offered it to me.

Bloggers, I fell for it, even if I can't remember doing so, and from that point on, I have been constitutionally incapable of eating a boiled egg without offering SOMEONE the empty shell. I know that very rarely will anyone fall for it. I have successfully tricked someone once in my entire life, which I estimate would be a success rate of roughly 1/375. Nevertheless it is hilariously funny.

These are a few of my favourite things.

writing

2011-09-21T10:00:00.003+12:00

This is going to be one of those blog posts in which I divulge things I've been trying not to think about too much. The problem is, I am rapidly becoming so bored with unemployment that I need to fill my time with things... and so it's becoming even harder to ignore this particular issue.

I've always thought 'wouldn't it be great to have more spare time so I could write more stories?' Well, now I have it.

Unfortunately, I feel like I've lost the ability to write... creatively, that is.

I have not written a single story or even the smallest piece of creative writing since I started my MA thesis two and a half years ago.

I feel stunted, like I've lost a limb, because up until that moment I have always scribbled things down. Since I was about six years old I wanted to be an author, and, even if my writing was pretty dreadful then, at least I was doing it.

What's more, I'd always been writer-minded, but not so much now. I was reading Stacy's awesome blog post on inspiration the other day and I wondered where this has gone - my constant awareness of the things around me, my intention to mine them ruthlessly for stories, scenes or characters.

I just don't know where to start now.

I can't blame this entirely on the MA, but it has been affected by my concentration on historical research and historical writing over the last few years. It's such a different way of thinking. I thought it might even help my creative writing, because planning stories has never been my strong point and it's just not possible to write a thesis without planning everything. But now I feel that I've lost the ability to just sit down and WRITE, without thinking too much.

I also feel that I listened to my supervisors too much when they couldn't understand that the pieces of writing I'd submitted to them were just drafts. My draft writing was always quite good but not very good at first draft stage, and so I think they got the idea that I'd already worked on improving it but hadn't succeeded in correcting all the mistakes, etc. They would go through and pick out every flaw, even when I asked them not to, assuring them I would deal with the phrasing later on. So I became paranoid about writing every sentence perfectly, the first time. Unfortunately this only made my prose more awkward. I look at my thesis now, and wish I had ignored almost everything they said about my writing (except for a few valid points).*

I'm hoping that in this public splurge of self-information, I will be able to prod myself into action. Admitting the problem being the first step to solving the problem, et cetera. To a large extent writing is just about sitting down and getting on with it. I get it.

* My supervisors were for the most part amazing, brilliant, helpful, insightful, kind, inspiring and understanding. I simply wish I had had a little more confidence, to know when I should have listened and when I shouldn't have.

music I like

2011-09-15T21:46:00.003+12:00

Just because. My current favourites.

And, along with just about everybody else:

boys boys boys

2011-09-14T16:04:00.007+12:00

A while ago, my flatmates and I sat down with pen and paper and hummed/hahed over a list of the attributes of the perfect man - or, more accurately, the sort of man we could see ourselves marrying. (Funnily enough, one of my flatmates got engaged the next week! This was not solely because of the list-making but we flatter ourselves it had something to do with it.)

After we'd laughed at ourselves a little, we took it quite seriously and each produced a list. I'll share mine with you now. I've actually blogged about this once before, on my old blog, but the list has changed a little (although in some ways it has stayed the same).

Each of us chose some qualities that were non-negotiable and some that were more negotiable. I suspect that some of our non-negotiables are actually less important than we think... but I will reproduce my list exactly as it was, for the sake of posterity.

Non-negotiables

(a) Christian, with a similar sense of mission, without making me feel too imperfect
As I said last time, this isn't always a black and white issue for everyone, but for me it is. I want someone who takes their faith seriously. However, I don't want to marry someone I look up to in awe of their faith in comparison to mine, as I would start feeling insecure.

(b) similar sense of humour
This is very important, I think.

(c) tallish; attraction; a sense of physical security
i.e. not too weedy

(d) someone I can respect, whose opinions I value
For a while, I could be with someone with whom I disagreed on any fundamental level or who seemed unwise. Eventually, I would inevitably end up looking down on him, and it would make for a very unhealthy relationship.

(e) someone I can trust and feel comfortable with
Fairly obvious.

(f) someone who really really likes me!
This is something that really stands out in my flatmate's relationship with her fiancé. He just adores her. It's lovely. Everyone knows they won't always FEEL "in love" with each other's most annoying qualities, etc., but you have to know that there is that foundation. At least, I do.

(g) someone with a similar sense of empathy and social integrity
I'm not saying I overflow with charitable giving as much as I should, but I would like to be in a marriage in which we could challenge each other to think outward in this way. I don't want to marry someone who always wants a bigger house and more cars. I want to be self-conscious about what we need and what we think we need.

(h) not too moody

(i) likewise, mental and emotional toughness - calm under pressure

(j) someone who listens

Qualities that are preferable, but negotiable

(k) values children and family, and is liked by my family

(l) musical or likes music
I've always fantasised about going to awesome concerts, etc., of all kinds, with The Boy.

(m) not too sporty
This may seem a little silly, but I've noticed that sporty people seem to want their girlfriends to be just like them. Not going to happen.

(n) exotic or pleasant accent
Okay, so this is more than a little silly :)

(o) someone who is a good at being handy around the house, and will deal with gross things
This has become even more important after living in an all-girl flat, feeling foolish every time our landlord has to fix something that boys would have been able to fix by themselves in three seconds.

(p) social, hospitable and outward-looking
Yes, I'm an introvert at heart, but I like being with other people. I like strong friendships and I think it's important to keep these up after getting married. I also like the idea of having a welcoming and open home.

(q) someone who can appreciate personal space
OK, so as I just said, I like being with other people. But. There is a point when I just want some alone-time. I hope that if I get married my husband can appreciate that.

What are your negotiables and non-negotiables?

discoveries

2011-09-10T12:50:00.004+12:00

You will probably remember how much I loved this angel tombstone in a cemetery near my father's house:

And you will probably remember that I was sad to discover that she had sustained quite some damage in the Christchurch earthquakes.

Today I started browsing the Christchurch Art Gallery's online galleries, and particularly their large collection of William (Bill) A. Sutton's work, which can be found here. He was an artist from Christchurch, born 1917, died 2000, and I've always had a thing for his work.

I was SO EXCITED to find among his sketches that he too liked the angel tombstone!

Here she is. Taken from this page on the gallery website.

It's a little hard to see, so I sharpened the picture here:

I admit I do wish he had been able to do something more with the sketch, but the fact that one of my favourite artists wandered round my city too, and liked the same things I like - that's cool enough as it is.

mastering the arts

2011-09-08T13:45:00.006+12:00

This morning I found out that I officially have a Masters degree in Arts.

And yes - that means that from now on, it's Master Allie to you.

It was a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions.

For one thing, it was a good solid mark, so I was pleased. I will now be able to say that I have a Master of Arts with Distinction. But it was also not quite as high as I would have liked - let's face it, I'm never going to be over the moon with anything less than A+ - so I was a little teensy bit disappointed. But I went for a walk, processed everything, thought back over the last few years and came to the conclusion that:

(a) I was being a little bit silly. I've done very well!

(b) I have learned Huge Things about how to do research. Anything that was not A+ about my thesis is an opportunity to improve next time.

(c) I've made it through rather a crazy two years by the grace of God - this is like a certification of that - and for that I feel a little over-emotional and proud and grateful.

job-hunting is so much fun

2011-09-07T10:48:00.005+12:00

So, I think it's time for a little update on my employment prospects.

I have now been rejected for 81 jobs! Huzzah!

I think I'm doing pretty well so far at keeping my head held high amidst a constant stream of rejections... I regret to inform you ... we found other applicants matched the requirements of experience more closely than you did... et cetera, et cetera. (That's if they reply at all.)

I could become rather cynical and question how these applicants ever got experience - but I try to avoid thinking too much about it and just write Better and More Persuasive covering letters.

Fortunately, I have two part-time jobs which have covered my bills so far but I will need to find something else in the immediate future as one of them is winding down.

I've had two interviews for a "proper job" so far - I didn't get either but one of them gave me some excellent feedback, and it was good practice. I also got to the point of taking a personality test for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After which they too rejected me. I think being rejected on the basis of your personality is slightly worse than being rejected because you "only" have a strong postgraduate degree.

Oh, isn't it all so fun?! I have had a few weeks of sheer apathy, refusing to even look at job applications, as it all seems hopeless and then I give myself a virtual slap, and start applying again. The funny thing is that when I look at some of the job descriptions, I KNOW I would be fantastic at them. The only thing I need to do is convince the employer of that.

So I beat on, boat against the current, borne ceaselessly into ... who knows where?!

one year on

2011-09-04T08:30:00.004+12:00

Today, it's one year on from the first major earthquake in the Canterbury region. When it happened, it's safe to say I had no idea how much things would change in Christchurch over the coming year. As you will probably be able to tell from reading my first earthquake blog post.

As I have probably said before, I'm a bit sceptical about the whole idea of officially remembering things based on an arbitrarily-selected portion of time. Also, it was really the February quake that turned things upside down.

Still, everyone else is doing it, and there's something about experiencing the sudden onset of spring at the moment that makes it easy to remember how things were a year ago.

And there's no denying that it was the September quake that made earthquakes a part of our consciousness. By the time the February quake hit, we'd been through thousands of miniature ones, almost every day. We'd seen our city closed to us, and we'd seen it reopened, and I for one had gained an entirely new perspective on the preciousness of my city. I remember sitting in the courtyard of the Dux de Lux sometime in January or early February looking out over the Gothic Revival architecture of the Arts Centre, a cold Pimms in hand, thinking how lucky I was to live in such a pleasant city and how close we'd come to losing it.

I can't remember all that much about the September earthquake, except that I was shaken awake, and it was very dark because all the streetlights went off and I thought vaguely to myself, wow, this is quite a reasonably sized earthquake. I wasn't even sure if it was worth getting up and checking on my flatmates until I heard them stumbling around in the dark. One of them was beside herself and I felt slightly frustrated with her, especially as I was still half-asleep and couldn't really grasp what was going on. One of them slept through it, which is kind of unbelievable in hindsight, but true. After checking on her, we sat around in the dark with candles on (apparently that's a big no-no) for about twenty minutes, I decided it must have been the Alpine Fault and hoped the people in the West Coast would be okay - has no idea that it was actually far closer to us. "Oh well," I said. "Let's go to bed."

The power stayed off until about 10am, and only then, when we were able to turn on the TV, did I start to realise what was going on.

Since then:

we take less for granted, and we plan for everything that could go wrong.

our social lives have become much more home-based. There are just far fewer places open.

"quaking" is one of the largest labels on the right sidebar of this blog.

we have a whole new vocabulary: "liquefaction", "munted", etc.

we are never at a loss for small talk or for conversation starters.

we have shaken our way through more than 8,000 sizeable quakes. It's a part of life now. And who knows when it will stop?

we have had to put up with a new mythology growing, outside Christchurch, of "resilient Cantabrians" or "tough southerners" when in fact so many people feel fragile, under siege, and would like the rest of the country to understand this.

having said that - I've personally learned a lot and come to understand myself a lot more.

we've started noticing when bad things happen abroad.

we've lost some people, some places and some things we can never recover.

halfway down the stairs: we all fall down

2011-09-02T09:40:00.004+12:00

The September issue of Halfway Down the Stairs is now published! The theme is "We All Fall Down" - which, I believe, has been one of the most interesting themes for us in terms of the submissions we have received.

Of course you should devour the entire issue! ...

... but, if you only read one piece, it should be The Red Dress, by M. B. Wallace. I really loved this story. One of my all-time favourites from the 'zine. (This is speaking from the point of view of a fiction editor, of course!) Go read it now. It's short, it's beautiful.

But there is plenty more: we were also very pleased to receive submissions like Leah Browning's Punch, and Jeff Wood's Ketchup. And there is quite a small but glittering section of poetry, and one really nice nonfiction selection.

This time, my contribution was a book review of a novel by one of our previous authors.

let them eat cake

2011-08-29T09:35:00.003+12:00

It was my flatmate's engagement party on Saturday night, and we were all supposed to bring a dessert. So I decided to make an engagement ring cake!!! What a great way to procrastibake.

I started by making a buttercake from the Edmonds cake mix. I feel ashamed even admitting this because I don't usually like using packets for baking, but there's no denying it's a reliable and simple way to make a cake for decorating. (It's not half bad as far as taste goes, either.) If you are above packet mixes, try this recipe.

It's fairly easy to manipulate this kind of shape into an engagement ring, obviously:

The recipe I used for the icing was the Vienna Cream recipe:

125 g/4 oz butter at room temperature
1.5 cups icing sugar
2 T milk

Place butter in small bowl of an electric mixer and beat until it is as white as possible.
Gradually add about half the sifted icing sugar, beating constantly.
Add milk gradually.
Then gradually beat in the remaining icing sugar.
Mixture should be smooth and easy to spread with a spatula.

My flatmate's ring is white gold, with a sapphire in the middle and a diamond on each side of it. So it was easy enough colouring the icing for the stones - not so easy for the silver-coloured ring. I ended up choosing "gold" colouring for the ring, which turned out more yellow than gold. But never mind!

And then I made it more beautiful:

I felt pure happiness looking at my cake. I was also very proud when my cake was first choice for a number of children at the party.

survive history

2011-08-19T15:15:00.004+12:00

Apparently, ASTONISHINGLY, the phrase "surviving history" did not originate with me. I've been playing on Google, originally because I'm so vain that I wanted to see where my blog appeared on the list of websites containing the phrase "surviving history"...

... except I don't think I ever found out. I got distracted by some of the intriguing entries that (deservedly) appeared well above me on the list.

Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna
This blog is about a project which is documenting the experiences of 10 Holocaust survivors in Lithuania. It talks about the exhibition currently touring outside Lithuania - read more about it here. It interviews survivors like Gita, and it talks about the problems they faced after the Holocaust and still face today. It talks about Lithuania's problems with anti-Semitism, Holocaust revision and the ultra-nationalists, and it discusses why this stuff still needs to be discussed. It links to info about other crimes against humanity around the world. Very impressive.

The Hebrew Bible Contains the Oldest Surviving History
Unfortunately you can't read the whole article unless you're a paid-up member, but the start of it is fascinating all the same. It challenges our perception of writing our own histories as an obvious thing to do across cultures. Interesting notion!

Surviving History: the TV show
Well, I don't know about you, but I didn't realise this show existed until now. History Channel crossed with Mythbusters, exploring the different ways humans have tortured or attacked or killed each other. Charming. Here is a clip about the history of hanging as a method of execution. I wish people didn't have to do this thing where they construct a safe, fake replica of something horrid from the past and claim to be finding out exactly "what it felt like". No. No, you don't. Hopefully you will never know what it feels like to be hanged or tortured or executed in any way.

childish delight

2011-08-16T23:12:00.004+12:00

You might remember I had a snow day last month. It was rather a lot of snow for Christchurch, and I thought that was it - turns out a rather large snowy cloud was heading this way from Antarctica and our whole country seems to be swearing they have seen snowflakes - no matter how far north or coastal they are.

It's not UNUSUAL for Christchurch to get snow in the winter but it is downright extraordinary for cities further north, like Wellington and Auckland.

Stephen Fry, who is currently in the country filming The Hobbit, put it like this on Twitter: "Wellington is beside itself with delight. Snow falling in the nation's capital for the first time for 35 years they tell me."
Then, later: "NZ has, bless it, gone officially mad. First snow in Auckland since the 30s. Children running along with open mouths to taste the flakes :)"

Basically the whole country is delighted. It may seem very strange to people from places with large annual snowfalls but it's really lovely to see the visible, childish joy that seems to be soaring around the country right now.

This lovely video was filmed in Wellington. Highly recommended.

we all fall down

2011-08-16T09:54:00.002+12:00

Today is the last day for submissions for "We All Fall Down" - the theme for our September issue of Halfway Down the Stairs!

Submission instructions can be found here. I'd encourage you to submit, especially if you've got a poem or a nonfiction piece sitting unpublished. (We've accepted rather a lot of fantastic fiction so far, but would still love to be sent more, too!)

the Proust questionnaire

2011-08-12T19:23:00.008+12:00

According to Vanity Fair (the magazine, not the novel):

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.

So, here I go. Opening myself up like a book to you.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

A wild location, sitting in front of a big window in a comfy armchair, a really gripping novel, a block of chocolate, really good coffee, a warm fire.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Disappointing people.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Over-analysing things.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

A lack of loyalty.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

My dad.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Books.

7. What is your current state of mind?

A little bit frustrated with myself for being lazy this week.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Extroversion.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

When I'm uncomfortable! I tend to overcompensate.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

To be honest? I'd like to lose some weight!

11. Which living person do you most despise?

... It took me a really long time to think of someone. I'm not sure I feel comfortable saying that about anyone. I do feel disgusted by Clayton Weatherston. A man from New Zealand who stabbed his ex-girlfriend 216 times and then tried to use the defence of provocation in court.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Physical: His voice and the way he speaks.
More abstract: Being understanding, having compassion.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Good conversation, and not judgmental.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

"Ummm.... yeah." My flatmate pointed out that I do this all the time, when I'm trying to remember what I was going to say and don't succeed. Now I can't stop noticing that I do it!

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

God.

16. When and where were you happiest?

All the Christmas Days of my childhood - having all my siblings around (which was not normal), food, receiving presents, giving presents, long summery days, laxity about bedtimes, etc...

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Dancing. I have the misfortune of complete uncoordinatable feet. (Yes, I know that is not a word.)

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would like to be more confident.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Hmm. Finishing my MA, I suppose.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

A bird of some kind.

21. Where would you most like to live?

In the mountains by a lake.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

The freedom to think and believe what I think and believe. The independence of my mind from manipulation or control. (Not that I believe I am entirely free of this, but I love that I don't have to think what the magazines tell me, or what the ads tell me, or what anyone tells me.) My equality with everyone around me, so that I can never grovel below someone or lord it over someone.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Hopelessness.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Organising events, because this involves creativity/finding original ideas/brainstorming but also pleasant mindless work.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

... A tendency to want to discover things for myself rather than be told about them.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

Time and effort.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Roald Dahl, Arthur Conan Doyle

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Jane Eyre

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Sophie Scholl

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

My siblings

31. What are your favorite names?

Kezia

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Cruelty, hypocrisy and selfishness

33. What is your greatest regret?

Taking Calculus in my last year of high school.

34. How would you like to die?

Not too old. Heroically! :)

35. What is your motto?

I don't particularly like mottos, unless they're funny. They tend to over-simplify things. But at this particular moment in time I do like this:

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. - Colossians 3:12-14

picking sides

2011-08-10T10:24:00.007+12:00

I wrote this blog post a while ago, and since then have been sitting on it for a while. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to publish it because it's very ranty, and not exactly in the normal style of this blog. So be warned - it deals with controversial stuff, and I am clearly quite upset about some things. The boat may be rocked.

Let's make a deal. Just in case you read this and disagree, and just in case any comments get heated. I promise not to deal any differently with you than I normally would. I respect the people who read this blog, I respect that we have differences of opinion, and I will continue to read YOUR blogs with pleasure. I would love if you could continue to read mine without judging my normal blog posts by what you may disagree with in this one.

--

I am going through a phase of feeling completely cynical about politics. (I know it's not exactly abnormal.)

I've always seen myself as a left-winger. I generally like left-wing people who argue about things better than right-wing people who argue about things. I love the idea of a society that recognises the contribution of the working class to wealth. I really, really love that I live in a country with a public health system that tends to work and is available to everyone. I like that if I am ever in deep financial trouble I probably won't have to go and live on the street. I like unions.

I'm not a fan of the Right. It is so fixated on the economic rights of the individual that it tends to ignore the masses and their need to, you know, eat. Its theory is that, by allowing individuals to accrue unlimited wealth, society will be more generally wealthy as an inevitable result. It seems to assume that people with lots of money will automatically be charitably-minded, responsible people who are brimming over with integrity. Ha!

I still feel this way about these things.

However, I'm growing less and less convinced that either Left or Right or anyone in between or on the extremes has a clue how to cope with difficult problems. The centrist/right-wing party in charge at the moment hasn't exactly fixed anything in the last few years they've been in power (to be fair, they aren't responsible for the financial problems of the global economy). On the other hand, the Left is almost cartoonish, bleating the same old song - "Tax the rich!" And what? All our problems will be solved? Recently, the Labour Party leader claimed that he would raise the minimum wage and this in itself would create more jobs... really?! I'm not a right-winger but, even so, this does not exactly compute.

It also bugs me how the Left has a penchant for saying that if you're one of us you need to feel the same way about every single issue. A few left-wing blogs I've been following lately have told me that because I believe that abortion is a violation of human rights I am therefore a man, socially conservative, a supporter of the war in Iraq, and a member of the right wing. If it helps you to ignore my objections by persuading yourself of that... well, please enjoy your bubble.

I'm beginning to think that the Left, over the last century or so, has a major problem. We TALK in terms of the masses. Social justice for all. Human rights. But actually we're all about picking sides, demanding justice for our half and delivering oppression on the other.

Lenin and Stalin and the international Communist movement were very open about this. It was the working class versus the capitalist oppressors, and it was a class war. And so only the rights of the workers have any weight whatsoever, and everyone else can rot in the gulag or be liquidated in purges. Stalinist or Maoist or Leninist crimes have been well known for a long time now, and the non-Communist Left rightly dissociates itself from them. Heck, even the Communists do so.

All the same, the non-Communist Left falls into the same trap when it starts arguing that, because it feels intense sympathy for one particular group of individuals, it's okay to ignore the rights of other individuals.

To fall pregnant, when you don't want to be pregnant... I feel sad thinking about this. It would be horrible. I'm not sure how to emphasise this without coming across a little trite, but please believe that women in this position have my full sympathy.

However, this in itself is not a wildcard to ignore the humanity of an unborn child. Demanding an end to this sad situation through abortion is another symptom of this mentality of picking-sides. As long as justice is done on ONE side, then it's okay that a human life is taken on the other.

Would anyone seriously question the humanity of a foetus if it were not for the fact that they want to have the freedom to abort it if it appears at an inconvenient time? Or if it were not for the fact that the state would prefer not to spend money on a child with a birth defect, who needs extra care, education, and support?

To call that child a parasite is just as unjust as calling the children of the Russian Tsar parasites who deserved to be murdered. It's just as unfair as exiling to forced labour and probable death the children of a peasant who happened to own a cow and was therefore a "rich" kulak.

And to tell ME that it's none of my business if an individual or a society decides to take someone else's life from them is a statement that has been made by a string of evil tyrants. It should never be received unquestioningly.

It's easier to get away with arguing that a foetus is not a human, because you can't see this unborn child. You can argue that, because it's not "normal" or it looks different to us, it doesn't have human rights in the same way we do. It's also easy to persuade yourself that it's okay because none of the people taking part in the debate will ever be threatened with this kind of "termination" (a word that bears a frightening resemblance to "liquidation", in my opinion). We have all made it out of the uterus, and therefore we are safe from this particular threat.

What happens, though, when WE become inconvenient? When we are in a car crash and lose control of our bodies? When we become elderly, frail, senile? By explaining away the rights of the individual in one case, will we have weakened our support of human rights in all cases?

And are we really comfortable, in the modern world, with saying that the worth placed on an individual by society defines their right to live or die? Are we comfortable with saying that an individual who has Down's Syndrome should not have made it out of the womb? And why - because they're not normal? They don't fit in with the majority of people? They don't "contribute" to society? It's offensive, isn't it. And yet it's the constant implication.

Our system has made us believe that we have to choose one or the other. The rights of the woman or the rights of the baby. By picking one or the other, we are buying into a system that degrades both. We need to change the system. Make it value pregnant women, support them, provide them with financial and emotional help. Make it value the vulnerable of all ages. Zero tolerance for discrimination in the workplace or society at large for women who are pregnant. Et cetera.

The inevitable response to my objections is usually that, if I really cared about the foetus, I would care about the foetus post-birth. That OBVIOUSLY the majority of abortions in New Zealand and elsewhere are undergone for selfless reasons - because the pregnant woman knows she wouldn't be able to provide the right kind of life for her child.

Firstly, here we have again the assumption that I am a rabid right-winger and don't want to vote for governments that will provide support for single mothers or families who live in difficult situations. I am not that person. Actually, I will almost always vote Labour or even lefter.

Secondly, the obvious retort is that we would not use the same logic about other humans in society. We don't kill criminals who have not been reformed because they will probably cause suffering when they leave prison and have an unhappy life. We are horrified and angry when the lives of infants and small children are taken away from them, no matter what sort of economic circumstances or family situation they were affected by.

We believe these things because we've seen these people, we've talked to them, they've had a chance to talk to us. We want to live in a society that gives everyone a chance to make what they can of what they've been given.

We believe that life is a Good Thing, an opportunity, and no one should be able to take it away on behalf of someone else because they think someone else will be better off that way - what narrow-minded arrogance!

We just seem to forget this, when it happens to be an unborn human. Maybe it's because it would be too inconvenient. Maybe it's because we can't see them, and they look different to us. Whatever the reason, I've had enough of this convenient blindness.

joy in music

2011-08-05T22:57:00.003+12:00

Cadbury's New Zealand branch recently brought out a new feel-good advertising campaign called "Share the Joy". The idea is, people sent in clips of noises of New Zealanders experiencing joy, and Cadbury and a famous guy used the clips to create a song. It's quite a cute idea, I suppose, and you can view it here if you want.

But though the video's sweet I find it doesn't quite succeed in making ME experience joy.

So I've been thinking recently about music that communicates joy in and of itself. I don't mean music with funny lyrics, or music about feel-good topics, but MUSIC that brings a smile to your face just through the way it manipulates rhythm or melody or harmonics.

And so here are some of my favourites. They will make you happier, or you can have your money back.

Ella Fitzgerald. And so here she is, with Mel Tormé, bringing a smile to the face of any one who's human, surely:

And if that wasn't enough for you, here she is, outright hilarious:

Now, who's heard of the Portsmouth Sinfonia? The only rule of admission was that you must not actually be a musician, or you must play an instrument unfamiliar to you. This awesome parody orchestra brought out several records and even toured! Here they are with Strauss' ~~majestic~~ "Also Sprach Zarathustra":

If you want more, I would highly, er, recommend their performance of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

This may be kind of weird, but the haka brings me joy. It's not really supposed to - the form they perform at the rugby is a war haka. It send chills running up and down my spine, but it also makes up for actually having to watch sports afterwards. And this particular haka, before an All Blacks vs Samoa game of rugby, is particularly awesome because both sides have a form of the haka, and they face each other off. Personally, I think the Maori haka is much scarier than the Samoan one. But I am slightly biased:

Stand By Me. It's a happy song. But it's even happier when played around the world by artists playing for change:

And because I'm obsessed with the tin whistle, I add this video. Feet tapping, heart smiling.

Then there's Shura Cherkassky, the pianist. I have never heard ANYONE match his rendition of the polka from Shostakovich's The Golden Age. They're too serious. He was very, very funny. He listened to the piece, instead of just performing it or showing off.

I couldn't find a full recording online but you can listen to it partially here. Otherwise, get hold of volume 3 of the collection of his encores.

Finally, there's Louis Armstrong, with "What a Wonderful World". There is a man who sings in the way the song wants him to.

toads? in holes?

2011-08-02T20:02:00.003+12:00

I love making toad in the hole. It's quite a ridiculous meal, and so it satisfies some childish instinct in me. And it is also so successful and fairly cheap depending on the type of sausages you buy and so delicious and it makes me feel like I'm English for the night and USUALLY the ingredients are close to hand - the only downside is that it seems to create a lot of dirty dishes.

I use Jamie Oliver's recipe - toad in the hole with onion gravy, mashed potatoes and greens.

You will need:
sunflower oil
8 sausages
4 sprigs rosemary
2 large red onions (but green onions will do just as well)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 knobs butter
6 T balsamic vinegar
1 vegetable stock cube or 1 tsp vegetable stock powder

For the batter:
185 mL milk
115 g plain flour
a pinch of salt
3 eggs

Mix the batter ingredients together and put them to one side.

Get a baking tin and put enough oil in that there is a thin layer over the whole container. Jamie recommends a whole centimetre deep but I don't find this much is necessary. Place this in the oven on its highest setting - about 240-250*C or 475*F.

When the oil is very hot, add your sausages. Keep your eye on them and allow them to colour until lightly golden.

About this time, start getting the potatoes ready to cook, in lots of boiling salted water, and make sure your onions etc are chopped. Instructions below the next paragraph on your onion gravy, which takes just over 20 minutes. I like to mash potatoes that still have their skins on, with some butter and milk.

Take the tin carefully out of the oven and pour your batter over the sausages. Throw the sprigs of rosemary into the batter. Place back in the oven, close the door, and leave it alone, the door closed, for at least 20 minutes, as Yorkshire pudding batter is sometimes temperamental. Remove when golden and crisp. Yum yum! Is this not the most ridiculous dish you ever saw?

Onion gravy: Fry the onions and garlic in the butter on a medium heat for about 5 minutes until translucent. I added a little bit of thyme. Add the balsamic vinegar and allow it to cook down by half. At this point, add the stock and a little bit of water. Allow to simmer for a few minutes. Yum yum! Great with both the toad in the hole and the potatoes.

This dish goes down SO WELL on a cold winter night.

snow day

2011-07-25T17:30:00.009+12:00

Okay, so if you want to read this blog post, you first have to agree to the following stipulation:

If you come from a very snowy wintry place, you are not allowed to scoff at my overwhelming excitement about the following blog post!!

Right. Moving on.

Last night, it started snowing. While I was at church. After I got home, I rushed outside to wander down the street looking at the light smattering of snow that had managed to settle.

Very nice and exciting but I didn't think we'd get much more than that.

Imagine my satisfaction to wake up this morning and look outside to find this:

It feels like the entire population of Christchurch has a smile on their faces today!

(Sad news, however. Since making the snowmen, their heads have fallen off. We are all Arts students.)

30 years today

2011-07-22T22:08:00.008+12:00

The Springbok tour of New Zealand began on July 22, 1981. The South African rugby team came to our shores while most of the rest of the world refused to take part in any sports competition involving the country which still held onto apartheid. What's more, our rugby officials decided not to put any Maori players into the All Blacks team just in case it was offensive to the sensitive white Springboks players.

[source]

I would like to think New Zealand has learned something from the tour. I hope it has, anyway, but feel slightly pessimistic.

It's so strange for me to admit that rugby is not just a game. The rugby world cup is coming to New Zealand this year and I am so thoroughly fed up with rugby-mania and misplaced national pride that I just want to scream with my hands in my hair - "IT DOESN'T MATTER!"

And yet professional sports are not just a game. Apartheid was not a game. I wish I could feel confident that the lessons of history are being learned, but if so how are we to account for the Beijing Olympics of 2008? The relentless disregard of basic human rights is not a game. Learn the lesson, New Zealand.

quoting

2011-07-19T16:00:00.005+12:00

Over the last two and a half years, I've flatted with about ten or eleven people altogether, which seems a lot now that I've thought about it. I've flatted with two of those people the entire time, and we're a pretty tight unit, so I hadn't realised there had been seven or eight others.

We've always had a quote wall up in our flats, to capture moments of unintentional humour and potential embarrassment. I thought I'd share some of them with you today. Most have been taken completely out of context. Unnamed, because I don't want to share my flatmates' names, and this is a great excuse to avoid indicating which ones are mine!

"The chicken is soft and tender like a love song."

"Did I tell you the story about when I was in the oven the other day?"

"It screens in 120 countries."
"120?! That's like 60 times two!"

"No, no, not the chicken!"
"I did not want to have to resort to this. I am afraid you leave me no other option."

(Re: guys) "They all just want me for my body."

"I've listened to this music for so long that I could go put on a bonnet."

"No one's that beautiful in real life."
"Of course they are! I have to look at it in the mirror every day."

"If Jesus was in a fairy tale, he would slay the dragon."

(Struggling with a bean bag) "I feel like a whale trying to get out of the sea."

"[Unnamed] kisses like a ravenous wildebeest."

"He likes goats."
"Wow, so much potential for seducing him."

X: "Allie failed at picking up ... (long pause) ... cabbage."
Y: "X failed at remembering what cabbage is."

(After hearing Adam Lambert sing Led Zeppelin) "I'm so jaded. I've heard it all before."

"He could carve my roast any day!"

(telling a story) "So, I used my intelligentness..."

"In all seriousness now..."
"I know. We never joke about dinner."

X: "It's zero, not oh."
Y: "Spot the pedantic person!"
Z: "Spot the pedant."

"I can't be friends with you anymore, I'm a boyfriended woman."

"Is it just me or is the internet slow?"
"No, you're slow too."

"Let's go shopping! Let's get dinner! Let's watch North & South!"
"Let's jump up and down and squeal!"

------

:)

We have fun.

when I grow up ...

2011-07-18T10:22:00.007+12:00

... I want a cottage garden.

I am NOT a fan of the gardens that seem to be fashionable in New Zealand at the moment. Someone seems to have decreed that everyone should only use native plants in their gardens, but this person has only given them a selection of about three native plants. Don't get me wrong - I love tussocks, flaxes and lancewoods - but they look way better growing wild, there are plenty of other natives that should be used, and on top of this they have become boring, because most gardens look the same.

My frustration with boring gardens has meant I've spent some time thinking about the type of garden I want when I grow up. To be honest, I'm not sure I will ever be a very good gardener and so my dreams of domestic paradise might be delusions. All the same, I am pretty sure of my ideal by now. And it is a cottage garden.

I've spent so much time thinking about it over the last little while that I have even come up with a list of the plants I really want to have in my garden. And here it is, in no particular order:

1. Violets. We used to have violets at the shady bottom of the garden when I was a child. I loved the scent, and the way they seemed so hidden away, like fairies.

2. NZ ferns for a wet shady corner. One native plant I would like to see a lot more of.

3. Some sort of climber - there are many options but here are a few I really like:

Hardenbergia.

Wisteria. (Problematic in that it takes ages to grow.)

Clematis.

4. Daffodils and lily-of-the-valley for spring. Of course.

5. A lemon tree. This is one of my top priorities. As you know, I am a lemonophile.

6. Lavender.
7. A plum tree. This is a picture of my big sister and me under the plum tree in our childhood garden. It was grown from a cutting from a tree that my grandfather bred, and so the plums were completely unique to our family and they were the most beautiful plums I've ever had. I would love to see if the current owners would let me take a cutting, one day!

8. Hydrangeas. It took me a while to learn to love hydrangeas. But now I really like them.

9. Hollyhocks.

10. A herb garden is essential.

11. Daisies.

12. Daphne. This is one plant upon which I absolutely insist. Possibly my favourite flower, and definitely my favourite scent.

13. Climbing roses. I like roses of all kinds, really, but my favourites are the smaller, slightly messy-looking ones with an amazing scent.

14. Bellflowers. I discovered these recently. Aren't they pretty?

alasdair and john

2011-07-11T08:30:00.006+12:00

New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote. Hurrah! For some reason I've ASSUMED for some time now that that must mean our men are slightly ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to enlightenment.

Over the past few weeks we've been given a chance to see that that is spectacularly not the case. A few males in powerful positions have made some outlandish statements that have shocked the country - and so in some ways, of course, the reaction to these statements is evidence that many men feel very differently to them. But in other ways, too, it has become very obvious that a large number of men feel very sympathetic.

Back in the days of the women's suffrage campaign, this was the kind of criticism women were up against:

A frightening, domineering archwife lowering the dignity of Parliament. Emotional and uncontrolled, she is clearly unsuitable to guide the country with rationality and restraint.

The picture has changed rather a lot now. But, for two relatively high-profile men, these ideas linger.

(1) Alasdair Thompson, who has had to resign from his position as CEO of the Employers' and Manufacturers' Association (EMA), recently defended the gender pay gap, claiming that women take much more leave than men - an obvious example being maternity leave, a slightly less unnecessary example being "monthly sick problems". Eugh.

As inappropriate and thoughtless as this statement appeared to be, Thompson proceeded to dig himself a deep, deep hole. He appeared in a couple of TV interviews in which he behaved in a completely bizarre way, promised "satistics" and then produced anecdotes, and pretty much acted like someone who has no idea how to conduct himself in public. You can read about it, or watch the full interview, here.

Had a great time on twitter reading other people's comments on the issue, some of which have been recorded here.

One of my favourites was from someone calling themselves "Alasdair_at_EMA": 'I am being completely misquoted. I have not mentioned anything regarding menstruation. Period.'

Another @RyanSproull: "Women are actually paid less because they spend hours crying and gossiping and asking for directions."

Another @teh_aimee: "Dear Alasdair Thompson. People _all over the world_ are currently having to rehinge their jaws."

I have to admit to feeling a little sorry for Mr Thompson after he lost his job and became the butt of the country's jokes. He's obviously completely clueless rather than intentionally malicious, and he's probably a nice old man who dandles his grandchildren on his knee - definitely no domestic tyrant. But the things he said and the way he said them, as if they were perfectly obvious (again, see the TV interview) ... well, it became very clear that feminism still has some pertinent things to say to NZ culture.

So I thought that was it for a while - until...

(2) The marketing director for our very own slightly far Right political party, Act, came out with some comments so damaging that even the Act party had to get rid of him. Taken from this article.

John Ansell began with racism, criticising "white cowards" for not taking action against the "Maorification" of New Zealand. (The Maori being the indigenous people of this country.) He thinks that Maori get special treatment, and has compared the situation to apartheid.

Yuck.

This is the main focus of people's criticism of Ansell, and rightly so, I think. Couldn't help noticing one of Ansell's comments, though:

Act is "a men's party. I can't get them to agree to that but it's a party for men and women who think like men."

Great, here we go again. Then someone on twitter directed my attention to this comment thread which Ansell has been active on.

DPF: “I’d be fascinated to hear why ACT is not a party for women who think like women.”
The evidence of history, David.
The women who support ACT are not squeamish about speaking bluntly about rational issues (including racial issues). I respect them very much.
In short, they’ve got guts.
More typical women are less rational and more emotional. They’d rather preserve relationships than rock the boat. Is that not true? ... women, by a reasonable margin, preferred to cuddle the various minority groups and spend more of other people’s money on welfare that to take the hard economic decisions. These ‘soft mothers’ voted for short-term gain and long-term pain.
The ‘strong fathers’, also by a reasonable margin, voted for short-term pain and long-term gain. The rational ... approach.
Now of course I’ll be branded misogynist as well as racist. But again, I’m just pointing out the simple truth.
The soft mother model doesn’t seem to be universal. In Britain, women ‘got’ Margaret Thatcher’s bold approach (a woman who thought like a man if ever there was one).
But in New Zealand, when it comes to strong policies that actually allow the country to move forward, the girls let the side down. ...

Man, I love it when people claim "the evidence of history" or "I'm just pointing out the simple truth", without specific reference to evidence of any kind.

And yes, here we are again. Facing up against a really delusional man who cannot stop talking when he really should do so. Facing claims that any women who are womanlike in character are irrational and unsuited to take part in government or even to vote, if Ansell is to be believed.

It's amazing how much has changed since 1893. And yet it's amazing how much things have stayed the same.

(An interesting blog post on the political implications of people like Ansell - if you're interested.)

update

2011-07-09T18:05:00.002+12:00

I've been pretty quiet about what's going on in my life at the moment in terms of day-to-day rat-race kind of stuff - now that the MA is over finito kaput.

So here is a brief explanation.

- I am enjoying life post-Masters.

- I am kind of looking for full-time employment, but not particularly urgently. I am also looking into scholarships for PhD study abroad.

- I am seriously considering attempting to write a screenplay.

- I am still working in administration for my sister's organisation. I am really enjoying it. It's not too time-consuming, but it's been paying the bills perfectly well so far. It's varied and interesting and I can work from home.

- On top of this, I have another job for about six weeks. It would be a very complex and boring story to explain how it came about that I got it, but now that I have it I have to tell you how incredibly cool it is. I am writing up a teaching manual for a robot language!!! I was a little daunted at first by doing something which is really rather different to anything I've done before... but now that I'm a few days into working on it I am LOVING it. It's so interesting, it's challenging, it's ridiculously unique, and again I can work from home.

the latest addition to my family

2011-07-06T12:05:00.003+12:00

I have a beautiful new niece who is two weeks old!

Her name is Eliza, which I think is a beautiful name, so pretty in fact that it has been on my own list of names-to-call-future-hypothetical-daughters for some time. But as these daughters are hypothetical, I'm perfectly happy for my sister and her husband to use the name on their real, solid, tiny little daughter.

She was born after a particularly quakey night in Christchurch. There was a magnitude 5.3 quake at about 10.30pm, centered very close to where we were, and it was followed by about nineteen more quakes throughout the night, right up until little Eliza was born at about 5:45am.

Eliza is going to be part of a strange little generation. Her class at school will be full of earthquake babies. And her elder sisters will grow up knowing rather an unnatural amount about earthquakes for children their age.

Anyway - musings about the future aside - you may remember I had been doing some knitting for my future niece, and I wrote about it a little while ago on this blog. Unfortunately, I decided in the end that the little wrap I made was just not good enough. It looked okay in the photo you saw, but that photo did not reveal all the flaws and mistakes that are just so obvious when I actually held the wrap in my hands.

So I had a go at something a little less challenging:

And I am glad I did, because I think they're rather cute!

african queen

2011-07-04T11:25:00.002+12:00

Last night I watched The African Queen for the first time. I am a big Bogart fan despite only having seen a few of his movies before this one: Casablanca, of course, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Big Sleep.

Loved it. I was expecting a rollicking adventure but I had no idea it would be so funny. I didn't know Bogart could be so hilariously undignified, and I thought Hepburn was incredible, with a few fantastic one-liners: "I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" Then there's the Captain of the Louisa: "By the authority vested in me by Kaiser Wilhelm II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution."

It's such a strange movie - it doesn't seem at all likely to work - but somehow it manages to combine Africa, suspense, war, romance, comedy, in a completely charming and exciting way.

Then I tried to go to sleep and kept waking up from dreams about crocodiles and rapids and being stuck in a papyrus swamp and arguing with Mr Allnut. It was most frustrating.

feadóg

2011-06-28T22:05:00.004+12:00

Today, an announcement.

I am currently obsessed with the Irish tin whistle.

(Otherwise known as the feadóg, a word I have not yet learnt to pronounce.)

Over the last month of writing my thesis, I started putting together a list of things I wanted to do once I finished. One of them was to learn the tin whistle properly and play in an Irish band.

Background: I bought a cheap tin whistle a few years ago when I was still playing the recorder a lot, but never really picked it up.

I didn't really intend to, but when I got home on the day I finished my thesis, I pulled out the whistle, googled myself some sheet music, enlisted my flatmate on the guitar and started playing the tin whistle.

I'm not fantastic. I've been trained for classical music on the recorder and so I don't have the right style, and I'm still getting used to some of the different fingerings... however... I am having SO MUCH FUN.

I have:

(a) found myself a fiddler - a friend from church who is a fantastic violinist and who is super keen to join in our sessions. All we need now is someone to play the bodhran, or some other kind of drum.

(b) spent far too much time on youtube looking up jigs and reels and then hunting down the sheet music on sites like this and this. Here are a couple of the songs I am determined to master:

As long as I can get other people to take it as seriously as I am, it's going to be awesome!!

And just to prove I can still laugh at myself:

food as experience

2011-06-19T13:51:00.003+12:00

I've declared my cookbook challenge over and completed - okay, so not quite completed but definitely over. I ended up giving away a couple of my least favourite recipe books to a secondhand book sale, so obviously I can't use them now. And then the recipes in the other couple of books are very difficult to adapt for a flat with a vegetarian in it.

However, the plan is to keep trying new recipes from different places. And my new favourite lunch recipe is sooooo yummy I thought I would share it with you.

The other night I made calzone based on Jamie Oliver's recipe, here. I loved the filling so much and it was so quick and easy that when someone at church gave me a big bag of free mushrooms, and I just happened to have bread dough in the breadmaker at home getting ready for my lunch, I decided to adapt the recipe somewhat.

Firstly, make bread rolls according to your own recipes or your breadmaker's instructions, or buy some bread rolls. Always better fresh!

In a frypan, heat some olive oil, and then sauté about half an onion, chopped, with some crushed garlic and thyme. Chop up some mushrooms and add them to the pan, frying until they look good. Add a tablespoon or two of butter. Then add some pasta sauce of the tomato variety - Jamie Oliver has a recipe for it in the link above but I just used the canned stuff. Throw in some spinach leaves and cook until it looks about right!

I know it doesn't LOOK particularly appetising, but it tastes amazing, especially with fresh bread. And it's very quick and easy.

In other food news:
- I went out for dinner last night for a friend's birthday. This was very exciting because so many restaurants are closed after the earthquakes that it's just such a pain to go out that I haven't been out for ages. I hadn't realised how much I missed it!
- We dined at a Vietnamese restaurant and the food was amazing! The service left much to be desired, however.
- Afterwards we went across the road to Misceo Café to have dessert and I was privileged to eat the most delicious and perfect chocolate mud cake I have ever tried. I was completely incapable of making myself feel guilty about it afterwards, because it was truly an art form. Such a cake SHOULD be eaten and enjoyed.

light and dark

2011-06-15T16:54:00.002+12:00

I astonished myself today with a sudden lightning strike of self-knowledge. I am becoming a big GRUMP.

Perhaps this is my way of responding to the earthquakes. Other people get frightened or emotional; I get annoyed at the people around me and develop a tendency towards reclusiveness and become furious if anyone should dare to interrupt my solitude. And then I get angry at myself for being like this.

On the other hand, I have had some lovely things happen lately.

First, about a week ago my flatmate A. got engaged. This is very, very exciting and lovely. I have lived with A. for two and a half years and so I have seen the entire story and I am SO happy for them. It's also very exciting that we are going to be involved in all the preparation and get an inside point of view (this might not be everyone's cup of tea but I LOVE HELPING TO ORGANISE THINGS).

Secondly, last night I got to feel a baby in utero for the first time ever. As I already have twelve nieces and nephews I don't know how it got this far without having done this, but my sister J. is having a baby anytime now and yesterday I got to feel one of the baby's legs, still inside my sister, kicking around and squirming.

What a strange, bizarre, alien, miraculous, happy thing. Life is good.

afterafteraftershocks

2011-06-13T19:44:00.004+12:00

So, we've had a day of larger than normal earthquakes. (One of them was a 6.0, which is the third biggest yet.) We didn't lose power or water, so very thankful for that. And no one has been seriously hurt - thank God!

On the other hand:

(a) Over 50,000 homes DON'T have power. It is getting down to freezing every night at the moment so please pray that Christchurch families can find ways to keep warm tonight.

(b) More damage. Dang and blast. There was red tape around a lot of these buildings, so luckily they fell without hurting anyone. But a friend of mine, as an example, whose house made it through both the September and February quakes by the skin of its teeth, has now lost her home. It's twisted off its foundation. My sister and brother-in-law had repairs on their house finished last week, and will have to start from the beginning again. It really sucks.

(c) We have to start boiling water again which is just a huge pain.

(d) This is all really tiring. And emotionally draining. The quakes today weren't HUGE, but they were very violent and rather scary. The dominant emotion I have seen expressed today is this: I AM OVER IT. Is this going to continue - every three or four months, just when we're starting to feel like things might be getting more normal again?

On the plus side, again, no one is dead. But on the minus side, this makes it psychologically okay to complain about things like dangerous water or unsettling aftershocks.

*pulling myself together*

I'm fine. There is a chocolate pudding in the oven and the fire is on. I don't feel bleak, like I did after the February earthquake. I was at home when it happened so I didn't have to go through the whole evacuation saga again. There are many things in the world that I DON'T have to put up with. Consider my blessings counted!

Edit: The biggest quake on Monday, it turns out, was actually a 6.3 on the Richter scale - exactly the same size as the February earthquake. Photos here.

the cordon

2011-06-07T17:22:00.006+12:00

Today I did one of the things I've been intending to do for a while, but left until I had finished my thesis. I walked around the cordon in Christchurch's CBD. This has been up since the February earthquake, but has diminished in size somewhat. The 'red zone' still endures. It's guarded by police and the army. I didn't feel particularly comfortable going on a sightseeing walk earlier. But more than three months have passed since the earthquake. Now I just miss the city centre, and I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

There are flowers and messages pinned around the place:

There is interesting brickwork everywhere:

And there are plenty and plenty of fences separating you from potential danger:

It's what makes Christchurch one of the safest cities in the country at the moment, in my opinion. We've been told there's a 23% chance of another big earthquake over 6 on the Richter scale, and we had a reasonably big (5.5) aftershock yesterday morning, while there are smaller ones rumbling away every day. So, understandably, people are nervous. Having visited a couple of other cities since the whole earthquake situation got underway in September last year, however, makes me thankful that I am here, if only for the reason that all our dangerous buildings have come down already or are surrounded by security fences.

I took a lot of photos. Here are some:

Yes, that is a cathedral being held up by shipping containers.

This is the Grand Chancellor hotel, Christchurch's tallest building and our very own leaning tower. You can probably see that it's angled slightly awry? Unfortunately for every building in its way if it should fall, it's going to take over a year to demolish it, which means business owners won't be back in for a very long time.

The Provincial Chambers were one of the most dramatically ruined for me. Very sad. There are a bunch of similar Gothic Revival buildings which have crumpled, but this is the most terrible one (except Durham Street Methodist Church, which was practically razed). Thankfully, it will be one of the few buildings on the priority list for rebuilding.

It was very eerie walking around the city. Where traffic is allowed, it's pretty busy, but as soon as you walk down a street closer to the cordon, the silence is overwhelming. No - it's not silent - but all you can hear is a building being demolished a few blocks away, and a few birds. Ghostly.

It is also strange to see some blank spots where well-known buildings used to be. St Elmo Courts on Montreal Street. The Cranmer Centre on Armagh Street. And the CTV building on Madras Street is the most poignant of all in its absence. I'm glad I wasn't able to see it. I think approximately 100 people died in its rubble.

It was a comfort, however, to see a few places that are still open and functioning. C4 was an awesome little café on High Street that has all but fallen down. Their street is also closed and will be for a long time. So I had thought there was no chance of a C4 flat white anytime in the future. I did not know that the C4 company roasts its own coffee, and so stumbling across its premises near the city, with a functioning and funky (though quiet) café, was very exciting. Here is my trim flat white, and a piece of lolly cake:

Now I am (a) footsore; (b) a little awed at the difference it makes to see some of these places with my own eyes; (c) glad to have been into the city finally, and glad to have visited C4; but (d) a little sad again.

submission

2011-05-28T08:56:00.006+12:00

I'm exhausted... but I have officially survived my MA!

I handed it in yesterday. I don't feel particularly victorious yet, but no doubt at some point in the next week I will begin to appreciate my freedom from a constant, pressing demand on my time. I am having some friends over to celebrate with dessert tonight... dessert should probably help, also!

Maybe it's the same for everyone? The Lord of the Rings: An Allegory of the PhD would certainly lead me to believe this. I really identify with this particular line: "When Frodo submits the Ring [the thesis] to the fire, it is in desperate confusion rather than with confidence, and for a while the world seems empty."

At least this is an MA, not a PhD, and no Saruman [examiner] awaits me with whom I will have to do face-to-face battle.

two items for your perusal

2011-05-22T12:40:00.004+12:00

First up, I have bought my first pair of heels - ever!! The idea is that eventually I will start going to job interviews and so on, and needed a pair of shoes that aren't falling to pieces/way too casual. And so I have invested some money, with the help of a very generous sister, in a pair of basic black shoes with a wedge:

[via]

This is significant because I never buy or wear heels. I'm tall, and I've always felt even more like a giant if my shoes had any height to them. However, in trying these shoes on, I couldn't help but notice how (a) flattering, and (b) pretty they were, much prettier than they appear in the picture, and I simply fell in love. Unless any of my potential employers are short, insecure men, I should be able to cope with my new statuesque appearance with few negative repercussions.

Secondly, I have been knitting. For the first time ever, I have knitted an actual piece of clothing that required assembly, for my sister's baby, who will be making her appearance mid-June. Here is my "lullaby wrap":

I have to admit I was a little disappointed with it, as it looked much nicer in the photo, and I managed to make numerous mistakes while sewing it together. But now that I look at it again I think it's redeemable. I'm thinking of crocheting a little rose (if I can figure out how to do so, but I have seen a number of youtube videos that make it look do-able) and attaching it to the front - what do you think? A mistake, or pretty?

cookbook challenge #10

2011-05-18T21:27:00.002+12:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

A few years ago, my aunt gave me an Italian cookbook - Simply Italian, by Sophie Baimbridge - by which I was immediately intimidated. So I've never used it except to make foccaccia bread. But today I opened it - reluctantly - and yet I knew it was about time. I found a recipe that looked fairly simplistic although not overly appetising, and off I went. Eleven down, six to go.

Bean and barley soup, served with fresh bread rolls. Turned out to be remarkably tasty for something that looks so puritanical.

Since I discovered that breadmaker bread tastes better if you use it to make the dough, and then stick it in the oven, I've been overly excited about eating fresh bread rolls with my meals. It means you have to allow 2 hours 20 mins for the dough to be ready, but you can always set the timer before you go to work in the morning so that it'll be ready when you get home. MmMM! I brush mine with a little beaten egg, and then sprinkle sesame seeds or some grated cheese on top.

As for the soup, here is the recipe. It claims to serve four but this is a hefty, filling soup, especially with bread, and it served five of us easily.

Ingredients:
200 g / 7 oz dried borlotti beans (I used a can of butter beans)
2 T olive oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1.5 litres chicken stock (I used vegetable stock because of my vegetarian flatmate)
1 T finely chopped thyme or sage
200 g / 7 oz pearl barley
100 g / 3.5 oz Parmesan, grated
1 T finely chopped parsley
4 teaspoons extra olive oil

If you are not using canned, pre-soaked beans: Soak the borlotti beans in cold water overnight. Drain off the water and put the beans in a large saucepan with plenty of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer until tender. (This will take about 1 hour depending on the age of the beans.) Drain.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and cook the onion over a low heat for 6 minutes, or until soft. Season with salt and pepper. Add the garlic and cook without browning for 20-30 seconds. Add the stock and thyme or sage and bring to the boil.

Stir in the barley a little at a time so that the stock continues to boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the borlotti beans and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the barley is tender and the soup is thick.

Purée one-third of the soup until smooth, leaving the remainder unpuréed to give the soup some texture. (I just stuck a whizz-stick in and didn't process for too long.) Return to the saucepan and stir in the Parmesan and parsley. Season and stir in half a cup to a cup of hot water to give a spoonable consistency. Serve immediately, with a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil stirred through each bowl.

MMMM!!! This was wintry and cosy and warm and very, very filling. It did not turn out at all how I expected it to. A big thumbs-up. Maybe I shouldn't be so intimidated by this book in future...

introversion sensation feeling perception/judgment

2011-05-17T19:09:00.009+12:00

I feel a little confused about my own personality, sometimes. I've never taken 'grown-up' personality tests like Myers-Briggs, but of course I was obsessed throughout my teens with taking multichoice personality quizzes in the high-quality magazines I perused. Was I a Britney or a Christina? An extrovert or an introvert? One of the weirder ones I remember taking was this particular test, which labelled you a lion, a beaver, an otter or a labrador. I was so labrador.

I had to take a personality test for a job I was shortlisted for recently. I found the whole experience incredibly annoying, because the test was misleading and flawed, I have no idea what my results were, and I was rejected!! So I've been feeling some scepticism when it comes to personality tests in general.

Last night, though, I decided I'd try and find an online personality test in the Myers-Briggs style. I thought it would be funny to be told a bunch of patently false things about myself and to be given some strange combination of letters as a label. I found this one, which is free, unless you want to buy a very long report at the end.

Some of my 'results' follow. Here are the personality type labels, and the ones I match most closely are highlighted:

Each letter stands for one of the following options:

And here is a short description of the two personality types that most matched my test answers:

It was quite a shock to me not to laugh at the test but actually look at it and see myself. Here are some things I liked about it:

1) It clarifies a few confusions I've been feeling. I always feel confused when in personality tests they ask you straight out, are you a rational person or an emotional person. I'm confused because I AM a very rational person. For instance, unlike many other people, the aftershocks we've been experiencing in Christchurch have absolutely no effect on my emotions, because I know it's very unlikely my house will fall down or that if it is there's very little I can do to stop it falling down on me. In reacting to things, I generally have a firm control over my emotions. And yet... in other cases I am entirely emotionally-driven. The decisions I make for the future are often driven by my introversion and my emotions.

So it was very interesting to me to see the way they have divided Sensation (deals with facts, practical outcomes) is not incompatible with or opposite to Feeling (makes decisions using personal or shared values). It seemed contradictory to me, but now I can understand how both could co-exist.

2) I liked that it emphasises that most people are not one single personality type. This makes a lot of sense.

3) I liked that I read the descriptions of ISFP and ISFJ and saw myself in them. I think it was actually helpful and eye-opening.

So - I'm feeling a lot less sceptical.

Which personality type are you?

several things

2011-05-12T15:13:00.000+12:00

1. I have joined Twitter! And so has Halfway Down the Stairs. You can follow me here. Please bear in mind that I don't really understand the system yet. And you can follow HDtS here!

2. I know for a fact that Natasha Solomons' new novel, The Novel in the Viola, is winging its way across the world to me - and I am very, very excited.

3. I am having a very very busy week. Firstly I have to, oh, finish my thesis or something like that. Secondly I have just started doing part-time administration work which is great and it distracts me away from other things. Thirdly I am helping to organise the entertainment for the church camp I am going on over the weekend.

4. In this entertainment, we are running a team game on Saturday night - a long line of activities for which each team can win points. The winning team will win an AMAZING prize (or maybe just a token one). I won't run through them all. But I am running one round of the game which is pretty flippin awesome. It is the interpretation of children's pictures. I have got hold of a bunch of pictures which do not have simple explanations. Some of them are crazy creative! Such as my nephew's - a dog army attacking dinosaurs. Each team must come up with an explanation of what is going on in the picture. Points will be awarded for most accurate, most creative, etc.

costume ideas for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

2011-05-09T16:44:00.007+12:00

Before our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party, we sat down and watched the movie, with pencil and paper in hand, jotting down ideas. One of the things we were especially looking out for was costume ideas. And so I give you this, a long list of costume ideas for those who take dressing-up seriously:

1) Truly Scrumptious. This is a fairly obvious one for any girl, and we had two Trulys at our event. This character has a number of ridiculous cupcake-style dresses and hats which are easy to mimic, and it is easy to find ridiculous clothing in any op shop (also known as thrift stores in the US of A, I believe?). She also has a number of distinctive hair styles like the one above which will always stand out.

2) Race car driver (opening credits scene). All you need is an appropriate pair of goggles - which, I grant you, are not always easy to find - and some kind of suit.

3) Wear an old-fashioned swimming suit, like Dick van Dyke's costume in the beach scene.

4) Grandpa. Find a dilapidated old suit, a pipe, and either borrow a real medal or make a fake one.

4) The executioner, who appears for about three seconds in the scene where Grandpa arrives at the Baron's castle. I suggested this to a friend, and she seemed quite offended, but I thought it an excellent idea! All it requires is black clothing, some sort of eye covering, and a fake axe made from cardboard (or even a real one).

5) The dolls, which are the disguise of Truly Scrumptious and Caractacus Potts. If you want to be the raggedy doll played by van Dyke, all you need is a clown-type costume.
If you want to be Truly Scrumptious, do what my flatmate did. Hair into plaits with yellow bows. A white blouse of some kind. Get an old green top and cut it up, and lace it with yellow ribbon or fabric. Find a little half apron and a red skirt. Paint your face with lots of make-up and red cheek spots. She looked gorgeous!
6) In theory, I thought this could be a costume. It's one of the Baron Bomburst's spies, as he arrives in England. I'm not exactly sure how it would be made, and it would be very difficult to sit down or watch the movie in. But if it appeals to you... go for gold!

7) Dick van Dyke's costume from the Old Bamboo scene. You would need a waistcoat, a straw punter's hat, and funny shaky things to strap around your calves. And of course a bamboo.

8) The Baron or Baroness Bomburst.

9) The child catcher. This terrifying man may upset small children. But a friend of mine came as the child catcher, which was pretty hilarious. He wore all black, with a black hat, and carried lollipops in his pocket. Pretty easy, but could you pull off the creepy manner?

10) Cyril and/or his wife. The very funny couple at the fairground - the husband's hair is ruined by Caractacus Potts' machine.

11) The Potts family: Caractacus, Jeremy or Jemima. Shabby chic.

12) Big brown bear. I really wanted someone to come as the big brown bear who comes lolloping over the mountain, in the story read by Grandpa to the children.

13) Caractacus Potts as we first see him, wearing his rocket backpack. Ambitious, but this would launch you to the forefront of party attendees. (Heh heh.)

14) A pirate. Pirates get mentioned very briefly, when Jeremy requests a story about them. My flatmate came as a pirate, because we recently threw her a pirate-themed birthday party and provided her with a hat, an eye-patch and a sword. This looked awesome with a striped shirt and lots of jewellery. She ended up coming as a girl pirate, because her boyfriend was a bit creeped-out when she painted stubble on her face.

15) A sweet factory worker. Another flatmate came dressed as one of these. She got a little half-apron, and put a paper doily in her hair as a little cap, over a grey top and black skirt - it looked very cute!

16) One of the old prisoners from the scene in which Grandpa is thrown into the dungeons. All this requires is a long grey beard and black clothing.

Finally, my costume:
17) I was: the roses of success growing from the ashes of disaster. (It's from one of the songs.) A trip to the op shop --> a loud top covered in roses. I wore earrings that were flowers, and I made myself a garland of fake roses. I wore dark jeans/shoes for the ashes part of the costume.

How to make a garland of (fake) roses:

I used:
- about a metre of florist wire, in several pieces (very, very cheap from a florist's)
- green tissue paper and sellotape
- fake roses - not too big, with long stems that are easy to bend
- some pink ribbon (not necessary)

I begun by twisting the florist wire together to make it a little stronger, and the correct length for my head. At one end, I made a little loop so that eventually I would be able to hook the other end in.

Then I covered it with green crepe paper, rolling pieces around the wire and holding them on with sellotape. (If you don't have many roses you may want to find a more attractive way of holding the paper on.) Don't cover the little loop you have made, but cover the other end of the wire with paper.

Then I began winding the stems of the roses onto the garland. I had about 24 roses all together (which cost about $18), but I started by placing them intermittently and then filling up the gaps evenly, so that they were evenly spread along the garland. I left about 12 cm space at each end of the wire so I could hook it up easily. This meant that the roses only went around to just behind my ears.

I wrapped a little pink ribbon around the garland, but this was pretty unnecessary and didn't really show up.

decorations for a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party

2011-05-07T13:47:00.013+12:00

Last night, we had our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. It was superb. It really was!

We had a bunch of people who know the movie really well, others who have never seen it before, and others who haven't seen it since they were children - and the impression I received is that everybody loved it.

We spent the day getting the house ready - and as we worked we got more and more excited. Before the day, we only had components of our decorations, but when we put them all up we saw how awesome it was going to look and it was quite thrilling!

I will update you on all the components of the evening - costumes, food, activities - at different points over the next couple of weeks but I will start with the ideas we had for decorations, what worked, what didn't work, and what we didn't try but would probably work!

The space we used: a large lounge for watching the movie, with a white sheet pinned on the wall as a screen. Our dining room for congregating/eating/drinking beforehand, after, and during intermission. We also decorated our conservatory, which guests have to walk through in order to enter the house.

The Scrumptious Sweet Co. sign, with yellow and white candy stripes and balloons. This really was the most striking decoration we had. It's also very easily recognisable in the movie - lots of "aaaahhhhs" from the audience when it appears on the screen for a few seconds.
You can find the sign on the movie, or from my image a few blog posts back, but I copied it off the images on this website.

Complicated story to this particular piece. I painted the entrance and admission signs intending to put them on the door into our house. And my flatmate R. wanted to make one of those little striped beach tents for changing clothes - a bit like these - which feature on the movie in the beach scene. We didn't want to spend much money, but we remembered we have some striped shower curtains which we use for protecting tables/floor when we paint things, and so R. used them to create the beach tent.

Well, it turned out not looking like a beach tent at all. Instead, it looked a heck of a lot more like a fairground tent - which happen to be a feature of the movie, luckily! And so we experimented to create the above, which can also look like this:

(By the way, there are glimpses of the entrance and admission signs during the Old Bamboo scene at the fairground. You can copy them from closer-up images from another of my blog posts.)

The table-car was very easy to make. We just grabbed some free cardboard boxes from the local supermarket and cut them up with a Stanley knife and then painted them. The wing is made from crepe paper. Much easier and quicker than they look, and a decoration that definitely evokes the movie.
Then we painted the racing car flags as well. One of our guests asked why we had chessboards on the walls, so perhaps if we had a second chance we'd attach sticks to the flags to make it a little more clear!

This particular decoration was a lot less clear! It's supposed to be Caractacus Potts' workshop, with inventions. But the closest we could find was an upside-down bike and a sawhorse!!

More candy stripes are in keeping with the theme and fill up space and provide colour.

This is the room in which we watched the movie. You can't see it all but it's packed with as many couches and chairs as we could fit in! Hanging on the roof is a big red and yellow Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wing, made from crepe paper. In theory this was a good idea, but crepe paper rips really easily, so it was difficult to make this hang exactly how we wanted it to.
And round the rest of the room, bunches of red, yellow and white balloons. We didn't want to over-decorate this room because we knew it would be so packed with chairs/people already.

This is our "beach", in the conservatory on the way into the house. Complete with sand (tidily spread over newsprint on the floor, beach chairs, picnic baskets and a huge beach umbrella which also handily hid junk.

These decorations were fantastic for us, because everything we used was borrowed or already owned, except that we had to buy a few balloons, some crepe paper, and a couple of rolls of newsprint. But in case you have found this blog in search of ideas for your own party, here are some other ideas which we did NOT use:

- a windmill cut out of cardboard, as in the windmill on the Potts' house.
- more fairground-themed items: simply watch that particular scene, there's plenty to work with
- if you can somehow find blue and white-striped or yellow and white-striped fabric or shower curtains, the beach tent would be a very cool thing to make.
- boxes with "dynamite" written on them.
- we completely forgot to make a sign saying "laboratory" and stick in on the bathroom door.
- Baron Bomburst's ship? Out of cardboard?
- find a stuffed toy like this dog - sorry, I don't know the breed, but I always think of it as the "Muffin McLay, like a bundle of hay" dog from the Hairy MacLary picture books. In the movie, its name is Edison.
- if you are more mechanically-minded than us, or have access to large amounts of metal junk and cogs and wheels, try creating Caractacus Potts' workshop.
- big colourful lollipops for the walls, like the ones offered by the child catcher.

cookbook challenge #9

2011-05-05T09:38:00.004+12:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

Last night, I chose a recipe based on the fact that we had all the ingredients at home and so I wouldn't have to get my lazy self to the supermarket. For this reason, this cookbook challenge is more of a cosy meal than a particularly exciting one. It didn't look particularly spectacular either - so no photo (but if you want to see someone else's attempt photographed, visit this link).

From Home Food, I made tuna mornay. Ten down, seven to go.

For this recipe, you will need:
60g / 2 & quarter oz butter
2 T plain flour
2 cups milk
1/2 t dry mustard
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
600 g / 1 lb 5 oz canned tuna in brine, drained
2 T finely chopped parsley
2 eggs, hard-boiled and chopped
4 T fresh breadcrumbs
paprika, for dusting

(I didn't have quite enough tuna so I just made one extra egg.)

Preheat oven to 180*C / 350*F.

Melt butter in saucepan. Add flour and stir over low heat for 1 minute. Take pan off heat and slowly pour in milk, stirring with your other hand until you have a smooth sauce. Return to heat, and stir constantly until sauce boils and thickens. Reduce heat, simmer for another 2 minutes.

Remove pan from heat, whisk in mustard and 2/3 of the cheese.

Roughly flake the tuna with a fork, then tip into cheesy sauce with parsley and egg. Season with a little salt and pepper (if you're using smoked tuna you won't need too much salt). Spoon into four 1-cup-sized ramekins or one large baking dish.

Mix together breadcrumbs and final 1/3 of cheese, sprinkle over top. Dust very lightly with paprika. Place in oven until topping is golden brown - about 20 minutes.

***

This was nice. Not particularly spectacular. But definitely easy and tasty and nice for a cold night. It serves four but will need some extras. I added corn kernels to the cheesy mixture, and also served with peas. Toast or fresh bread might be a good idea as well.

sneak peek

2011-05-04T10:28:00.006+12:00

I was going to wait until The Event was over before showing you the decorations we have been working on... but what the heck, here's a sneak peek at some of them!

Candy stripes.

Signs. I am particularly proud of the sweet company one.

And of course - the car.

Only a few days to go! I am getting quite excited!

I think we've done a good job this time of being more aware of what we can cope with, and making decoration/food plans to fit our capabilities and budget. Last time, we spent almost every evening, in the two weeks leading up to our singalong Sound of Music, painting scenes from the movie. They looked awesome, if I do say so myself. But they were huge time-suckers, and this time we've gone for more simple, eye-catching ideas.

the royal wedding

2011-04-28T11:37:00.005+12:00

A friend on facebook - only 20 minutes ago, approximately - told me that he was going to "judge" me because I look forward to watching the royal wedding with a bunch of friends as we drink tea and eat scones and cucumber sandwiches.

Apparently, women have an "innate cultural interest" in watching weddings and in fairytale prince and princess stories.

BAD innate cultural interest! NAUGHTY innate cultural interest!

Bah! It makes me want to throw things. Who is he to tell me what I should or should not be interested in? Who is he to interpret my reasons for wanting to watch the royal wedding?

And here they are:

(1) It's a chance to see a spectacle that I absolutely agree is outdated. It's none of my business what the UK decides to do about the monarchy. If I were in the UK I may feel a little more personally aggrieved that my tax pounds were going to this family. But since I'm not, and since I rather enjoy relics of the past, I am looking forward to seeing something grand and interesting and over-the-top.

(2) It also happens to be a rather cheerful event. No doubt my friend would prefer me to be holding parties discussing events in Libya or Afghanistan like a serious person, or moping around feeling depressed about the state of the world, but I for one have had enough gloom and am going to take this opportunity to celebrate love/marriage and run wild with it. I've had a crappy few months and I want to do something frivolous and ridiculous, dammit!

(3) The royal wedding is a historical event which is going to be watched by a huge number of people all over the world. Firstly, as an historian-in-training, I feel I should be interested in things that people will look back on in the future. The debate stirred up by this may lead to much more debate, with huge effects on the political structure of the UK and the Commonwealth. I want to be able to say that I saw the event that started it. Secondly, I've always felt a slight jealousy of people who can say that they took part in events of huge popular consciousness. My father saw the first landing on the moon. My sister saw Charles and Diana's wedding. Both events they witnessed with millions of people all over the globe. They can say they were a part of it.

(4) I like William. He came and spoke at the memorial service for the earthquake victims on March 18 and he seemed genuinely moved by what has happened here. In his speech, he only said things that were empathetic, encouraging and kind. It meant a lot to many people that he would come so far, so close to his wedding. It created a huge amount of goodwill that no video message from the British Prime Minister could have hoped to equal. As an ambassador for Britain, William was very successful. I think it's great that the links between countries can be deepened by these kinds of exchanges. So yeah - I like him. He seems nice, unaffected, and in love with a nice-looking woman. I think he earns his keep. I wish him well.

So there.

(Sorry about the rantyness. I'm tired of being told how I should feel about things.)

random display of leaves

2011-04-26T11:48:00.004+12:00

Last autumn, I became a little bit obsessive-compulsive about collecting beautiful leaves and pressing them in the pages of large books. I've left them for about a year now, and the other day I got them all out to have a look at the fruits of my labour.

They're pretty! I'm not completely sure what I'll do with them! Greeting cards, bookmarks, photo frames? Who knows?!

The leaves that were pressed in my Penguin English dictionary came out the best, and the Georgette Heyer Omnibus and Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words also worked pretty well. I warn you against using Khrushchev Remembers, however. The leaves pressed within its pages were of a very inferior quality. :)

aftershock

2011-04-23T17:07:00.010+12:00

I'm staying with my grandmother at the moment, while my aunt and uncle are away on holiday. She lives close to my old home where my father still lives and where I lived for about four years. One of my favourite spots in the area was the old church cemetery on the other side of the park. You may remember, if you followed my old blog, that I used to photograph one particular angel rather often:

I really loved that angel. She even inspired a story I wrote and published on Halfway Down the Stairs, a rather overwrought story in which I wish I had been slightly less melodramatic, but which still has a few elements I really like.

I went out for a walk this afternoon - it's a beautiful, beautiful autumn day - and found myself approaching my old haunt, the cemetery (gosh, I really did intend no pun there). Imagine my shock and feeling of sadness to be greeted by this:

Silt that has seeped up through the ground during the quakes in the process of liquefaction

It's a bit of a shock, actually. I had heard that a few cemeteries around the city looked quite different, since the September and February earthquakes. But it's always a surprise to actually see these spots for yourself.

30 days of song

2011-04-18T23:42:00.006+12:00

Some muso friends are doing this meme on facebook. What can I say, I can't resist making lists! However, my music taste is totally uncool in comparison with theirs. Blogging feels strangely, comfortably anonymous - so I've transferred the 30 day song challenge over. Who knows, I may pluck up the courage to actually share on fb also.

day 01: your favourite song (at the moment? hmm)
C'est Moi, by Rupa and the April Fishes

day 02: your least favourite song
Low, by Flo Rida
No link, because it's a DEGRADING song and it makes me want to throw up.

day 03: a song that makes you happy
Something in the Water, by Brooke Fraser

day 04: a song that makes you sad
The Scientist, by Coldplay

day 05: a song that reminds you of someone
Contrapunctus 1, from Art of the Fugue, by Bach
Reminds me of my father.

day 06: a song that reminds you of somewhere
Fish, by Goldenhorse
New Zealand, on a perfect summer's day by the sea.

day 07: a song that reminds you of a certain event
In Christ Alone
After the earthquake on February 22, my flatmates and I were sitting around feeling absolutely miserable. Completely unable to do anything, until we got out our guitars and started singing this.

day 08: a song that you know all the words to
Stuff and Nonsense, by Split Enz

day 09: a song that you can dance to
I Want to Be Your Mother's Son-in-Law, with Macy Gray (from Divine Secrets... soundtrack)

day 10: a song that makes you fall asleep (in a good way!)
No Longer There, by the Cat Empire

day 11: a song from your favourite band
Love is Blindness, by U2
Started to really love this one after I saw the DVD of the Zoo TV concert in Sydney.

day 12: a song from a band you hate
Why would I want to inflict that upon you?

day 13: a song that is your guilty pleasure
Glee Cast, Marry You
Something about this song makes me happy and excited!!

day 14: a song that no one would expect you to love
Single Ladies, by Beyonce
I (also) really love that her live band is all women. So good to see!

day 15: a song that describes you
You Are So Beautiful, by Joe Cocker
:D just kidding. I don't have a clue and can't be bothered thinking existentially right now.

day 16: a song that you used to love but now hate
Miami, by Will Smith
12 years old. Don't judge. (Still have a soft spot for Getting Jiggy Wit It)

day 17: a song that you hear often on the radio
Rolling in the Deep, by Adele
And I don't mind at all!

day 18: a song that you wish you heard on the radio
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3

day 19: a song from your favourite album (at the moment)
Dance Anthem of the 80s, from Regina Spektor's Far

day 20: a song that you listen to when you're angry
Nothing Ever Happens, by Del Amitri

day 21: a song that you listen to when you're happy
I'm Into Something Good, interpreted by The Bird and the Bee

day 22: a song that you listen to when you're sad
One for my Baby, by Frank Sinatra

day 23: a song that you want to play at your wedding
Hawkmoon 269, by U2

day 24: a song that you want to play at your funeral
In a Little While, by U2
Gosh, I really seem to be into U2 for momentous occasions, don't I? I particularly love the version I have linked to - recommended viewing!

day 25: a song that makes you laugh
Northcote (So Hungover), by the Bedroom Philosopher

day 26: a song that you can play on an instrument
Gershwin, I Got Rhythm
OK, so not quite as perfectly as Gershwin himself did in that video...

day 27: a song that you wish you could play
Wanderer-Fantasie, by Schubert
... for starters! First one that popped into my mind, but trust me, there are many more.

day 28: a song that makes you feel guilty
Er... that is one emotion that I have never felt in music.

day 29: a song from your childhood
Phantom of the Opera, from the musical

day 30: your favourite song this time last year
These Roses, by Gin Wigmore
... well, roughly this time last year, anyway.

cookbook challenge #8

2011-04-13T19:29:00.006+12:00

[About the New Year's resolution behind this]

In a never-seen-before twist, I have used TWO cookbooks for ONE meal. (Okay, so it's not quite as exciting as I make it sound. Still, I feel pretty Martha Stewart-esque.)

From Meena Pathak's Flavours of India, I made murgh lababdar (chicken in a creamy tomato and onion sauce), and from my mother's clearfile of Indian recipes, I made dahl. Nine down, eight to go.

Something about today... I was flicking through the Meena Pathak cookbook salivating at all the beautiful recipes, and this chicken one just caught my eye. I couldn't bear not to make it. And then I remembered my vegetarian flatmate. So, dahl was added to the mix, because it goes well with other Indian dishes and it can stand alone too.

I cannot emphasise enough how FANTASTIC this meal was. I loved it. You should try it.

Here are the recipes I used:

1) Dahl. I assure you, it's better than it looks:

This dish serves four as a main course.
You will need:

1 cup red or brown lentils, or moong dahl (I used red lentils)
4 cups of water
2T oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp grated fresh root ginger
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt

Boil the lentils in the water until tender and mushy. (About 20 minutes for moong dahl, 30 for red lentils, 40 for brown lentils.)

In another pan, heat the oil and cook the next five ingredients over a moderate heat until the onion is tender. Stir in the garam masala and salt and remove from heat.

Add the onion mixture to the soft lentils in their cooking liquid, and simmer for 5 minutes. (Boil fast if mixture needs thickening, or add more liquid if it is too thick.)
Serve immediately or reheat.

I started the next dish about halfway through the dahl process. How to make murgh lababdar. Note: I did not use the chilli, and I used only a small amount of chilli powder, because one of my flatmates is heat-intolerant. The meal was still lovely without it:

Serves 4-6.
You will need:
2 T vegetable oil
400g / 14 oz onions, chopped
25g / 1 oz fresh root ginger, chopped
2 tsp crushed garlic
1 small green chilli, chopped
600g / 1 and a quarter oz tomatoes, chopped
60g / 3 oz butter
3/4 tsp red chilli powder
1 kg / 2 lb chicken breast, cut into cubes (I only used 500g/1 lb, and this was perfectly adequate)
salt
300 mL / 1/2 pint cream (I used milk and this also was fine)
2 tsp garam masala
large pinch of dried fenugreek leaves (what the heck? I don't know what this is, and neither did my supermarket! It was fine without them)
3 T chopped fresh coriander

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add chopped onions, ginger, garlic and green chilli, and sauté for about 10 minutes, until the onions are a light golden brown colour.

Add the chopped tomatoes, butter and red chilli powder and cook over a low heat for about 40 minutes, stirring at regular intervals until the butter separates from the gravy.

Add the chicken pieces and continue to cook for about 10-15 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Add the salt and cream and cook for another 10 minutes. Finally, stir in the garam masala and dried fenugreek leaves. Sprinkle with chopped fresh coriander. Serve with rice.

The final product, as put away in a plastic container for the flatmate who wasn't home tonight:
This was SO GOOD. Definitely the best meal of my entire cooking challenge! The only slight drawback is that it takes quite a while to get ready, so it's definitely not a get home from work, throw something together kind of meal. All the same, it's not labour-intensive. There's definitely room to sit down and read a book, getting up every now and then to stir it.

Altogether, it easily served five, and then there were leftovers for two lunches.

Very, very good. Thank you, Meena Pathak. Thank you, Mum.

party food

2011-04-13T12:58:00.007+12:00

As part of my series on ideas for throwing a sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party... I give you... CCBB-themed PARTY FOOD.

These are just initial ideas. It's very unlikely we'll get around to serving every single one of these things - however, there's nothing wrong with providing future party-goers with ideas.

1. Vulgaria, the fictional location for the wicked Baron Bomburst's castle, filmed at Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria.

Obviously, there is no such place as Vulgaria - but I figured it sounds fairly similar to Bavaria and Bulgaria, besides having been filmed in Bavaria. And so I found some promising sounding recipes with the help of google:

From Bavaria:
This website has recipes for Bavarian cream puffs, rum balls, apple strudel, marble cake, etc.
Bavarian pretzels
Spitzbuben (Christmas cookies)

From Bulgaria:
Decadent chocolate cake (this is supposed to made several days before it is eaten, which is ideal)
Cinnamon puffs
Apple cake
Cheese bread

2. Apple strudel. As the song from the scene pictured above says, 'You're my little teddy bear, my lovey lovey dovey little teddy bear, you're the apfel strudel of mine eye...'
(We will probably be leaving this out, because we served crisp apple strudel for our Singalong Sound of Music and it would seem a bit too similar!)

3. The sweets of the child-catcher. 'Here we are, children! Come and get your lollipops! Come along, my little ones!' As wicked (and downright terrifying) as this horrid man is, even for adults, you have to admit that the sweets he offers sound pretty good.
Treacle tarts, ice cream, cherry pie, cream puffs, and, of course, lollipops. All free today!

4. Tea with the Maharajah. Everyone loves Grandpa, ex-army bootcleaner who spends a lot of time exploring the world in his 'laboratory'. And I know this is a tenuous link to food, but he does, after all, announce that today he is off to India, to have tea with the Maharajah. Easily incorporated!

5. Toot sweets - cunning little tubes of deliciousness with conveniently-placed holes that produce a high-piched whistle adored by dogs. As demonstrated in the scene pictured above. 'A mouthful of cheer, a sweet without peer, that musical morsel supreme,' as Caractacus Potts would say.

6. Car cookies, somewhat like those above. [photo via] They'll probably be much less perfect to look at, but they have an obvious thematic link and are reasonably easy.

Besides all this, we will have popcorn, of course. Mini pretzels could be a good way to add something savoury, munchable and thematic to the mix. I will keep you updated after the event with how the food situation panned out.

Any ideas to add?

unfortunate advertisements

2011-04-12T15:47:00.003+12:00

Here are some examples I found of slightly unfortunate advertising in British newspapers in the 1930s.

This is an ad from mid-1939.

I hope these people didn't invest very much money in British tourism in Germany.

Mmm, magnesium! I am salivating at the very thought of its glorious, poisonous taste.

I think I'd probably be cured of quite a lot of things if I took radioactive baths, too.

ten of the mostest

2011-04-11T18:42:00.009+12:00

About three years ago, on my old blog, I made a list of ten of the mostest. And here are ten more of them.

1. Most uncomfortable, crazy honeymoon ever?
This one would be it. Or at least it would be in the top five.

2. Most fun I will never have?

Sigh... if only I could dance.

3. Silliest, most pointless new law?

France's decision to ban the burqa/niqab/etc. As appalled as I am at the idea of wearing full body covering in this way, and as much as I feel that it's probably quite a repressive thing to make someone do, I am even more appalled at a society that thinks it can decide who can and cannot wear what is essentially just another item of clothing. The only effect such a law can have is to make wearing a burqa seem rebellious and therefore attractive.

Go Kenza Drider and a whole bunch of other Muslim women in France for sticking it to the French authorities.

4. Quickest homemade chocolate fix?

Three minute chocolate mug cake. Highly recommended if you are lazy and hungry. Make sure you include the chocolate chips.

Also, on a food- and chocolate-related theme, the recipe I am MOST tempted to use for our Singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party?

Bavarian Decadent Chocolate Cake. [I did some internet research on Bavarian and Bulgarian food - figuring these are close enough to Vulgaria to be acceptable. More on this on some other occasion.]

5. The thing I am most looking forward to about having a job/career?

Money. Even a job that is not paid particularly well could more than double my current income! It sounds incredibly materialistic of me, and partly it is - it will be nice to buy new clothes etc. again - but I am trying to plan for this change wisely, budget well, keep a modest lifestyle and put a sizeable portion aside for savings and charity. Start well, so that I don't get used to squandering too much, and yet buy myself some nice things and enjoy them.

6. Most dreaded sentence?

"Hey Allie - it's Friday." (In a significant tone. Followed shortly by "And Saturday comes afterwards." Followed by mental anguish.)

7. Movie most recently seen?

Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and some guy whose name I forget. I don't regret seeing it - it was good - but I wish I had read the book first, and as films go, it was very intense. Any one read the book, or anything else by Kazuo Ishiguro?

As for DVDs, my flatmates and I watched 27 Dresses last night. It was pretty funny. I was pleasantly surprised.

8. Most enthusiastic musicians?

9. Three things I am most looking forward to over the next month?

(a) Perfecting all the little details of my thesis. Printing it off and getting it bound. Handing it in, getting the photo of this crucial moment, and releasing it into the unknown.

(b) The royal wedding. I feel silly to admit this. I feel like I should be an anti-royalist. But I remember my sister telling me about how exciting it was to watch Charles and Diana's wedding back in 1981, and feeling jealous that she got to see something like that. (I also felt jealous of my dad, that he got to watch the first man landing on the moon, but this isn't in quite the same league.) Now I get a chance to see a royal wedding - it should be fun! I think it would be even more fun to have friends over with whom to watch it, to serve tea and scones, and to ooh and aah over the clothes and to judge every single last detail. Sounds like a plan, Stan.

(b) Our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. Of course.

10. The place I would most like to visit, currently?

Israel. I know it seems like a dangerous place to go, but when is Israel ever going to be safe? I want to wander the streets of a place sooooo oooooold. I want to imagine. I want to do my own little pilgrimage. (I want to visit some of the places nearby, too. Damascus. Petra. Tripoli. Cyprus. Et cetera.)

thanks

2011-04-08T16:08:00.007+12:00

The boil-water order has finally been lifted! A month and a half after the earthquake. We have been industriously boiling our water for weeks now. It's not so bad. But it's going to be very, very nice to return to normal habits of tooth-brushing and face-washing and dish-washing and water-drinking and so on.

In the spirit of celebration, which I feel has come upon me, I would like to mention some of the things that have cheered me up or helped me relax in the wake of the quake. There's quite a lot of things to pay tribute to. It will be a long list. In no particular order:

1. Thanks to the woman in the Otago Museum shop, when I visited with my two small nieces about a week after the earthquake. I was having a day of feeling particularly bad, feeling useless, and wishing I was back in Christchurch. When she found out that I was from Christchurch, and had brought my nieces down so my sister could work, she said: "I just think that what you are doing is wonderful. You're doing something so very helpful and practical when the rest of us just feel so helpless!" It really, really helped me! Thanks very much!

2. Thanks to Oscar, pictured below:

Oscar is a bichon frise-Jack Russell cross. He is happy and excitable and loves to be cuddled. When I was staying with my sister in Dunedin, I took him for a lot of walks and I found it very healing to be around such a simple, happy, faithful creature who took such pleasure in Life. Dogs are good for the soul, I think.

3. Thanks to a facebook page, You Know You're From Christchurch When... The idea is: light relief makes everybody feel better. It certainly made me feel better. Here are some of the best contributions. Here, also, is a photo added to the site which I thought was really cute.

4. A poem written about the earthquake. I thought this was amazing.

5. The memorial service on March 18 at Hagley Park in Christchurch, which I attended, had moments of sheer tediousness but also moments of loveliness. These were some of my favourites:
The unanimous, spontaneous standing ovations of the crowd for the search and rescue teams and the fire service.
The video montage they showed at the end of the service of people helping people, rising above the disaster. This is one of my favourite things of all.
Prince William's speech was unexpectedly touching. That is one promising prince.
A beautiful performance of Pie Jesu by Dame Malvina Major and a choir boy called Patrick Manning.
The haka at the start.
Hayley Westenra's performance of Amazing Grace.
It was also quite amazing singing the national anthem towards the end of the service. I felt just about as patriotic as I will ever feel. It was also amazing feeling the extreme appropriateness of our anthem's wonderful lyrics.

6. The song written by a band in Wellington as a tribute, all proceeds to the Red Cross fund. It's called Morning Light and I think it's rather beautiful.

7. The funny song written by a Christchurch resident. Rewritten from Tim Finn's "There's a Fraction Too Much Friction", it is called "There's a Fraction Liquefaction". (Liquefaction is the process by which hundreds of thousands of silt and mud appeared on the streets of Christchurch.) I love it when people manage to find humour in situations like this.

8. Another example of this is the website Show Us Your Long Drop. This was a competition for the most creative outdoor loos. Creativity out of necessity.

9. The skaters who have found opportunity in the twisted streets of eastern Christchurch.

10. Some of the cool ideas for rebuilding Christchurch. Creative and exciting! They make the whole horrid experience seem like an opportunity in disguise.

11. Feeling proud of my city, proud of my nation, for the way most of us have handled this experience. As this writer says.

12. No thanks to Ken Ring, the conspiracy theorist/weather presenter/author of "Pawmistry: How to Read Your Cat's Paws", who decided it was a good idea to predict a huge earthquake, even bigger than the ones before, on March 20. His prediction was based entirely on pseudo-science, but he managed to terrify a rather large percentage of Christchurch's population. A lot of us felt very, very angry at him and were jubilant when, of course, no major earthquake struck on March 20. We were even more jubilant when this video appeared, mocking Ken Ring, very successfully.

13. Thank you to Bruce Springsteen for his "My City of Ruins". Handel's "Comfort Ye, My People". U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday". Brooke Fraser's "Shadowfeet". Coldplay's "Everything's Not Lost". And many more. Music in general, really. On the day of the earthquake, soon after I got home, we were sitting around feeling absolutely miserable. We thought about praying but didn't know what to pray other than the simplest calls for help, and then we suddenly decided to get out our guitars and sing. We sang songs to God and they expressed everything we wanted to say, and it was a really powerful thing to be able to do. I don't think I'll ever forget that experience. So thanks to music. Thanks to my wonderful flatmates that I could do something like that with them. And thanks to God for getting us through this time.

14. And thanks to you guys who have borne with my slightly dark blogging style since February. It's hard to express how wonderful it has been to have support and prayers from all over the world in a time like this. I've heard an idea being tossed around over and over since the quake, since the nations of the world turned up to help us in little New Zealand, and since the quake and tsunami in Japan, and it is this: Why on earth do we bother with war, when working together is so utterly wonderful?

cookbook challenge #7

2011-04-06T19:29:00.009+12:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

From The Really Useful Ultimate Student Cookbook, by Silvana Franco, I made calazone. To be precise, I made two kinds of calazone - one with courgettes (zucchini), and one with cheesy potatoes. MmmmMMMM! Seven down, ten to go.

Franco has a way, throughout this recipe book, of taking a basic idea - like a baked potato, for example - and suggesting a number of ways to make this more interesting. It's fantastic, and really useful, just as the title promises. In this case, she suggests making calzone or pizza, gives you a recipe for pizza dough, and then has suggestions for toppings or fillings. I couldn't decide. So I made a sample of both, rationalising that we could use the leftovers for lunches.

I simply made the pizza dough in the breadmaker, using the breadmaker manual's instructions for this - multiplying the recipe by 1.5. Nice and easy, it smells gorgeous, and tastes beautiful, without all the hard work. You do need to allow about 45 minutes for the dough to be ready, however.

Preheat the oven to 220*C or 450*F.

Here are the instructions for these particular fillings.

For the courgettes, you will need:
About 3 small courgettes or 1 large one
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
4 tablespoons olive oil

Quarter the courgettes lengthways and then slice very thinly to make little wedges. Toss with the onion, garlic, parsley and plenty of salt/pepper.

For the cheesy potatoes, you will need:
500g potatoes, diced (I used a bit more to make it go further)
2 tablespoons milk
125g cheese, grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
a few leaves fresh basil, roughly torn
seasoning

Cook the potatoes in plenty of boiling salted water for 10-15 minutes, until tender. Drain well and mash with the milk until smooth and fluffy. Stir in the cheese, onion, basil and plenty of seasoning.

At this point, I divided the dough into five portions. I rolled each on a floury board into a large-ish rectangle. (For the cheesy potato calzone, Franco suggests grating some Parmesan and rolling the dough on this as well as on the flour. This tasted good.)

I piled the courgette mixture onto two of the rectangles, only on one half of each, leaving a small gap around the edges. I dampened the edges, and then folded the other half of the dough over, pressing with my fingers to seal. Onto a lightly oiled baking tray, and into the oven to cook for 15 minutes.

I piled the potato mixture onto three of the rectangles, on one half of each, leaving a small gap around the edges (as above), and folded over (as above). This also went into the oven for 15 minutes, until crusty and golden!

I sliced it, and served it with a green salad.

This was a meal that went down really, really well. We had an extra unexpected guest, but it served all six of us easily, with leftovers for our lunches the next day. It was tasty, the dough was a really nice change from pastry-type savouries, it was filling. It was a super-cheap meal, but didn't seem cheap, if that makes sense.

Next time, I would be a little more wanton with the amount of seasoning, and I would probably add garlic to the potato mixture too. And yet I feel very satisfied with this fantastic meal. I am sure I will come back to it in the future, to experiment and to reproduce.

excitement

2011-04-06T15:00:00.002+12:00

Oh my word, I have just discovered the coolest shopping website ever, and had to share!! Warning: gushing ahead. For all I know, you've all known about this website forever, but I didn't, and I feel like I'm uncovering Tutankhamen's tomb.

Zenni Optical. An online spectacles company. Cheap glasses, anyone?

I wish I had known about it last year, when I bought my first pair of glasses, shelling out over NZ $500 for frames, lenses and an eye exam.

ALL the frames on this website are between US $9.99 and $46 (or NZ $12 and $60). Even its most expensive glasses are ONE TENTH of the price of my fancy Converse glasses from the local optometrist. (Don't get me wrong, I love my Converse frames, but I don't particularly love the effect they had on my savings account.)

And that's not all.

Because it sucks to buy something like glasses without trying them on first, you can upload a photo of yourself to Zenni and try the frames on virtually! Just imagine all the hours you could spend on this site playing with this fun wee toy.

Reading this through, I can see that you may be suspicious that someone from Zenni Optical has hacked into my account. I can assure you now that this is not spam. I am simply a little over-excited that I may be able to afford more than one pair of glasses, or that if I break or lose my current glasses it's not the end of the world.

sing-along

2011-04-05T16:49:00.007+12:00

In about a month's time, my flatmate and I are throwing a Sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party! We are very, very excited.

You may remember that last year we hosted a sing-along Sound of Music at our flat. It was a pretty amazing experience - so much fun! I had been to a public version of this event once before, so I already had heaps of ideas from that for ways to encourage audience participation (e.g. party poppers to let off when they kiss, edelweiss to wave in the air, whistles to blow, etc etc). There are also heaps of ideas online for costumes, activities, party food and so on.

And there's something about The Sound of Music that is very easy to work with - all those songs full of random lists. Brown paper packages tied up with string; do, a deer, a female deer; a flibbertigibbet, a will o' the wisp, a clown; cream coloured ponies and crisp apple strudel... and so on.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is rather different. My attempts to find anything online have been woeful. It is hard to believe we are the first people to do something like this who thought to chronicle the experience online, but nevertheless we are going to have to come up with most of the ideas ourselves. It's a fantastic, imaginative movie (did you know Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay?), and so there's plenty of material to work with. I am sure we'll do just fine.

But in the interests of future singalong-holders, I would like to announce my plan to provide the internet with a blog series about holding a sing-along Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. Over the next couple of months, I will pass on to you the many ideas I am sure we will come up with, on:

1. Decorations
2. Party food and drink
3. Costumes
4. Audience participation: ideas and props
And more!

To see the progress of this idea, see all my blog posts under the label sing-alongs.

oops

2011-04-04T13:13:00.008+12:00

I have been applying for lots and lots and lots of jobs. About fifty so far, and I have many more on the to-do list. My policy is to apply for anything and everything that could conceivably accept me. Now is not the time to be fussy. I know that I'm on the shortlist for one, currently, but I've got fairly used to receiving rejections. I've developed a philosophical attitude towards them - after all, the earthquake has delayed my thesis by at least a month, so it's quite lucky I am not currently expected to be working full-time as well as finishing my thesis.

The problem with my policy is that I feel like I'm getting a little blasé about the whole application process. I spent yesterday afternoon applying for about fifteen jobs. Writing cover letters, rewriting cover letters, making small alterations to my CV, firing through online applications, filing away the job descriptions and the date I applied for them. Quickly quickly quickly, so I can get back to work.

Turns out that in my speed I was not very careful with one of them. I received an email this morning from the HR person in charge of a copywriter/freelance writing vacancy saying "Hello, we received your application, but we are not [Insert Company here] nor do we need a [Insert vacancy here]." Obviously I had managed to forget to alter those crucial words in my cover letter, even though I had changed everything else to suit the position.

I groaned, swallowed my pride, apologised profusely and offered a corrected version. Response: "Well, if you seriously want to work as a copywriter, I'd advise you edit your own cover letter properly. Obviously, I can't accept your application. Sorry. You seem like a nice person."

Ouch. And touché, good point, and all the rest of it.

The pity of it is that I was actually quite excited about that application. That job sounded much more intriguing than the majority of the other things I have been applying for. It would also have allowed me to work from Christchurch, unlike most available jobs at the moment.

I have had other moments of embarrassment. I applied for a job as a proofreader for a magazine publishing company. Not particularly exciting so I haven't lost much sleep over that one. However, only a few hours after applying, I got a phone call from HR, who wanted to talk to me about it. Unfortunately, when they got to the inevitable question - "And what do you think of [Insert name here] magazine?" - I had to admit that I had never laid eyes on this magazine before, and didn't even have a clue what type of magazine it was. Cringe! Not a good look! (It was a lifestyle/home decorating magazine, as it turns out.)

Another experience: I had a phone interview for a local job in a library. I do feel I was slightly unfairly treated here, because they told me beforehand it was just a phone call to check things like the date I would be available, and then they proceeded to ask all the standard interview questions. Including: "Can you tell me about a time when you had a difficult experience with a customer?" I was flummoxed. I have NEVER had a bad experience with a customer. And I have worked several customer service jobs. I didn't know what to say, and it showed. (I've come to the conclusion now that I should simply have been honest. I haven't had bad customer service experiences, and that probably shows that I am good at dealing with customers. I shouldn't have to feel like it doesn't.)

I think the problem is that because I am already doing what is basically a full-time job (writing a thesis), a job that is by necessity absolutely consuming, I don't feel like I have time to take job applications seriously. I am also coming from a background of studenthood, in which I have paid people to accept me into their organisation! People in the real world, however, don't have to be fair, or consider everything about your application, or account for your mistakes. They can ring you entirely out of the blue and expect you to know everything about their organisation. They only need to see one single unfavourable thing about you and it will sour your entire application. I'm not complaining - but it's a mental adjustment for me to make. And it's scary!

cookbook challenge #6

2011-04-04T07:35:00.004+12:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

From a Foodtown magazine, I made broccoli and cauliflower curry with cumin seeds. Six down, eleven to go.

This recipe is vegetarian and also gluten free, which is great, considering I served it to a friend who needed the latter and a flatmate who needed the former. Unfortunately, it wasn't so good for another flatmate, who has a very very very low tolerance for hot food. I didn't even feel like it was hot, but even the tiny amount of heat in it was too much for her. Sigh. Someday I'll get it right for everyone!

You will need:
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 onion, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 teaspoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
375 g /13 oz can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed, diced and cooked
500g / 1 lb & 1 oz bag frozen cauliflower and broccoli
1 can (drained) chickpeas
1 tablespoon cornflour, mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water

Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the mustard and cumin seeds and cover with a lid of some kind. When the seeds have finished popping, remove the cover.

Toss in the onion, garlic, ginger, coriander and spices and cook gently until the onion is soft. Add the evaporated milk and bring to a simmer. Stir frequently.

When the sauce is simmering, add the salt, cooked diced potato, frozen vegetables and chickpeas. Simmer until the vegetables are piping hot, then mix in the cornflour/water.

This should be served with rice. It serves four or five.

Verdict: Yeah, this is okay. It's a pretty good way to serve a big, filling meal without meat. It didn't seem particularly special to me, though. Maybe it was just that I had dined off the aroma of all the spices cooking, and so wasn't able to taste them as easily when I actually ate the meal.

All the same, it wasn't a bad meal at all. Even if not particularly exciting.

why the rules against split infinitives and final prepositions are silly

2011-04-02T12:24:00.008+13:00

I have a bone to pick, so to speak. A grammatical bone. I have endured in silence - well, not exactly silence - but I have endured in blogging silence for some time, and cannot hold back my blog-rant any more. [Sorry about the probable boringness of what will follow.]

I do not believe that the rules against splitting infinitives or putting prepositions at the end of a clause have any kind of justification whatsoever.

Take that, eighteenth and nineteenth century grammaticians who had nothing better to do than make up rules that were completely inappropriate to the English language.

This breaking-point comes as I have received more comments from my supervisors on the chapters of my thesis. I am willing to admit that in some cases moving the adjectives or prepositions around may make for more elegant writing. However, the majority of the 'corrections' they have made sound unnatural, and much worse than the original sentences, even if they are correct according to the rules against splitting infinitives or placing prepositions at the end of a clause. And so, I bring to you an angry rant against two very stupid grammatical rules:

- These rules are utterly inappropriate to English. English is not like French; it does not have 'infinitives' in the same way. English is not like Latin, which does proscribe prepositions at the end of clauses.

The rules were made up by busybody grammarians in the 18th or 19th centuries who decided that English should be more like what they saw as the ideal (though dead) language, Latin. As Tina Blue says,

"Some of the 'rules' of English grammar that you learned in school were devised by pedants who believed that English was inferior to Latin and should be improved by forcing it onto the Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. But English is descended from an ancestral German dialect, not from Latin, and certain of the rules based on Latin grammar simply do not fit the structure of English."
[NB: English does have a relationship to Latin, especially in borrowed words - but Blue is correct in saying that the grammar of our language is descended more directly from German.]

According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the rule about prepositions seems to have been created in 1672 by John Dryden, and "repeated uncritically thereafter". The same goes for the split infinitive, although that was only debated for the first time in the 19th century.

- Every great author or writer has broken both rules (and many others) on numerous occasions. That is, unless they too subscribe to the ridiculous myth. For example, we can see the following authors splitting their infinitives:

"But I would come back to where it please me to live: to really live." - Ernest Hemingway
"Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride..." - Robert Burns
"Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows / Thy pity may deserve to pitied be..." - Shakespeare
"And so we proceeded to minutely examine them." - Bram Stoker
And then, of course, there's Star Trek's famous "to boldly go where no man has gone before". Thank goodness the writers of Star Trek were sensible. It sounds so much cooler than the alternative.

And, of course, most of us have heard versions of Winston Churchill's response to an over-zealous editor who wanted him to remove a preposition from the end of a sentence: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!"

As A Dictionary of Modern English Usage says,

"Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards." [quoted here]

- Most people who are actually qualified, intelligent grammarians refuse to accept the need for these rules. For instance, the Oxford University Press decided in 1995 that there is nothing wrong with the split infinitive.
Another expert, Edward D. Johnson, said in 1982 that the idea that a sentence cannot end with a preposition is a "superstition".
Meanwhile, the acknowledged expert in the field, H. W. Fowler, points out the fact that people who say the final preposition is wrong, when used as a phrasal verb, are actually just showing their own ignorance, because the final "preposition" in this context is actually an "adverbial particle"!
[NB: a phrasal verb is a verb that absolutely must have a preposition after it, in order to understand the meaning. For example, the verb "to put" completely changes its meaning when it is becomes "to put up" or "to put up with".]

- Of course there are times when using these principles makes a piece of writing better. But there are other times when the use of these rules simply obscures meaning or unnecessarily complicates a perfectly good sentence. Here is an example:

"The government expected unemployment to more than double in the next three years."

As Karl Craig points out, where else could you put "more than"?

- Because people push rules like this which don't matter, and which have no reflection in the language, it undermines the importance of other rules that do actually have some foundation, that actually affect the meaning of sentences.

- I can understand following these rules in formal settings, such as writing a cover letter for a job - just in case the person reading it is deluded into thinking your final preposition is bad usage and doesn't give you the job. However, I am starting to hate these rules SO MUCH that I feel we should all start making an effort to banish them forever. If the person who marks my thesis has a problem with my prose for these reasons, I'd rather contest his judgment afterward, explaining my reasons, than change something that is perfectly good beforehand.

- I just find it quite sad that children in schools are being taught silly rules, wasting their time, or writers who produce perfectly adequate work are being scorned for their use of these constructions. One of the coolest things about the real English language is its capacity for creative fiddling. I find it very, very sad that creativity is inhibited for no good reason.

Make the world a better place! Eschew these pointless rules! Long live the split infinitive! Long live the final preposition!

Here is something I did because I felt so mad!!!!!
Feel free to make it into a t-shirt or something :)

Sources I looked at:

General articles on grammar myths:
'Grammar Myths', by Karl Craig
Grammar Girl's 'Top Ten Grammar Myths'
Wikipedia on 'hypercorrection'

On prepositions:
The debate over Churchill's famous sarcastic usage of "up with which I will not put".
'Prepositions at the end of sentences: further explanation of why the "rule" is wrong,' by Tina Blue
'It's usually not wrong to end a sentence with a preposition', by Tina Blue
Grammar Girl on final prepositions

On split infinitives:
The Independent, on the OUP's decision to allow split infinitives, and the Queen's English Society's response
Wikipedia on split infinitives
"The so-called split infinitive"
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, on split infinitives

escaping

2011-03-28T16:27:00.008+13:00

My dad went on a trip to Auckland last week, and left me his car. Suddenly, on Thursday at about 10.30am, I realised that (a) I had to return the car on Friday; (b) this was my last chance to get out of town; and (c) the weather was going to be beautiful in Arthur's Pass that day. I shook myself out of my morning stupor, got dressed, and went and knocked on my flatmate A.'s door. "I'm sorry to do this to you, but do you want to go to Arthur's Pass today, and if so can you be ready to leave in half an hour?!"

It took us a bit longer! But by midday we were on our way out of town, down the Old West Coast Road, heading for the mountains. Arthur's Pass is one of the main routes through the mountains. It's about one hour and forty minutes from Christchurch by car, and it's a national park. It's also a place for which I have a particular affection, as I have spent many, many family holidays there. My grandfather, a steam train driver, had a tiny cottage there in the old days. My father and all his brothers went to visit the area periodically, building their own skis in the winter and scaling the peaks in the summer. My family has continued the tradition, and now my siblings have begun taking their own children there.

A. and I arrived at about 1.40, hungry, but not so hungry that we weren't willing to wait for the perfect picnic spot. We found it:

It took us a little while, but we found it. We wanted grass, we wanted solitude, we wanted to be near water (you can't see, but we're overlooking a river). If you want to find our perfect picnic spot, just turn off onto the road where the police sign is - it's right near the start of the Mt Bealey Track.

Then we wandered around by the river near our picnic spot. Sounds non-eventful but it was charming. After we tired of it, we decided to go and climb up to the Punchbowl Falls (otherwise known as the Devil's Punchbowl). It's a climb of about half an hour. I remembered it being very steep but philosophised that I was only about eleven last time I did it and was probably just whining.

It is very steep. This is my impression near the beginning:

We hauled ourselves up the hill, feeling very, very pathetic and unfit. But eventually the climbing part ended and then we could just enjoy the really beautiful forest on a really beautiful day:

Then finally we reached the falls and all our hard work was worth it. They really are rather special. The water just drops down this sheer cliff and hits a pool before dropping from that pool into another and another and another... Here we are on the viewing platform about one third of the way down the waterfall:

It's okay standing on a viewing platform, but it's better getting closer, so we climbed underneath the platform and then just sat on rocks in the sun and the spray from the falls, watching water moving:

Beautiful.

I could have stayed there for much longer, but it was time to leave. So we went back down the track (it's much quicker on the way back, of course), got in the car, took a quick trip to look at the view down the Viaduct, and then drove home - via the Bealey Hotel where we stopped for a drink. And nearly got eaten alive by sandflies.

Edit: So yeah, on Thursday I hadn't managed to get back into my study-hard routine yet. :) But now I am!

cookbook challenge #5

2011-03-25T11:55:00.005+13:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

I had some friends over on my cooking night, Wednesday - and using Vegie Food, I made pumpkin and feta pie. I've had my eye on this recipe for a while now and it didn't disappoint! Five down, twelve to go.

You will need:
700g / 1 lb, 9 oz butternut pumpkin (squash), cut into 2cm / 3/4 inch pieces
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 small red onions, halved and sliced
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
100g / 3 and a half oz feta cheese
1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
1 large sheet shortcrust pastry (savoury)

Preheat the oven to 200*C / 400*F. Put the pumpkin and garlic cloves on a baking tray and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove the garlic cloves, and leave the pumpkin to cool.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons oil in a pan, add the onion and cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar and cook for 15 minutes or until the onion is caramelized. Remove from the heat and add to the pumpkin. Cool completely.

Add the feta and rosemary to the pumpkin mixture once cooled. Squeeze out the garlic flesh and mix it through the vegetables. Season.

Roll out the pastry between two sheets of baking paper to a 35 cm / 14 inch circle. Remove the top sheet of paper and arrange the pastry on a tray. Put the pumpkin mixture on top, leaving a border of about 4 cm / 1 and a half inch. Fold over the edges, pleating as you fold:

Bake for 30 minutes, or until crisp and golden.

Unfortunately I didn't get the more attractive photo of the pie as it looks when it is cooked, but trust me regardless - this is a really gorgeous meal! I loved the way the sweetness of the pumpkin worked with the balsamic vinegar and the feta... mmmm.... I served it with a green salad, and it served five. I also got lots of compliments because people seem to think anything involving pastry is difficult, but it's actually a very simple recipe. Yum yum! A big thumbs-up from me!

allie is very happy and very grateful

2011-03-22T13:24:00.009+13:00

I am a happy camper, because my thesis stuff has been restored to me! This morning I assembled with a few other postgrads and staff from the History building at the Civil Defence HQ on campus, and we got to enter our offices and grab what we could in 5 minutes. As you will see from the photo below, I was VERY ENTHUSIASTIC about this.

Here, I have just signed in at NZi3 centre on Creyke Road, and I am "authorised to be on campus". Woot!

We are given hard hats and hi-visibility vests, while our footwear is checked. Fabulous. Most of us are carrying several bags - I carried one large overnight bag with my backpack and three shopping bags inside it. Then we walked across campus, under supervision of the wonderful people in red boiler suits and matching hard hats who spend their days helping postgrads and staff retrieve their most necessary belongings from their buildings within the cordon.

Here we are outside the history building, exactly one month after we ran out of it in the 6.3 shake of 22 February, listening to a safety briefing. We enter the building with one civil defence volunteer to two of us, and are given five minutes to pack up all our essential belongings.

Once in, I gather all my papers and ringbinders, stuffing them randomly into bags. I race down the hallway to the break room, where we were eating lunch when the quake hit, and retrieve my favourite coffee mug - it is of sentimental value, made for me personally when I was a baby! I race back to my office, and start shovelling ALL my books - personal and library ones - into the shopping bags. They probably total fifty or sixty all together. I stagger out of the room, a very happy MA student:

Thank goodness they had a van waiting outside to carry our things back to the NZi3 centre, where my father's car was parked. I don't know how far I would have made it alone!! Them books are heavy.

It's hard to convey how happy I feel. Up until now, I have been living in a state of complete indecision. It has been really hard to do ANY work without all my stuff, and I had no idea when it would be possible to get my stuff. It is a really strange thing, living one day at a time. I've had it remarkably easy in comparison with people whose homes fell down or have no job to go to, so I don't want to exaggerate - but I am really, really looking forward to having no excuse not to work. I am looking forward to finishing my thesis! I am looking forward to setting up a routine again! Yeah, some things will be different, but now I can look into the future again, and it feels good. Very, very good.

So - THANK YOU, Civil Defence personnel. You are wonderful, lovely people. I will be baking you a very large chocolate cake and bringing it in tomorrow.

memories in Christchurch

2011-03-21T16:05:00.012+13:00

After the earthquake, so many of the places I have built my memories around are changed forever. I thought I would do a blog post in memory of some of my favourite haunts. Some may be rebuilt, but the majority have become (or soon will become) an empty slate for the future.

ChristChurch Cathedral is the giant of this list for most Cantabrians. It was the distinctive icon of our city. Located literally in the centre of Christchurch, with the town built around it, all roads pointing in towards it, it seemed impregnable. When someone told me, after the quake, that they couldn't see the spire of the cathedral from their office as usual, I simply couldn't believe it and told them it must have been the misty conditions.

This photo was taken at dawn on Anzac Day - April 25, 2010 - when we remembered our fallen soldiers outside the cathedral.

This is the cathedral now.

The Canterbury Provincial Chambers were the former seat of local government. I wandered round them maybe once a year, took photos, enjoyed the stained glass and thought how lucky I was to live somewhere with buildings like this. The photos I took I often used for Halfway Down the Stairs; in fact the profile picture for our facebook page currently uses a photo from the Provincial Chambers.

The pictures of the chambers as they are today are so, so different.

Here is a picture of my friend K. before our graduation in 2008. For University of Canterbury graduations, all graduands march from here, the Arts Centre (the former site of the university), to the town hall - about seven minutes walk - where the ceremony begins. K. is standing in front of the Court Theatre, one of Christchurch's best theatres, which like almost all of them has undergone such extensive damage it is unclear whether it will ever open again. I think the UC graduation processions will be a long time coming, too. I would love to be able to graduate with my MA properly. It would be even more meaningful after the experiences of this year. But... I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

This is my favourite secondhand bookstore. (Photo from Google Maps streetview - 9 Riccarton Road.) It was run by a church, nonprofit for a charity, and every book was $2 or $3 TOPS.

It's a rather more shocking view now - and, sadly, someone died in its rubble.

The band rotunda in Hagley Park, where I sometimes take my nieces to dance and sing. (I'm not sure why, but it seems like a good place to dance around singing songs from Mary Poppins.) I haven't seen any photos, but I understand it's badly damaged now.

The Dux de Lux - pictured here featuring my friends in the outdoor area. This was my favourite restaurant/bar. I had my birthday dinner there five months ago and I've popped in for coffee or a beer at least four times since then. One of the pleasantest, most vibrant places in town for a drink, on the edge of the Arts Centre. It was the Student Union building when my dad was at university.

I walked past it on Friday - it's at the edge of the cordon, which my flatmate and I wandered around after the memorial service at Hagley Park. Doesn't look particularly good, but it does look salvageable. I hope it comes back fighting, as strong as ever.

St John's Latimer Square, an evangelical Anglican church, where my sister was married in 2004 (above), and where a bunch of my friends go. This was one of the buildings that sustained most damage in the September earthquakes, and I could only find a photo of it as it was in September. I understand it is all but destroyed now.

Heritage churches in general have not come out of the earthquakes well.

The Catholic Basilica towered over the Christchurch School of Music, where I spent every Saturday morning and many Tuesday evenings during my childhood and teen years. A beautiful building inside and out, I also entered it to perform in concerts. I will always remember performing Allegri's 'Miserere Mei, Deus' in my recorder ensemble from an upper gallery - the acoustics so perfect that the music we made sounded like the most angelic thing I had ever heard. I took this photo about nine years ago while I waited for my parents to pick me up.

This is how the basilica looks now.

cookbook challenge #4

2011-03-16T19:11:00.006+13:00

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

Welcome to the first proper cooked meal, from a recipe book I haven't used, since the quake. I thought half-heartedly about sticking to my resolution, but really just wanted familiar comfort food whenever I had to cook a meal over the last few weeks. I feel more human now, and (more importantly!) want to get back into some kind of routine, so here I am again.

From Donna Hay's Pasta, Rice and Noodles, I made chunky pesto pasta. It's not a particularly unusual recipe to see around the place, but I couldn't resist the thought of those beautiful flavours, and went down to the supermarket hungry for the scent of basil. (Hmm. That last phrase sounds like it could be plucked straight out of Mills and Boon, if only the herb in question had a capital letter.)

You will need:
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
1 and a half cups basil leaves
400g / 14 oz penne pasta
sea salt and cracked black pepper
1 cup finely grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F. Place the pine nuts on a baking tray and roast for 3 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool. Place the pine nuts, garlic and oil in a food processor and process in short bursts until roughly chopped. Add the basil and process until just combined. Set the pesto aside.

Cook the pasta in a saucepan of salted boiling water for 10-12 minutes or until al dente. Drain and place in a large bowl. Stir through the pesto, salt, pepper and parmesan.

YUM!!

It serves four. I served it with cherry tomatoes because they look pretty and they taste fantastic with it. (Do you like our classy-as flat crockery???) You may notice the pasta looks slightly weird. That is because we didn't have quite enough penne and so I bulked it up with lasagna pieces.

There are many things I like about this recipe.

- It's easy. Very, very quick. And yet the results do not correlate to the amount of effort put in.

- It's very tasty. Both flavoursome and fresh.

- It's deceptive. I don't know about you but I would normally look at a pasta dish with such a tiny amount of apparent colour or sauce, and I would think 'boring'. I would assume it would be very bland. However, the flavours seem to explode. It's like a secret weapon. This excites me!

On the other hand, it's EXPENSIVE.

I don't know about you, but paying $5 or $6 for a tiny bag of nuts does not seem normal to me. They are amazing superfood nuts, of course, and the result is beautiful, but that seems more pricey than petrol or printer toner (my default idea of expensive things). Then, you buy fresh basil, parmesan cheese and olive oil as well. Ouch. Still... for a once-in-a-long-while meal, it's worth it.

oh, Japan

2011-03-11T23:43:00.004+13:00

The amount of empathy that has come out of Japan for New Zealand over the last two weeks has been astounding. They've sent dedicated and hardworking rescue teams, money, love and prayers, and they've lost citizens to the earthquake here in Christchurch too. Now I am thinking of the disaster hitting their shores with much sadness. An earthquake somewhere between 8.4 and 8.9 on the Richter scale, and a tsunami to follow. For those of us here, who have experienced, at the very most, a 7.1, this is mindblowing and very, very sad. If anyone from Japan or the affected areas in Japan should happen to read this, please know that we are watching the news with much concern and love for you. We are praying. Please let me know if there's anything else I can to do to help.

allie's emergency survival kit!

2011-03-08T23:54:00.014+13:00

So - disaster strikes. You have no power, no water, no sewerage (or you HAVE water but it's unsafe). There are holes in your roof/floor/insert other crucial structure here. You may have no access to your workplace. What will you need?

Based on my experience, and the experience of people around me, of the last two weeks, here is:
Allie's Guide To Surviving Natural Disasters. With Particular Reference to Earthquakes.
A Guide to the things you really should start thinking about putting aside NOW. Because you never know when you may need them.

(Number One) [and I write it out fully because it is that important] Clean Water.
Even in Christchurch, where the emergency services are brilliantly organised, you want to have enough water to survive for a few days. If you don't particularly trust your government to get things sorted quickly, put aside enough water for a week or two. If you can afford to buy big plastic containers in which to store large amounts of water, great. If you can't, do what I did and simply clean out juice bottles when you've drunk all the juice, and start putting them aside with clean water in them. If you're really careful, put them in two different places, in case one secret cache gets buried under rubble.

(2) A source of light. With extra batteries. Obvious, but necessary. Candles are okay, but not particularly safe or easy to use.

(3) Hygiene items. These are very, very important, but most people do not think to put these things aside. Trust me, if you're living in a disaster zone, you really are not going to be able to just pop down to the shops for some tampons. Buy some now, put them aside!!

Hand sanitizer is also crucial. Unless you want to get gastroenteritis or similar nasties, that is.

Finally, if like me you really hate not washing your hair for several days in a row, I would really recommend buying a dry shampoo of any kind and putting it aside. It will make you feel MUCH better when there is no water available. Things are always much darker, much more depressing, when you have greasy hair.

(4) If you have any crucial medications, KEEP SPARES somewhere. I know a bunch of people who, as the quake hit, ran straight out of their offices, leaving incredibly important prescription drugs behind. It was the sensible thing to do, really, but no one would let them back in afterwards to retrieve them. If you're lucky, you'll be able to get to a pharmacy, but if you're not, you're in trouble.

(5) If you have babies or small toddlers: Nappies. Formula. Baby wipes (which, in an emergency, have the double use of cleaning baby and cleaning You).

(6) A tarpaulin and rope. This will cover holes left in your roof by falling chimneys, for example, and so will keep rain out. Or, it will provide shelter or ground cover when you have to sleep outside. (I'm serious. I know of people whose million dollar homes are rubble and they are now sleeping under a tarp in the back yard.) Or, it will provide a modest little screen to hide the hole in the ground you had to dig for unmentionable reasons. On that note, also make sure you have a spade.
For ideas, view this awesome website which chronicles Cantabrians' alternative loo arrangements over the last two weeks :)

(7) Food. I suppose this is rather obvious, and it looks like it should be higher up the list. We found, however, that we could survive fairly well on what we had in the shelves for a few days, at least. At some point, however, you are going to run out of these things, and so if you happen to be trapped at home without access to supermarkets or aid all of a sudden, canned or non-perishable food is a must.

(8) Cash. For fairly obvious reasons. Although if you have all of the above, you will be able to cope for a while without it.

On a less necessary but helpful note
You will be able to cope without these things, but they will also make life a lot easier:

(9) Camping gear like a small gas stove with refills, a chemical toilet, a solar shower and a tent. These four things will make you very happy in a disaster zone. Especially the chemical toilet. And even if your house is liveable and you don't need the tent, chances are one of your neighbours will.

(10) Things to do. Especially if you have kids. Colouring books and pencils, or books, or activities. It may seem silly, but you will feel SO MUCH BETTER if you have access to your iPod or something like that which can be used without having to plug it in.

You may feel slightly silly taking all these precautions. People may even mock you. Just do it anyway, and imagine the satisfaction when all your careful preparations come in handy! For example, I had the satisfaction in the first quake (September last year) in knowing that the very night before the quake, my flatmate had mocked me for putting aside clean water for emergencies. Suddenly, when the water was unsafe to drink and we had no electricity to boil it, she didn't think I was so crazy after all!

One more small note.

The first quake to hit Christchurch was not so serious, partially because it was at night, but the nocturnal aspect brought with it a few issues:

(1) Earthquakes tend to break things. For this reason, you should find shoes or slippers as quickly as possible. When you go stumbling about your house trying to assess the damage in the pitch black because the power is off, you really don't want to step on all the broken glass in bare feet.

(2) If you decide to run out of your house, try to remember - in the split second you are actually thinking - whether you have any clothes on. I know someone who dashed out of her house stark naked and only realised when she was already outside, along with all the neighbours. (I also heard about someone who was having a bikini wax when the February quake struck. Hmm. Apparently the beautician wouldn't let her run outside until she'd found her underwear.)

things that are good

2011-03-06T16:42:00.010+13:00

I've been feeling a bit bad lately that I've been loading all this dark earthquake stuff on you guys. And now that I'm back in Christchurch I'm feeling a lot more ... normal. So here is my list of things that are good in the midst of all the crappiness.

1. Having a home. As the facebook page says, you know you're in Christchurch when you are lucky to have a roof over your head, even when you're a millionaire. Also, being home.

2. Recent newsflash - the 22 bodies they expected to find under the rubble of the Cathedral were simply not there! A nice change to the rising-bodycount-stories.

3. This is not Haiti. This is not Libya.

4. There are plenty of ways to help out. The Student Volunteer Army is one of the more famous ways. There's also the 'Farmy Army' which rolled into town with its farm equipment and, with the SVA, got rid of a few hundred thousand tons of silt. There is also the Christchurch Baking Army and Comfort for Christchurch, to whom I dropped off sixty muffins (see below) and a bunch of other things today. You can volunteer for the Red Cross, or at a shelter for displaced people, or you can just drive over to the affected areas and start door-knocking and handing out supplies on your own initiative.

5. In the middle of all of this, people have a sense of humour. See the photo below. Also see Rocky, an uninvited guest to a Redcliffs home.

6. All these things are coming to the surface so visibly in a really moving way: Love, community spirit, humility, friendship, unity, inclusiveness.

7. I have family and friends who are alive and well.

8. I think my eyes have perhaps been opened a little. I will not scoff light-heartedly at material possessions again. They are useful, and the people whose possessions have vanished in the blink of an eye are living hard lives right now. At the same time, I have to recognise how little we have that is permanent, and how unnecessary many things are that I wanted before.

9. I am learning to appreciate people I didn't really value before, or look at them in new ways. Businesses and commerce are important. Many of them have been very kind in the wake of the earthquake. Engineers, the natural enemy of the University of Canterbury arts student, are important and hard-working. Strong muscles are useful, as shown by the video below:

10. Because the cordon around the city is still in place, we are unable to return some DVDs we got out from a central video store. :) Much more time to watch period dramas (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Rebecca, and Sense and Sensibility) and classic movies (The Great Dictator, The Great Gatsby, and Love in the Afternoon)!

11. I know this is not particularly relevant to quaking, but there is a new issue of Halfway Down the Stairs out, and I really like it. That in itself makes me happier.

thoughts of Christchurch

2011-03-03T12:02:00.007+13:00

It's been an exhausting week. For me, probably not half so exhausting as many of the people who are still in Christchurch. I've been looking after my two nieces, both of whom were away from their parents for the first time ever - let alone having been through a major disaster. They've been little heroines, but it's definitely taken it out of me. I think it's more than that, though. There's an emotional exhaustion. I ingest as much of the news from Christchurch as I possibly can. I would sit with my ears glued to the radio all day, every day, if I could. This doesn't make me feel any better. But I need to feel involved. I'm finding it really hard to bear being away. I'm hoping to go back on Monday but I feel like I need to keep in check with reality a bit and remember why I'm here. If my sister and her husband need me to be here, I can't just go skipping back to Christchurch. But I wish I could. I know how fortunate I am to be able to shower etc but I feel like I need to experience what everyone else in Christchurch is experiencing.

Below is a photo someone took from the hills as the buildings of the city fell on Tuesday the 22nd of February:

It blows my mind. With the last earthquake, we all rolled our eyes a bit at the way the media was portraying the CBD. Of course, it was bad - we weren't denying that the buildings that had been affected were very bad - but it was just like the media to show only those buildings and not the ones still standing. This time, the few people who are allowed into the CBD are saying that the media have almost not reflected accurately enough just how bad it really is. A friend of mine burst into tears as she was escorted in to collect her car, because she could never have imagined her city so devastated. It's reported that the public won't even be allowed back into the CBD until Christmas. Christchurch is a broken city. It's very depressing to imagine, and to hear reports of the hardship in the suburbs. Thousands of people are suddenly homeless. They've lost everything.

As sympathetic as people in Dunedin are, it's just not the same as being with people who love Christchurch because it's their home. On the cover of the Otago Daily Times today, there was an article about how, although the earthquake is really horrible, it may bring growth to the Otago region through all the people who will inevitably leave Christchurch and bring their careers/businesses/skills here. It felt like a slap in the face. (That's not the attitude of most people, thank goodness. They're desperate to help, so sympathetic that I feel like a fraud because personally I've lost very few possessions. We've had three different people drop off meals at my sister's house simply because she was housing Christchurch refugees.)

Part of the difficulty of being away is that you can't help out practically, like the thousands of people digging up silt or distributing baking or taking supplies to stranded families by mountain bike. I'm not saying doing this is easy. But it is very depressing to watch from a distance, invested in it so heavily because it's your home, the city you grew up in, yet unable to experience the overwhelming community spirit of the people of Christchurch or the determination that does exist to survive this. Below is a photo a friend posted on facebook:

Sandcastles made from the silt currently covering large areas of the city... we can rebuild. Such an encouraging message, and exactly what I needed to hear, and it could only come from residents of Christchurch.

Voices from Christchurch: on video.

from dunedin

2011-02-25T15:11:00.003+13:00

I am currently in Dunedin staying with my sister V. My sister J brought me and her two daughters down on Wednesday, and has driven back up today so she can work at the hospital while childcare centres are closed. The idea is that I am helping Christchurch by not being a burden on it and by providing childcare for doctors, but just like last time I feel horribly guilty for being away. Trying to be rational. But still feeling overwhelmed with love for my home and sorrow at the way things are right now. I don't have the energy to think about how different things will be on the streets of Christchurch, once elegant, pleasant and cheerful, in the coming years.

I'm happy at the number of people they have managed to pull out of the rubble alive, and so incredibly proud of the people of the city who have been working valiantly and thoughtfully in the rescue effort, and so grateful to all the teams that have flown in from around the country and the world to lend their generous hands. We're not lucky, but it is wonderful to live in a stable country with good organisational systems to cope with a situation like this, and to have good international relationships. But I feel particularly bleak about those still trapped, dead or alive. The father of a good friend from church was in the CTV building, which has been pronounced "100% unsurvivable". Friends of my sister's walked from the centre of the city then over the Port Hills to get to their homes in Lyttleton (the centre of the quake) and were crushed on the way by boulders dislodged by aftershocks. Everyone knows someone who has died, or someone whose life has been transformed by the death of a loved one.

Dunedin has been my refuge from horrible things several times now, and I'm very grateful for the chance to shower, wash my hair, flush the toilet without thinking about it, brush my teeth with tap water, pop down to the supermarket, catch a bus, visit the bank, etc, etc. But in my heart I just want to be at home. My supervisor, who recently moved to Australia, emailed me to find out if I was safe, and when I had replied with reassurance he said how horrible it was to be among people whose lives just went on when, for him, it was like a part of himself had been ripped away.

Here are some photos of Christchurch before and after.
Aerial footage of the city.

more quaking

2011-02-23T07:47:00.003+13:00

Just a note to let you know that I am fine. As far as I know, my family in Christchurch is also fine. As far as I can see from the clues on facebook, my friends appear to be fine - a relief, when I know a number who work in the CBD. A few have had nasty experiences, like being trapped in a lift.

I was on the university campus when it happened, eating lunch with some friends in our break room. The earthquake hit, someone said "holy cow", and we all dived under tables or doorways. This is strange, because this is literally the first time I've ever got under anything in the progression of big earthquakes since September 2010. It is also the first time I've actually felt in any danger, in the buildings I have happened to be in. As I sat under the doorway I could see cracks appearing in the hallways before my eyes and the whole building rumbled and creaked, five floors of concrete above us on the second storey.

We got out as soon as it stopped - this means, unfortunately, that my wallet, computer and so on are still sitting in my office, although fortunately I have my keys and my cellphone - and assembled in one of the carparks nearby. Just a few minutes later another big one hit, and this was strange, because normally the quakes are very difficult to feel outside. This one was quite different; I felt like I was standing on water, and had to brace myself against a car, which was rocking back and forth quite violently itself. If you looked up you could see all the buildings swaying. Very weird.

The scary part now was waiting to find out what was going to happen. It is impossible to have got through the last five months without learning what this kind of quake means for our city buildings, which have all been slowly weakened over time by aftershock after aftershock. It was also easy to imagine the possibilities to the people of the city, especially in the middle of a busy working day. The first rumour I heard was that the spire of the cathedral was gone. Then I heard about buses crushed by falling buildings and that was when I started to feel confirmed in my feeling that this was very very serious. The cellphone networks were very clogged, as were the roads, and I was getting text message after text message from family and friends, who obviously were not receiving my replies, so I walked home to use our landline.

It was so good to see my flatmates. Three of them were at home, quite shaken up but okay, and the other one got home soon after me. No power but we had a handy transistor radio our power company sent us in case of another major shake - thank you Meridian! My stereo fell off its shelf plus a bunch of books etc, but no broken glasses this time. I rang all my family in different cities, couldn't get through to my sister in Christchurch but other relatives had been in contact. She had been unable to get in touch with her husband and her kids, who were in their daycare, and so she walked from the hospital in the CBD all the way to the hospital on the outskirts of the city where her husband works - at 23 weeks pregnant. My grandmother was fine, cheerful as always - she is a trooper. My dad is out of town at the moment.

Soon after I got home, I was talking to my sister in Dunedin on the phone, and another big aftershock hit. Lucky her, she got to listen to me getting under the table and then suddenly realising that water was pouring through our roof. Turned out our chimney had just fallen down, breaking something on its way, and our bathroom and laundry was rapidly flooding. I feel quite proud of the fact that I rushed outside with my toolbox, found the mains, and turned off the water. Girl power! This did mean, however, that now we had neither water nor power.

So, we have evacuated to my father's house in another part of town. It has both water and power, although we're boiling all water just in case. We're not allowed to take showers or flush toilets or anything like that because the plumbing and sewerage infrastructure has just been so badly damaged. It is very nice to be able to watch TV, though, and go online to find out if friends are okay. I'm hoping to be able to get into my building at uni if they consider my need is urgent enough (i.e., I have no money), but I don't know if they'll let me. And who knows how long this could last?

Right now, Christchurch needs your prayers, and any other kind of help you can offer. There are lots of people working extremely hard to free people trapped in buildings, there are many other people homeless, and, as for myself and many others, it was impossible to sleep through the night with earthquake after earthquake rolling in. Exhaustion is inevitable, and we've all just had enough of this. We thought we had had the big one. Turns out we were in store for more. I don't want to think how long it's going to take to make things "normal"again. Certainly much longer than five months. But God is very good and can bring good things even out of something like this.

photos of summer, #2

2011-02-21T16:20:00.009+13:00

Some more of my favourite snapshots from my summer so far...

Smores. On a bonfire. On the beach.

A building I liked in Lake Coleridge township

My niece and nephew, freezing, but valiantly thumbs-upping

A bellbird feasting

An evening walk in the hills

Swimming in a lovely choppy ocean

Christmas day walk

distracted

2011-02-18T18:25:00.010+13:00

Today, and on Wednesday, I sat in a horrid tomb designed to torture students (named the audiovisual room by our optimistic librarians), poring over microfilm from four months of the Daily Herald of 1933. Because the central library is still closed due to earthquake damage, I had to use one of the smaller libraries on campus, which is equipped only with a horrid, old microfilm machine that can only focus on small parts of each page at a time and whose movements induce motion sickness.

I got distracted, however, by many, many things. Here are some, for your reading pleasure. I hope they don't make you feel sick and grumpy, as I currently feel. (I apologise for the low quality - I had to photograph what is basically a projected image):

Mmm... self-raising flour. Every boy's favourite.

They look good enough to eat with my shredded wheat.

We recommend stretching your hands up in supplication to the man of your heart's desire. Works like a charm.

Aaand, some shocking fashion:

"Will the trouser fashion become popular? The woman was photographed in Trafalgar-square yesterday."
... Nahhhh.

They really are?! Is the sky falling on our heads?