I'm on Twitter

Just in case there is anyone who I have forgotten to tell, I mostly lurk on Twitter now:

http://twitter.com/martianscribe

I am working as a Science Editor in Christchurch now (moved down here the day Michael Jackson died - coinkidink) and so I am quite liking the 140-character limit of Twitter. Really, I spend all day editing other people's writing; I don't want to bother editing my own lengthy blog posts.

This blog might become active again if I go overseas again for travel or adventure, or if it is a rainy Sunday and I need something to do. Otherwise, see you on the Internets.

2009. The year of laziness.

The California Bombshell

I've been sitting in the classroom here at Whitireia all afternoon looking at the election map on cnn.com and watching the US election unfold. When I first started looking, only 4% of precincts were reporting, and nothing particularly interesting was happening. All of the ten or so States declared won were the same as they had been at the last election. I have watched as 1, 2, 3 and then 4 States swung democrat, one of them being the Swing State Ohio.

Just now, I heard cheering coming from down the road, perhaps from one of the Irish pubs. I refreshed the page . . . and the West coast states were declared. Obama, 297 electoral votes and counting.

I don't know much about the American voting system, but I think that means the Americans have their new President.

'The Stolen Earth' and 'Journey's End'

Last night Prime played the two parter season finale of Dr Who season 4 back to back. OMGOMGOMG!!! It was so exciting, I spent 2 hrs 20mins bouncing off the freaking walls!

I feel a bit cheated in that I didn't get the original experience of having to wait a week to find out what happened with the regeneration. Instead, I and my fellow Kiwi Whovians only had to wait the duration of an ad break. Not nearly enough suspense.

I am aware that there were plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, but who cares? I'm certainly not going to dwell on them. It's the feel of the story, the silly excitement, that did it for me. That pure, unbridled craziness which is what I love best about the new Dr Who.

Conundrum

It's odd, but ever since I started studying for the Diploma in Publishing, I have written very little. Fiction, blog posts, emails, diary entries . . . they have all suffered. Yet lethargy is not the cause. I have been quite diligent this year in getting my course work done (especially in contrast to my study habits at Uni).

Publishing is another form of creative output for me. It takes the place of writing in that it satiates that need I have to make things, to produce some quantifiable output of my labours.

Is this a good thing? For such a long time, I have longed to better my writing, but now I am putting that dream on hold to help other people's writing find its way into the world. How can I consider that undesirable? I don't think I can.

Disorientation

(I am writing this at home on Monday afternoon: I won't post it until Tuesday.)

Yesterday I went to the fruit and vege market. I really like going there. I got:
A broccoli for $1
A handful of runner beans (Are they called that in NZ? I'm overthinking and can't figure it out.)
White button mushrooms
A huge brown mushroom
A bunch of rhubarb for $1
A bunch of spinach for $1
An avocado for 80c
A small bunch of fresh Thai basil for $1
And (as a treat) a lotus seed moon pie

I can't remember how much the weighed items cost, but it all came to less than $10.

The basil is sitting in a glass of water on my kitchen windowsill. The rhubarb is boiled up and in a pot in my fridge. I had some on my muesli this morning.

I felt weird today; all fuzzy-like. I couldn't concentrate on the referencing and bibliographies lesson first thing this morning (although, considering the topic and the time, maybe that is not so much of a mystery). After class I was trying to make a production schedule but I couldn't get my brain to work properly. I was getting all confused, and frustrated at myself for being so confused.

When I walked home just a short while ago I still felt odd. I felt a bit disoriented, constantly surprised to find myself walking down the street. I walked past the tattoo shop in Cuba Street and I could hear the buzzing of a needle. The noise followed me long after I was out of earshot. It started to spit with rain, but I didn't take my coat out of my bag. I felt like the rain was not actually hitting me, as if I were in some kind of protective shell. Even when the raindrops increased in size and I could feel them through my sleeve, I still felt like I was inside a shell, but that there were holes in my shell. I meandered into the suprette and bought mayonnaise, then meandered back out again. As I got to my street, the spitting evolved to drizzle and I thought that it would start to clear me of my fuzziness, but still it was not quite enough. So as soon as I got home I made myself a piece of peanut butter toast and a cup of tea (my pick-me-up remedy) and now I feel better.

Normal life

I find it hard to believe that I have not yet been living in my flat for two weeks. It feels as if I have been living there for about three weeks or so. Funny how a person's sense of time can be so wonky.

I am a good girl and cook my dinner every night. Unfortunately, I have not been so good with lunches; I have a tendency to buy. But at least I know where in the area food can be bought cheap.

The course is going well. We have had a lot of interesting guest speakers come to speak to us. It is amazing how well-connected the course is. It is a totally different experience to studying at Uni. We rarely had any scientists come to speak to us who were not members of the faculty. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only remember two such circumstances in three years. Yet on the publishing course every week we get one or two guest speakers who are important people in the industry. These people take time out of their busy schedules to come and speak to us students about their experience in and with the industry, and to give us advice. I think it is a very generous thing for them to do. It also helps us as students in that we already feel like a part of the publishing world, and feel that it will be easy for us to find employment after the course finishes. I never had that feeling at all while studying for my BSc: I felt so disconnected from the real world of science.

I am not sure why, but ever since I have moved out of home again I have been making sure to watch the news every night. I was not doing that while I was at my parents' house. But now, every night at 6 o'clock I turn the TV to TV3 and watch 3news and Campbell Live - a programme I never bothered to watch before. How odd.

Aro Valley

I no longer have internet access in the evenings and weekends. This is a bad thing. But the reason why I don't have internet access in the evenings anymore is because I moved out of home (again). Which is good. I found a small 1 bedroom (not a bedsit) flat in Aro Valley, and moved in on Monday. It is a fully furnished flat, which made moving in very easy and cheap. I have a small living room, a sunny bedroom, a usable kitchen and a bathroom with a spacious shower. It takes me about 25 minutes to walk to class in the morning, which is considerably faster than the 1hr 25mins it was taking me to get to class from my parents' house in the Hutt. All in all, I'm quite pleased with myself.

Last night I went to see a documentary that was playing at the Paramount cinema. It was called Helvetica and was all about the typeface (font) of the same name. A documentary about a font? Sounds boring, I know. But it was actually very interesting and surprisingly funny. There were more than a few moments of 'whole audience laugh-out-loud' goodness. I'm sure if I tried to explain what the documentary talked about I would make it sound horribly boring and put people off seeing it. Instead, take my word that it is worth watching if ever you get a chance.

Wellington Zoo

I went to Wellington Zoo the other day to take reference photos of animals. Here are some which came out quite well, if I do say so myself.

(I may as well point out here that my feelings towards zoos are conflicted: they give endangered species an alternative place to live and indeed with some species there are more of the animals in zoos than in the wild; but I always look at the size and quality of the cages and wonder if the animals can have a decent life there.)

I am so out of the habit of writing to my blog that I no longer write even when I have things to say.

For the last four weeks I have been getting back into the swing of student life. I have classes from 9 to 12, Monday to Friday. We study a wide range of topics related to the publishing industry; copy editing methods, grammar, design, manuscript assessment, inDesign usage, . . . the list goes on. In the afternoon we can stay in the classroom and do our assignments.

The Cuba Mall campus I am studying at opened for the first time on the day that my course started. We were the only class there. When we started, we had tables and chairs in our classroom and nothing else. There were a couple other classrooms like ours, and the other half of the floor was boarded off because it was not finished. Two weeks later computers were installed in our classroom. An assignment we had to do was postponed because of the lack of computers. The other day we finally got a projector and screen, although we still only have a portable whiteboard, not one on a wall. The other half of the campus is still not finished. The buskers outside on the street drive us crazy. But despite all those problems, it is a nice campus to study at: it is light and airy in the classrooms; it is clean and new; the computers are good with big screens; and the location is good - we can walk out the door of the building straight into Cuba Mall, a busy and unique area of Wellington with many cafes and eateries, bars and small shops.

There are seventeen people on the course including myself. Everyone gets along well because we are all have so much in common, which is a good thing because of the amount of time we will be spending together this year. Every day we have a half hour morning tea together in the small cafeteria. We drink tea or coffee and have a good ol' chin-wag before getting back to class for another hour.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this last week we had no classes because it was Writers and Readers Week, a part of the International Festival of the Arts which is happening this month in Wellington. We each got three free tickets through our course. On Wednesday I went to a talk called The Big Questions. It was supposed to be a talk about popular scientific publishing. Rather than talk about the publishing of science, the talkers talked more about the scentific issues that they had covered in their respective books. Having studied science at university, little of it was new to me, but still it was an interesting talk to listen to. On Thursday I went to listen to the author Ursula Dubosarsky talk about her books. I had not heard of her before. She is an Australian author of children's novels. I found her talk to be so fascinating that I went out yesterday and bought one of her books, The Red Shoe, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Afterwards, I bought a ticket to a talk called Art and Text which was about blending the written and visual media. Dissappointingly, the speakers seemed more interested in using lots of big words to show how intelligent they think they are than in saying anything actually meaningful to the audience. Stupid academic posturing: I had no bloody idea what they were going on about half the time, and I'm not stupid. On Friday I went to listen to NZ writer CK Stead talk. He had many interesting things to say: I found his talk to be rather enjoyable. I will have to go out and buy one of his books too.

Overlander

On Wednesday I took the Overlander (long-distance train) from Hamilton to Wellington. The country is very dry and yellow at the moment. I tried taking photos from inside the train, which didn't work too well. So I spent some time out on the observation deck, which was fun. Here are some photos.

It's mostly good

I have one week left to go before I finish at my summer job. Actually, I only have four days left to work because it is Waitangi Day this coming Wednesday. On Friday I received a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates for being such a good sport working over the Xmas/ New Year period and even volunteering to work extra long days over that period (even though it turned out I wasn't needed to work all those hours because of a supply delay).

Next Saturday I will be flying up to Hamilton to visit my friend. I'm really looking forward to it! I'll be there for a few days and then I will catch the train back to Wellington.

I will have four days (two of those a weekend) between my trip to Hamilton and the day I start my course. Everything's moving so fast!

2008

I finally know what I am going to be doing this year. I have been accepted onto the course that I applied for. This year I am going to be studying for a Diploma in Publishing at Whitireia Polytechnic's Wellington campus. I feel so relieved!

My current job finishes on February 8th and the course starts on February 18th. Everything seems to have worked out very well for me so far.

みつけた！

These are edamame, which are whole soy beans. I didn't think I would be able to find any here in New Zealand, but luckily I was wrong.

For my Japanese friends . . .

これらは九月にとったふるさとのしゃしんです。

Pictures from October

December Roses

With more than a vague sense of guilt . . .

It has been a very long time since I last posted here, hasn't it? I can't think why. I kept up with my posting while I was working in Japan, but when I find myself with copious amounts of free time suddenly it seems too much effort. It is illogical.

I did not do so well with the NaNoWriMo. I had been doing practically nothing for the duration of September and October, and as soon as I decided to do something that would take up a lot of that free time, Life Happened. On November 2nd I had a job interview. I didn't get that job, but shortly afterwards my mother arranged for me to have an interview at her work. Since late November I have been working full time. I am on a fixed term contract that will end next February. The work I am doing is very basic. I am a mail sorter of sorts. But at least it is money.

I applied for the Diploma in Publishing that is offered by Whitireia Polytechnic. Shortly afterwards I had an interview for said course. I will find out next January whether I will be studying next year or not.

Until last week I was attending a Tuesday evening art class. It was fun, but now it is finished.

Oh, and a week ago I had a birthday.

So, after all that I only managed to write 7,800 words for NaNoWriMo which was no where near the target of 50,000 words. Oh, well.

NaNoWriMo

Stars

The reason I haven’t blogged for so long is that I was intending to blog about my stay in Tokyo on my way out of Japan. Y’know, keep everything chronological. I was going to post pictures I took inside the Himiko ferry and pictures I took in Odaiba. But I’m not in Japan anymore. What is the point in blogging about being in Japan? I guess that must have been what my subconscious was thinking as I procrastinated and procrastinated some more writing that blog post. I now give up, and move on.

What have I been doing since I returned to NZ? Not a lot, really. I have applied for lots of jobs I found in the newspaper or on www.seek.co.nz, but I haven’t had an interview for any of them. I have had an interview with an employment agent. I hope she has better luck on my behalf than I have had on my own. I have made a little money. I sold a few bracelets I made on www.trademe.co.nz. But the amount of money I made no where near makes up for not having a job.

One thing I have been doing a lot of is watching DVDs. I rented Pan’s Labyrinth and Tideland from the video store. Pan’s Labyrinth was wonderful. It felt like a proper traditional fairytale (i.e. dark) rather than some airy-fairy Disney concoction. It struck a chord and resonated. Four and a half stars out of five. Tideland was disturbing, as it was obviously intended to be. There are many deep and powerful messages in Tideland, about innocence, resilience and the power of imagination and denial. However the movie is not for everyone, and I can see that many people would be disgusted by it. I wouldn’t give it to my mother to watch. She definitely wouldn’t understand. Four stars out of five.

Since August I have seen several different series on DVD. My mother has all four seasons of Enterprise on DVD and I have watched the first season and part of the second. I’m not a big Trek fan and Enterprise isn’t as good as earlier Star Trek series, but it is worth watching, if only when there is nothing else to watch. Oh, and I think I’ll just take the time to say that I don’t like Captain Archer.

My cousin lent me series one and two of the new Battlestar Galactica. My mother who is a big Sci Fi fan doen’t like it. She says it is ‘too dark’. I say that her memories of the old series are ruining her enjoyment of the new one. She says ‘Starbuck’s a woman!’ thereby proving my point. Anyway, I’m rather enjoying the new Battlestar Galactica. I don’t think it is too dark and gritty, I think the old series was unrealistically bright. Considering the situation the fleet is in, of course things would be grim. I like the new Starbuck and Boomer characters, the two who were changed from men to women. I like how the cylons have a story of their own to tell. I give the show four stars out of five. It misses out on that fifth star because of the over-use of sex and/or drunken tomfoolery as a plot driving tool, and also because the new Apollo is a git and I don’t like him.

My Mum bought a new series last week. I watched the whole thing over the weekend, twelve episodes on Saturday and all the rest on Sunday (and very early Monday morning). What TV series could have driven me to undertake such a marathon? Why, Heroes of course. (I don’t usually do this, but) OMG, SQUEEEE!!!! It’s so good! I couldn’t stop watching it, I just had to keep going and going until my eyes and my backside hurt. It was imperative. Eight stars out of five. No, nine! My favourite character is Peter because he is the Clark Kent/Peter Parker of the series. Not that he is exactly like either of those characters, but close enough. I also like Claire because her talent is one of the more intimately disturbing and yet she dealt better than most. And who couldn’t like Hiro? Even his manner of speaking Japanese is cute! The second series starts soon here. The ‘coming soon’ ads are already playing. Lucky!

I’ve started watching a few shows on TV. On Mondays I watch Robin Hood. Superficially light but in actuality rather dark, this newest incarnation of the old story has just the right balance of humour and death. But I’m not too sure about the costumes. It seems what they’ve tried to do is make the clothes look like clothes of the period and modern clothes at the same time. Presumably they have done this to appeal to younger audiences, to say ‘Hey, those cats back in the medieval period, they could be cool too’. Instead, it just looks like they were working with an incredibly small budget and couldn’t afford to make proper period costumes. Three and a half stars out of five.

On Tuesdays I watch The Tudors. Henry, although lacking the light hair he was known for, is sufficiently psycho, and Catherine of Aragon is as deserving of pity as she should be. The show is not quite historically correct, but even so good viewing. Three and a half stars out of five.

On Wednesdays, I watch The Nine. It’s fairly good, and has an interesting concept, but I don’t have a favourite character yet which is a bad sign.

On Friday I watch Boston Legal. Everyone else here has seen it all before, but it is my first time seeing it. I’m told that it gets wackier as the series progresses. I think it is already rather wacky. I haven’t seen enough of it yet to form a proper opinion, but I am definitely going to keep watching it. Denny Crane.

On Sundays I watch Doctor Who. It is the third of the new seasons that is playing on TV now, although I had previously only seen up to half way through the second. I still don’t know how Rose left, only that she is alive and the Doctor sinks into depression every time she is mentioned. I actually rather miss Rose. Not that Martha is a bad companion, but the Doctor/Rose partnership was such a good one. Oh, well. So far three and a half stars out of five, although that rating may go up once I have forgotten those terrible New York accents.

There is another show I keep watching and shock, horror, it is a reality TV show. It is called Miami Ink and it is about a tattoo shop in Miami. The artists who work there are all very talented. Their tattoos are works of art, above and beyond what most tattooers are capable of. I watch it for the art

And that, basically, is my life at the moment. Sad, isn’t it?

Tazawako

On the 5th of August I went to Lake Tazawa in eastern Akita Prefecture. I wrote about the trip several weeks ago. Here are the pictures.

Tatsuko (?) Hime. I think I've got that name right. She is a character in a local folk tale.

Sumiko and myself.