The Kiwi Files

A New Country!

2010-06-06T05:31:00.010+12:00

So, finally, we get around to blogging again, to using this web site to keep a record of our busy lives. In March, 2010, we left Dunedin with heavy hearts. Summer was winding down and we had to say goodbye to some very good friends, and some great bubble tea, and make our way home to the US.

Before we left, we went on an odyssey through New Zealand. Driving 4000-km in a month and seeing so many beautiful places on the way. So, over the next few weeks I'll be posting some of the best photos from our trip and reliving our adventures as I do so.

Now, we're in Michigan, in Grand Rapids, starting a new adventure. And so I'll post some photos of some of the new fun we've been having too.

Alright, let's get started, on the first week of our trip through New Zealand:

In Search of Ambergris

2010-02-23T06:40:00.004+13:00

So, I'm writing a book. I'm not sure how it happened. I've always assumed I'd write a book at some point. And here I am in the middle of one, and under contract with Harper Collins Australia. My book is about ambergris, which is a fancy French word for whale poo. Actually, as you'll learn if you ever read my book, it's poo and a whole lot more.

Ambergris is expelled by sperm whales only, and probably by only one percent of them. It comes out sticky and black and fecal and fairly unpleasant. But then it floats. It floats. And floats. And floats. Years pass. Decades. The ambergris changes, molecule by molecule. Photo-oxidized by sunlight and altered by seawater, it travels in vast loops, carried by slow and irresistible ocean currents. And then it washes up somewhere. By then, it is a completely different thing: a fragrant gray, waxy lump, covered with a resinous rind.

Anyway, my book is about finding some, and it'll be published by Harper Collins in Australia and New Zealand in September 2011. A long way away. Last month, we visited Stewart Island in search of ambergris. A rugged, windswept and isolated place, Stewart Island sits in the southern seas, 20-miles south of New Zealand's south island. Traditionally rainy and stormy, we enjoyed sunny weather for the 5-days we were there. I even took a flight in a tiny single-engine Cessna over to the west coast beaches, where people find ambergris all the time. I didn't find any. But the search was worth it!

My true calling.

2010-02-22T21:51:00.004+13:00

I have a confession to make. I love science. I've always loved it and have been working in science for years. But it's not my true love. My true love is surfing. I've always felt, somewhere deep in my soul, that I was always meant to be a surfer. So, finally, I took it into my own hands to gather my friends and to learn how to surf. Was it everything I dreamt it would be?

Totally rad.

Am I any good? All I can say is ... practice practice and all is coming.* (ETK)

(Photos above: Smails Beach, Dunedin, NZ; Max and mom on a board; Max checking out the surf; The ladies and I head for our first encounter with the ocean. )

*Thanks for learning with me, Rachel, Chew Ling and Amy; thanks for teaching me, Chris; thanks for supporting me, Chris and Max.

Port is home.

2010-02-21T21:21:00.004+13:00

We never knew that finding a house in Port Chalmers would turn out to be a little hidden treasure. Here are a few pictures of us on a night out in Port:

Enjoying a Blackbeard's Revenge pizza (pepperoni, salami, green and red capsicum and chillies) at Small Poppy Pizzeria. Yum.

Max loves pizza. Especially from Small Poppy.

Not our regular takeaway, but one of the two takeaways in Port. The other one has Chinese takeaway, too.

The PORT in all its glory. There's even a cruise ship docked at the port. One of our favorite things to do is go to the overlook to see the cruise ship that has docked for the day. Without fail, Chris and Max will try to wave at people on the ship to see if they will wave back. (ETK)

Happy Birthday, Max!

2009-12-23T21:41:00.005+13:00

Firstly, dear readers, I'd like to apologize for the absence of posts in the last few months. Sometimes, things just get busy. We've been fortunate enough to enjoy visits from family, and I've been working on a book, and we've been raising Max, and the blog took a back seat. But no longer! We're back and eager to start posting again. Buckle in.

And we have good reason to start again. Max turned one last week -- this year, at exactly 12:15am on December 20th, Emeline and I were fast asleep in bed, snoring like hobos in warm dumpsters. This is because raising a one-year-old human is tiring. But a year earlier our lives changed forever -- and for better -- at 12:15am, in the early hours of an otherwise normal Saturday morning, when we welcomed our beautiful little monster into our world.

So, this was an auspicious day. Emeline baked a cake -- a big, iced chocolate cake -- and we had a quiet little dinner with our favorite small human. The next day, we invited some friends over too, so they could celebrate Max with us, which meant more cake. The photos below are from our little Kemp dinner, with Max first tentatively exploring the cake, wondering why we lit it on fire, and then soon realizing everything was fine and it wouldn't hurt a bit to smear the icing over his face and hair and neck and clothes and high chair and parents.

We'd just like to say: Happy Birthday, Max. We love you!

Photos of Christmas to follow soon.

Father's Day

2009-09-12T06:43:00.004+12:00

Last weekend, we headed out to the beach to celebrate New Zealand Father's Day. This was an inaugural event! Not to be missed. Max had no idea what was going on, but we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and got a bagful of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and headed to Tomahawk Beach.

Max enjoyed the beach and we enjoyed the fried chicken. Little Max is a little over 8-months-old now. He's getting mobile, crawling a little bit more every day. He's speaking more too and, last Sunday particularly, graced me with plenty of "Da-da-dad-dad," which we've convinced ourselves is his version of, "Dad."

I captured both our favorite and least favorite part of the day on video. This is Max deciding to test whether Tomahawk Beach tastes as nice as our fried chicken.

Resemblance?

2009-09-01T20:47:00.004+12:00

Me, on the right, with my sister Deb and my twin brother Stuart, circa 1974.

Max, a few weeks ago. The poor little man looks like his dad a bit.

Perfect Day

2009-08-18T20:24:00.006+12:00

Last Sunday was a perfect day. So were the few that preceded it. We got up when Max got us up; we went to the swimming pool nice and early as the sun came up over the harbor; and then we went to Capers, one of our favorite breakfast spots, for a proper breakfast. Perfect. And then home for a nap. I can't think of a better way of spending a Sunday. We only have another four days before we can do it all over again.

I Can See A Rainbow

2009-08-01T14:23:00.004+12:00

A couple of mornings ago, we woke up to the strangest sky. It was as if it was lit by an artificial light -- cloudy and sunny at the same time. New Zealand skies always seem to produce some truly magnificent rainbows and not long afterward we saw a huge, complete uninterrupted rainbow stretching from one side of the valley to the other, arcing across the sky and ending somewhere over the ocean, out of our sight. Max was not as impressed as we were. He assumes, I think, that if he sees something once he'll have lots of chances to see it again. Seven-month-olds! We tried to convince him that this isn't something you get to see every day. He was interested mostly in other things. He has a toy moose with chewable ears. He's chewing on it as I type this. Rainbows are less interesting than chewable moooses. Emeline, on the other hand, had to be restrained from driving to the little white house on the other side of the hill and demanding to see the pots of gold.

Maori Week Continued: Fish and Fishing

2009-07-30T10:26:00.007+12:00

In a previous blog entry, I told the Maori story of New Zealand and how the north and south islands were named. Here is an abridged version of the story, along with a word lesson, prepared by Te Tumu - School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies for Maori Language Week 2009 at the University of Otago:

ika = (noun) meaning fish
Pronunciation: i = as in "see"; ka = as in "cut"

hi = (verb) meaning to fish
Pronunciation: i = as in "heed"

Combined, hi ika means "to fish for fish".

Maori Language Week (July 27-31)

2009-07-29T10:16:00.005+12:00

To all of our non-Kiwi readers: Did you know that New Zealand has 3 official languages? Besides English and Sign language, Maori is the third official language of New Zealand.

This week is Maori Language Week in New Zealand. The country takes one week out of the year to reflect upon the importance of the Maori language and reminds those living here to become familiar with Te Reo Maori, if we don't already speak it. This week, I will post some Maori words and phrases for you to learn along with us.

-o-

To be honest with you, I was completely unaware of the Maori - the native people of New Zealand and the language - when we first moved here. And I consider myself a knowledgeable person. But I never learned about New Zealand in school, except for where it is located. So since moving to New Zealand, I have been curious and amazed by the Maori language and the fact that it permeates quite a bit of every day life here in New Zealand.

If you take the time to look at a map of New Zealand, you'll notice that a few of the cities throughout the country are in Maori: Whangarei, Kaitaia, Taranaki, Moeraki, just to name a few. But most cities have both an English name and a Maori name. For example, we live in Dunedin (Maori name = Otepoti). Other examples: Wellington (the capital city) = Te Whanganui a Tara; Auckland = Tamaki Makaurau; Christchurch = Otautahi.

This week on Sunrise (our favorite television morning news program), the weatherman Josh gives us the weather on a map with the Maori city placenames. On Monday, I missed the weather in Dunedin because I forgot that its Maori name is Otepoti. I wonder if this happened to a lot of other people in Dunedin, including the locals? (ETK)

New Sunday Routine

2009-07-20T07:51:00.006+12:00

Everyone who has had a baby or has a baby knows that routines are important.

Over the past month of so, we have developed a new Sunday morning routine. Before Max, the weekends used to be filled with lazy mornings reading in bed, drinking coffee and then heading off to the Farmer's market or the beach. And while we still drink coffee and go to the market, only now it's with Max. So, as a new family we've developed a brand new morning routine on Sundays: Yum Cha.

Yum Cha ("drinking tea") is the Cantonese ritual referring to the actual event of gathering with family and friends for dim sum. Dim sum ("a bit of heart") is the name of the cuisine served at Yum Cha consisting of a wide range of small dishes (steamed pork buns, sweet and sour wontons, Chinese sausage with rice, Egg Tarts, Chinese pork triangles) served with Chinese tea.

Sunday mornings, rain or shine, we all gather into the car and drive into town anticipating the delicious dim sum at Golden Harvest Chinese restaurant. It's sort of hidden, Golden Harvest, tucked into an almost secret walkway amongst all of the clothing and tat shops on George Street. We happened upon it one day while going for a walk with Max in the pram.

Most mornings we're the first people to arrive. As the morning progresses, the restaurant fills mostly with Asian families and students. The waitresses know that we're regulars. One even mentioned to Chris, "You must really like Yum Cha. You're here every week."

No kidding.

It's part of our routine. (ETK)

Selves-portrait: Me and Max at Golden Harvest

Max and Chris eating dim sum. Notice all of the toys to keep Max occupied.

Spicy Szechuan Soup - And they're not kidding ... check out all the dried red chilies!

Spicy!

Enjoying our Sunday.

Funny Faces

2009-06-26T08:20:00.004+12:00

Just the other day, Max started making funny faces. To be more accurate, Max started making new funny faces. He's always made funny faces, but these are particularly enjoyable. We're not sure if he's exploring his mouth, playing with his lips, trying to soothe sore gums, or just goofing around.

Ferberization

2009-06-20T06:36:00.004+12:00

What a busy month. You'll have noticed the absence of regular posts. Most of you will have stopped even checking the blog. Yeah, well. We're back. We took a break -- or at least, I took a break -- mostly because of the gathering exhaustion that looking after a small baby seems to generate.

Max never slept. Friends sent us the cute obligatory photos of their babies, sleeping in the bath, or in a pile of fresh laundry, or in a high chair in the middle of eating. It never happened with Max. Never. Never happened. He was like a ninja: always alert, always ready to pounce. And we indulged him. At night we rocked him to sleep and held him in our arms. If he woke up, we would run to calm him. He ruled the house, like a tiny bad-tempered emperor who should not be disobeyed. His rule was bloody, that's for sure.

Finally, and fortunately, things devolved enough that we were sleeping two hours a night. Max was sick and couldn't breathe well and he'd wake up if we even stopped rocking him for a moment. Something had to be done. So last week we sleep-trained him. We used the Ferber technique, which is well-described all over the place but email me if you want information. For a first-time parent, it's a huge deal: the guilt, the crying, the urge to pick him up, the hope that it works. A misinformed friend told me it was torture. We did it anyway. Within three nights Max was sleeping for hours at a time in his own cot. On the fourth night he slept for eleven hours without making any noise. We have a new baby.

Thank you, Dr Ferber. If I could, I think I would kiss you.

A Poetic Weekend

2009-05-20T17:22:00.004+12:00

A weekly visit to the sea
Hunting for treasure on the seashore.

It's cold and I see my breath.
The sea air is invigorating.

Sparing a few seconds to pose for a photo or two.

The Story of New Zealand

2009-05-19T13:41:00.003+12:00

One of the latest news stories in New Zealand is the debate to officially name the North and South islands of New Zealand. Apparently, these names aren't geographically official, so it's been suggested that the islands be named with their Maori names -

North Island : Te Ika-a-Maui (meaning the fish of Maui)
South Island: Te Wai Pounamu (meaning the canoe of Maui)

Here is the beautiful traditional Maori story of how New Zealand was created and the origin of these names:

Once upon a time there was a Maori god named Maui who was the youngest of 5 children in his family. Maui's 4 older brothers didn't like him very much and often left him out when they played. Maui, however, was very creative and imaginative on his own doing things like taming the sun and capturing fire. One day the 4 older brothers decided to go fishing, of course without Maui. But Maui was clever and snuck onto the canoe, Te Wai Pounamu (the canoe of Maui - the South Island), and hid there. To show his brothers that he indeed was able to fish well, Maui attempted to catch a fish and ended up catching the biggest one of all, Te Ika-a-Maui, the fish of Maui (the North Island).

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

2009-05-04T03:56:00.008+12:00

It's autumn now, and the trees are bare for another year. And it's cold outside too. Frost on the ground, and snow in the forecast. It's our second May here but it still seems strange. Dad had to buy some new slippers! I got a new hat. I like it when it's cold because it means I can stay inside, and bounce in my Jolly Jumper, and read with Mom, and compare slippers with Dad.

Central

2009-04-19T10:18:00.005+12:00

Last weekend, we loaded our little nuclear family into our car and drove three hours west, into the dry scrub and the mountains and valleys of Central Otago. Wine and fruit country. Last year, before Max was even much of an idea, we went to Queenstown and, on the way we stumbled on the Clyde Wine and Food Festival. You get your own wine glass as you enter and you make your way around the stalls, tasting wine after wine until they all start to taste similar but you don't care because you're happy.

This year we thought we'd take Max along too. We stayed in a hotel for the first time with him ... I think he slept better than he does at home. We had a great time -- tasted a lot of wine and bought apples, pears, quinces, and dried fruit to bring home -- and we can't wait to get out there again.

Here are some photos from the trip. My favorite is the one of Max and Emeline by a statue in Lawrence, on the way. We really just stopped to use the public bathrooms and this statue was outside. We now know Max really likes statues.

Our Littlest World Traveler

2009-04-03T09:21:00.005+13:00

Skilled migrant. Work to residence. FBI fingerprints. Criminal record. Permanent resident.

We've been plowing through applications to become Permanent Residents of New Zealand. This means that we'll be able to have access to the national health care, subsidies (like child care subsidies) and be able to apply for credit cards and financing. We'll also be able to travel in and out of New Zealand as we please, without visas, as long as we live.

We thought of applying almost a year ago, but the application fee was a little too steep for us. Now that we've decided to take the leap, we have another little member of our family to add to the application. But we need a few things for Max in order to apply. One being a passport.

We're world travelers, me and Chris, and so why shouldn't Max? I've tried to take a passport photo of him, but he's not very good at staying still for the photo. You can tell me which one you like the best:

Some Recent Photos

2009-04-01T19:58:00.005+13:00

A New Friend

2009-03-29T05:52:00.003+13:00

This guy came with the house. Every day, I take a shower and open the bathroom window and this snail appears on the inside of the window, racing across it. I thought snails were supposed to be slow. He's fast. I like him.

Drool: Action Shot

2009-03-22T09:28:00.005+13:00

Max Laughing

2009-03-16T17:47:00.005+13:00

Max decided to start giggling yesterday. Before that, his laugh was a mixture of cough and gurgle and it was one of the loveliest sounds either of us had ever heard. Yesterday, without warning, the cough/gurgle became a proper giggle and now we have a new favorite sound.

The View From Our Back Yard

2009-03-15T21:18:00.008+13:00

And this was the view from our backyard tonight, as the sun went down over the hills and the ground grew cold and the sunlight struggled through the mist. It's quite a thing to be able to see from our window. At the foot of these hills, dotted with sheep, is the road I drive down to get to work every day.

The View From Our Living Room

2009-03-15T09:45:00.006+13:00

I took this photo a few nights ago from inside our new living room, with the front door open. This is our view. The hill you can see to the right is Mount Cargill, the highest point in Dunedin. The bright strip of water in the middle of the frame is Otago harbor, which stretches south all the way from Port to Dunedin. There's a road that you can't see on this photo that twists and turns for about 8-miles and I drive it, or ride the bus along it every day.

Great Lines From Great Books #4

2009-03-13T08:01:00.006+13:00

The other day, trapped inside by hail and relentless winds, which lasted for about three days and nights and howled around the corners of our little house, I read Max to sleep with a spirited performance of Othello: a one-man show, with different voices for all the characters. Not too shabby. Did he care? He was asleep about two minutes after this photo was taken.

But I read this line and I enjoyed it very much. Who can say anything better than Shakespeare anyway? Here, Brabantio is talking about his daughter, who has just brought shame upon him by having the nerve to marry a black man (times don't change much do they? This was 400-years ago.). And his words are so lovely ... although I'd be happy enough if Max married a black woman.

Brabantio: ... for my particular grief is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature that is engluts and swallows other sorrows and is still itself.

We heart Maria (our midwife).

2009-03-11T11:06:00.004+13:00

(**Note: Max is actually almost 12 weeks old. This post is a little late ... but as you can imagine, I've been a bit busy and couldn't post it sooner!)

Max is officially 7 weeks old and today was the last day that Maria came to "officially" see Max as our midwife. 7 weeks postnatal, you say? Yes, it's postnatal week 7 and we are (were) still having visits from our midwife.

New Zealand, as I've said before, is a very funny place. There are many things that are strange and new to us, one of them being mandatory midwifery care for pregnant women. We first met Maria when I was 5 weeks pregnant. We were wide-eyed Americans, eager to start prenatal care for our first pregnancy. Maria thought we were silly for having booked so early with her. (But she didn't tell us this until further along in the pregnancy when we got to know her. :)) I was very anxious to have a midwife, as this was not how I knew it would have gone if we were still in America. Pregnancy to me was sterile, white walls, serious discussions, planned inductions, and a guess-who game of which doctor would show up at the labor. But now that I am in New Zealand, it became a whole new ball of wax ...

40+ weeks later and on the day of our discharge from Maria's care, I can look at midwives and the practice of midwifery with new (well, 40+ weeks old) eyes. Midwifery is certainly a calling and can sometimes be a thankless job. But I think that Maria is mainly in the business of midwifery not for the thanks, but for the blessing to bring beautiful new humans into this wonderful world. Maria was made to be a midwife. She is patient, compassionate, careful, respectful and loving. She cared about me during my pregnancy. She heard every complaint of my aches and pains, answered all of our silly and stupid questions, laughed at all of Chris's jokes and comforted me with every scared and anxious tear that I cried.

You can't make me believe that my gynecologist back in America (who would have been my obstetrician, too) would have done even half as good of a job as Maria. And I liked my Ob/Gyn in Cincinnati. At the time. But like I said before, she fit my idea of pregnancy - she was serious, sterile, humorless, emotionless and who knows if she would have been the one to birth Max.

But I realize that I'm lucky, too. Many kiwi women could tell you stories about a bad midwife. The system isn't flawless here. That's why I must sing the praises of Maria to let her know and for us to remember how special she is to our family. Every single visit (minus the scans and the actual labor), Maria traveled to our home. She was thorough with her check-ups, but not as invasive as it would have been in America (They prod you WAAAAY too much and really for no reason - trust me, ladies, it's not necessary.) We heard Max's heartbeat every visit and were reassured that he was healthy and happy all the time.

And although my labor was as smooth as any woman could hope for, Maria was amazing during the difficult times: at week 19 when we thought Max had a heart defect; when I thought Max had settled breech close to the end of the labor and Maria quickly arranged a scan to reassure us that Max was perfectly anterior; and most importantly, during our postnatal period. All I can say is breastfeeding wouldn't have gone so smoothly without Maria's patience and persistence.

It's obvious that I could go on about Maria and midwives. But I won't. I just need to say thanks to Maria for supporting us throughout this most important event in our lives. Being far away from family and friends, we needed someone like you. And I know you're just doing your job. But if everyone did their job as well as you, well ... I imagine we'd all be much happier.

Thanks for everything.

Maybe we'll see you again ... but not too soon.

(Support midwives everyone!!!) (ETK)

Photo 1: Maria taking care of a tired mom and a brand new son.
Photo 2: Maria checking all of Max's vitals.

Port Chalmers

2009-03-08T12:48:00.002+13:00

Filthy Feral University of Otago Students

2009-03-05T20:58:00.011+13:00

I've been meaning to post an entry about this year's toga parade for a week or so, but we've been so busy moving house I never got around to it until now. It's things like this that made us want to move out of the city and go north to Port Chalmers. Every year the new University of Otago students dress in togas for the annual toga parade through the city streets. In the past, alumni and locals have lined George Street to watch the parade. Friends have told me that even just 5-years ago it was a very fun event.

This year was different. We didn't even know about the parade before we found we were driving through it, with Max in the back of the car in his car seat. On one side of the road, we saw a column of hundreds of fresh-faced youngsters in togas and sandals. Then, on the other side of the road, we saw these thugs, carrying trays of eggs. Very Clockwork Orange. A right bunch of droogs.

A second or two later, a wall of eggs rained down, thrown from the roofs and balconies of the buildings along the other side of the street from the students. It was like the Norman Invasion. Thus began a few hours of chaos, violence and stupidity. Violence breeds violence, and alcohol is a great catalyst for the reaction. There was pitched battle in the streets for a while. City police stood and tried to maintain order and had traffic cones and bottles thrown at them. Students were throwing around buckets filled with vomit and feces.

No, you read it right: vomit and feces. Oh, future captains of industry! You come to Dunedin from the farms and little drowsy two-street towns of the south and you're barely evolved enough to cross the street.

By the end of the night, students had rampaged through the city, in a drunken riot, breaking store windows, even stopping a car that was being driven down George Street in the city center and breaking one of its windows. What if that had been our car? With a two-and-a-half-month-old baby in the back? The streets were filthy. The buildings were covered with egg yolk.

I must admit though, I do like the headline on the web edition of the Otago Daily Times: "I came, I saw, I chundered -- toga parade turns into drunken rampage."

The next morning, the building I work in was being cleaned with high-velocity water jets to remove the egg stains from the walls, and the whole street had a gross thick eggy smell hanging above it. Pigeons sat lazily fussing on the balconies, full of eggs. The kids here are gross dirty nasty feral disrespectful cretinous poorly-raised drunken little criminals. I've said it before and people leap to their defense. No. They're nasty little things with no respect for other people and no sense of the value of anything that doesn't belong to them. You can say what you want about the US, but these kids would have been clubbed in the head and thrown in jail to bleed on the floor for the night. They'd have left university with a diploma in one hand and a criminal record to show their prospective employers in the other.

That's an education that means something.

New Houses

2009-03-02T11:03:00.002+13:00

We're in our new house now. Very tough weekend! Imagine having to move everything but also having to hold a baby at all times. Max doesn't sleep at all during the day (at all), so our options were either to move house at 4am in the dark, or for Emeline to hold him, at our old house or our new house, while I ran around moving things and driving between Dunedin and Port Chalmers; and then for me to hold Max while Emeline drove around and moved things.

Crazy. Impossible. Difficult. Challenging. Tiring. Chaotic.

And in the process, we almost forgot to stop and take the time to say goodbye to our old wonderful house, which we've been renting for a year. It was such a special place and a special time for us. We watched Emeline's belly get steadily larger and larger there; spent a wet and gray winter huddled under blankets there, shoving extra sheets against the curtains and the windows to stop the gusts of wind from billowing out the curtains like sails; we cooked a lot of great meals there; hosted friends and family there; we loved and laughed there an awful lot; and, of course, when he was a two-day-old little peanut, we took our brand new boy back from the hospital there, and rocked and shushed and cooed and sang to him in every room of the house at some point, at 3am, with his stubborn untired eyes shining in the almost dark.

Houses are just buildings. But they can be something more. And we managed to fill this one up with a lot of special things.

Goodbye, Hood Street!

We love you.

Fried Jam Donuts

2009-02-26T08:19:00.006+13:00

I want to talk for a moment about fried jam donuts. Here in New Zealand, on every major street, in every neighborhood, sits a greasy fish-and-chip shop, a modest squat little building with greasy yellow smoke curling from a greasy little chimney. They're usually owned by Chinese people and they are basically just a counter in front of a bank of bubbling vats of oil. There's usually a menu of chips and burgers, battered blue cod, oysters and sausages and a fairly extensive selection of Chinese dishes too.

It's delicious, quick, affordable, and extremely bad for you. If the fat doesn't kill you, the guilt will.

But there's a part of the menu that almost no sensible person would order from: It's the fried dessert section, which includes fried donuts, fried ice cream, and fried candy bars, etc. So, they take something that's already quite bad for you, and they throw it in oil and fry it, and then they roll it around in sugar for good measure.

The other night we finally tried a fried jam donut. $1.40 NZD. The exterior: fried golden-brown, crispy and crunchy with sugar. The interior: moist, warm dough, and jam made hot and runny, superheated by the frying. It was so uberdelicious. So wonderfully wrong. So tasty and sweet. So ... very good. So deadly.

We know we can never ever eat one again.

Bathtime

2009-02-25T21:41:00.001+13:00

Being spoiled.

2009-02-20T19:13:00.016+13:00

For the last 3 weeks, Max has been coddled, cuddled, spoiled and snuggled. He's the celebrity of the family having had his picture taken at almost all of his waking (and sleeping) moments. And all because he's the newest member of the family. Someone new to love and welcome into their lives.

We have been lucky to have my family (parents and sister) visit us from thousands of miles away. I say lucky because the new, sleep-deprived, extremely tired parents (us) had the chance to find some extra sleep, shower, brush teeth, and eat a few meals together. It's very likely that my family didn't even think that they were doing us any favors. They just wanted to meet Max. Hold him close. Hear him coo and cry. Watch him smile at the faces they made. But these very things gave me and Chris a welcome break to this new adventure called parenting.

Just a simple visit, for a simple reason: Max.

But the results were far more profound:
My parents saw me as a parent for the first time. Chris and I learned how to leave the house with Max for longer than an hour. We learned that sometimes Lolo (Grandpa) is best at calming a screaming Max (and that this is the first time my dad has ever held a baby since his own.) We know that we will return to the U.S. soon enough to be closer to our families.

My family visiting us here in Dunedin, meeting Max, staying at our rental house, helping us move into our new house, walking on our favorite beaches, eating at our favorite restaurants. ... they are witnesses to our life here in New Zealand. Somehow it makes it more real.

Chris and I know how difficult it is for anybody to visit us here in New Zealand. So naturally, we're thankful and appreciative to my family. Thank you.

You are already missed - mom, dad, and Jojo. We will see you soon and never be away for too long.

And don't worry, dad, Max will call you soon ... and often. (ETK)

More Dunedin Graffiti

2009-02-19T15:08:00.008+13:00

I like this one a lot. I've decided that, here in the Kemp household, we're all owls in a lark world (even Max, although he's only two-months-old and doesn't really know that he's an owl yet). I just think it's a good policy to follow. It makes sense.

There's something oddly beautiful about the phrase too. Owl in a lark world. I love it. It was there in the morning, by the railway station and the Saturday market sun. I bet it's already been scrubbed away or painted over.

By larks, probably.

Incidentally, the collective noun for larks is an exultation; and for owls, it's a parliament.

Here, in our little house, we are a parliament.

Just Like His Dad

2009-02-18T10:15:00.003+13:00

Max's doting paternal grandparents have sent, all the way from Greece, by the wonder of modern technology, some scanned thirty-five-year-old images of me as a baby. I was quite surprised to see that my son does actually look quite a bit like me. I'll try to find a photo later of Max from the same angle, to see if I'm just imagining the similarity.

We'll see if we can get some baby pictures of his mom up on here too.

DISH

2009-02-15T10:11:00.005+13:00

I wrote an article for a New Zealand-based glossy food magazine called DISH recently. What I really like about the magazine are the efforts that go into the production. It's a beautiful product, lovely images, good writing, full of interesting recipes to try. So I pitched them an article on harvesting and cooking with local seaweed. And they told me to write it.

It came out about a month ago. It's been fun. I've been recognized a couple of times, because there's a photo of me and Emeline standing in the water tasting seaweed. We went to our favorite breakfast spot and the server told us she'd seen it and asked herself, "How do I know those people?" before she worked out it was us. The same happened with a couple of coworkers, and the real estate agent who takes care of our house.

Yeah. We're famous.

Yaaaaaawn

2009-02-08T19:02:00.007+13:00

Life is tough. Seriously. When everything is done for you, and audiences applaud enthusiastically if you giggle at them, life is a seriously tough thing to get through. Poor Max. Seriously. How will you cope?

Port

2009-02-07T15:58:00.005+13:00

Emeline, Max and I are excited to report that we are landowners (or at least homeowners). We've taken the leap of buying a little house for our little family. A home is an important place for a child, and a rented house just doesn't cut it. My own childhood home was filled with its own mythologies, the hidden corners of the back garden, the closets converted into cramped afternoon dens. It had its own character. I knew the noises it made as it settled into the ground. Part of me will always be there. We wanted to give Max a place like that. So, we bought a house.

It's over there, in the photo, on the other side of the water. In Port Chalmers.

On March 23rd, 1848, a ship called the John Wickliffe docked at Port Chalmers, carrying settlers from England, some of whom had been on the ship since it left Gravesend the previous November. A couple of decades later, gold was discovered in central Otago and Port Chalmers became a busy port, a new world, a frontier, a dreamscape.

Port Chalmers -- or simply Port to those who live there: its steep thin streets, haunted by the tired ghosts of prospectors and pirates. Little box houses, with dusty model ships standing sadly in the windows. Fog rolling in off the Pacific.

For Max.

Cutest Picture of the Week

2009-02-03T21:34:00.002+13:00

Easily. No contest. Just getting a bath from dad and posing for mom.

Belly Laughs

2009-02-02T16:31:00.004+13:00

A couple of weeks ago, Max treated us to his first smiles. At first we thought he was grimacing through some nasty wind but, sure enough, they were big dimply grins. His eyes shine darkly and his chin doubles and then triples, with his amusement, until he looks like a little laughing Buddha.

When he smiles, we feel like the luckiest people in the world. It's like he's bestowing on us a gift.

The simplest gift: a smile.

Non parents, please forgive us these indulgences: we know they're boring to almost everyone but us. But Max has started to laugh now. As with almost all things, he entered this world unable to laugh but this week, he seems to be in the middle of learning how to do it properly. It starts with a smile, and then becomes a big gummy open mouth, accompanied by a strange noise, halfway between a cough and a strangled yawn. It's not quite right. His tongue isn't quite sure where to go. But he's got impeccable comic timing. And every day this strangled yawn becomes a little bit more like a giggle.

On the one hand, I can't wait until he finally giggles at me. It'll sound like music. On the other hand, when he's practicing, and throwing his little head back at some joke that only he hears, I think I could live happily in that moment for ever.

At the Beach

2009-01-28T21:38:00.009+13:00

I have to go back to work tomorrow. Boo. So we made sure we went to the beach today. The sun was shining and the sky was a bright blue bowl. For a while anyway. We drove north, through Port Chalmers (more on Port later -- we just bought a house there), to Aramoana: Maori for pathway to the sea.

I did a spot of fishing, buying a squid from the fishmonger on the drive there. I didn't catch a fish. I was put off by seals swimming and rolling through the green thick drifts of seaweed in front of me. And the occasional blue penguin bobbing past on its belly. And the seagulls diving into the water from high up in the sky to catch fish, with their wings folded back, making a sound like a stone entering the water.

Too much nature!

These are things I can't complain about, I suppose, even if they stop me from catching my dinner. I had a couple of great bites, though, which I missed (no excuse). My hands still smell of squid now.

Not good.

All Smiles

2009-01-27T20:53:00.002+13:00

Good Hair Days

2009-01-27T09:32:00.003+13:00

We're both quite hairy people in our own ways, and so we fully anticipated that Max would be a hairy person too. When he entered the world, we were so relieved he was healthy that we were willing to overlook the hairy back, shoulders and forehead. We have a little outfit for him that is made of a kind of string vest material and, when he wears it, he looks like a tiny little construction worker. Or a little swarthy Greek man, the tufts of hair sprouting from his shoulders.

I half expect him to start whistling at pretty women in the street.

But I thought it made him even more delicious -- like a little kitten. Now, though, Max is losing his baby hair. It's everywhere! It's in his bassinet. It's on his pacifier. I find little hairs in my mouth after I give him a kiss. It's in my food. On my pillow. On the table.

It's even right here on my laptop, sticking to my fingers as I type.

Tea Time

2009-01-22T19:42:00.011+13:00

Max is officially 6 weeks old now. I can hardly believe it. Time has flown by so fast. In less than a week, it means that Chris will return to work and I will spend the remainder of my 6 month leave as a "single" mom. (Luckily, my family is coming to visit for the next few weeks!) It's been amazing having Chris at home with me and Max. Not only did he tirelessly and lovingly take care of me and Max during these tough first 6 weeks, but he was able to create a special and strong bond with his son. That's something that most dads don't get the chance to do.

We've been telling everyone here that dads in the States don't get much time off, if any, for the birth of their baby. New Zealand allows dads 2 weeks paternity leave. On top of that, Chris benefited from the Christmas holiday break and used some vacation time.

We're lucky here. The system is kind to new parents. And so are our employers (the University and bosses). Life here in Dunedin is kind to new parents. Things are laid-back. Slow.

We're able to BREATHE.

Take for instance: tea time. When Chris returns to work, he'll fool himself into thinking that he's working hard ... until it's tea time. At around 10:30am and 3pm, Chris and his co-workers will stop working and ritualistically gather to the tea room for a morning/afternoon tea break. Many even plan experiments ahead of time so that it doesn't clash with tea time. Or, like in my department, tea time is planned days in advance. And has a theme to it. (ETK)

(**Chris - Max and I will miss having you at home. We're the luckiest. Thanks.)

44th

2009-01-22T17:41:00.004+13:00

Yesterday, for some strange reason (a little boy called Max), we were up at 5:30am to watch Barack Hussein Obama become the 44th President of the United States. Regardless of our background, beliefs and hopes, it was stirring to see history being made far, far, far, far away in a country that we love, full of people we love.

It was cold there and it's warm here. And it was Tuesday there and already Wednesday here. But what was remarkable there was still wonderful and exciting and remarkable here too.

La lucha continua!

Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit

2009-01-19T14:25:00.008+13:00

To our considerable disappointment, Max has forgotten how to sleep. For a while there, he knew how to sleep. And now he's forgotten. You can see him thinking about it, trying to remember how he did it. But he's definitely forgotten.

A good friend of ours, Jackie, sent us the book The Happiest Baby on the Block, by a doctor called Harvey Karp. People talk about this book with quiet reverence like it's a book of secret spells, so we were excited to get it.

Karp has some really interesting theories. The most unusual one, to me, is that our ancestors gave birth to babies with smaller heads and carried them for longer than we do; but that evolution gave us larger brains and bigger heads, requiring women to give birth earlier in their pregnancy, before a baby is really ready for the outside world. So they come out at the start of what he calls the fourth trimester, completely unprepared for life. And they're not happy about it.

Lots of babies are fussy and cry a lot during their first three months -- the fourth trimester -- and, once you've fed and changed them, the only way to really calm them is to mimic the womb, because that's where they came from and that's where they really want to be again. This involves lots of swaddling, and rocking, and lots of white noise to calm them.

And so, at 4am this morning, while Emeline swaddled and cooed and rocked and patted a restless Max, I downloaded an album of sounds of the sea, with song titles like Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit, and Ocean Surf in a Hidden Cove. And then, Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: with The Dry Season; and, predictably enough, The Rainy Season.

The rain forest tracks were a bit scary: lots of strange birds with screeching calls, against a backdrop of insect noises and water dripping from the wet canopy above.

So I made a playlist on my iTunes instead -- 5 continuous hours of Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit. Then we slept, lying in our floating bed, adrift, almost submerged by the sounds of breakers collapsing on the shore, gulls in the distance, which filled our room. And -- last night at least -- Maxwell Ezra Kemp, a little boy who already has the sound of the sea in his soul, slept.

Tonight, it's back to our briny room, with its kelp-colored curtains, for another voyage into uncharted waters.

Max

2009-01-18T11:17:00.003+13:00

Four-Weeks-Old!

2009-01-17T09:13:00.004+13:00

Deal or no Deal

2009-01-16T19:29:00.007+13:00

Okay, so every weekday, at 9am, Deal or no Deal is on the TV. It's a sad aspect of parenting, but something I once groaned at is now a high point of the morning. I'm probably on my second or third cup of coffee by the time it comes on, and maybe that contributes to my excitement. Also, a few hours of infomercials end with Deal or no Deal, so that helps too. If I ever see the guy with the ladders or the man who puts gravel in his frying pans I'm not responsible for my actions.

Anyway.

Neither Emeline or I were huge TV watchers before we left the States. Moving to New Zealand increased our viewing hours, simply because lots of things close early here and Dunedin is a small and simple town.

But when Max came our viewing exploded!

Booooom.

We're captive in our own house really for the first 6-weeks. Max feeds every 4-hours, and spends the time between feeds pooping and crying and looking at things, which is fine because we seem to be biologically programmed to find this a wondrous joy. It is. He pooped this afternoon just after I'd taken the previous diaper off -- and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Anyway.

So, we've never really watched Deal or no Deal before. This is either the Australian or New Zealand edition. We're not sure. But the contestants seem really really bad. Someone who watches the American edition will have to let us know, but do people often stubbornly refuse deal after deal until they have only two really bad cases to choose from? Do they do that there? Do they? They do it here.

In the past couple of weeks, I've seen people win $2, or $1, or 10c several times. They refuse all offers from the banker until they're left with the one case they selected in the first place. Emeline, Max and I are all shouting, "Take the deal." It's almost like no one's explained the rules to them. Just the other day, this woman had two cases left: the one she'd chosen and the last other one out there.

Two cases: $1 or 10c.

Banker's offer: 75c

She won: 10c.

I laughed as much as when Max pooped on me today.

And then I made another cup of coffee.

Having a Bath

2009-01-14T21:01:00.004+13:00

Things have been going pretty well in the past few days. Max is feeding well, and growing like a houseplant. Sometimes he even treats us to five hours of continuous sleep in the middle of the night. We've adapted. Five hours is more than enough sleep to get through a busy day. With coffee.

We watch the sun come up; we watch the sun go down. Things happen in between.

Here in our house, late at night, evening TV becomes BBC news through the night, which becomes brainless infomercials just before 6am, which become amusing reality shows an hour later, like Animal Extractors, where animal removal specialists trap raccoons and bats and bears and snakes from California back country and release them somewhere else, then Deal or No Deal, Rachael Ray, Tyra Banks and the juggernaut of daytime TV, the lunchtime news, then kids shows, current affairs, Survivor, Gordon Ramsay, CSI, the weather and sports round-up, and it starts all over again. And I watch my amazing wife and my beautiful baby, and I try to grab every second on the way.

Sometimes, though, Max still tests us. Last night, in desperation, after several hours of non-stop crying we put him in the bath with me. And, instantly, he stopped crying. Instantly. Mid-squeal. In fact, he fell asleep. The hours of screaming were worth it for this photo, which I think is one of my very favorites so far in his short but wonderful life.

A Dream

2009-01-13T12:13:00.004+13:00

I had a dream last night, which is just coming back to me now. In it, Emeline and I were discussing who Max most closely resembles. In the dream, I went into the bathroom and shaved off my beard and, when I looked in the mirror I looked exactly the same as Max. This is weird because he's a baby and I'm not. In the dream, I decided that I should try to make my hair look like Max's too, so I got some hair clippers out and starting trimming my hair and discovered I had a huge bald spot that I hadn't known about. It was about the size of a saucer. I wasn't upset by it, but I was surprised to find it there. It was pink and smooth and completely hairless.

Paging Dr Freud.

Anyway, who do you think he looks most like?

The Babywearers

2009-01-12T17:42:00.007+13:00

Wearing a baby in a sling takes a bit of getting used to, for sure. The first time we tried it, I eased Max in and he started screaming immediately. His neck looked funny. We were convinced we'd nearly killed him. It took us a lot longer to get him out again, too. I felt like I experienced my own version of birth. And the screaming! We hadn't killed him yet, but we were killing him now.

So we left it for a few days. And then we tried again. We waited until he was tired and fed and ambushed him, throwing him in the sling and letting him settle like a 5-pound sack of potatoes. He didn't budge, or scream, or fidget, or even wake up.

I attracted some stares and giggles from passers-by as I walked downtown around Dunedin with Max slung across my front in my stylish Argyle sling. But that's okay. If I'm weird, I'm weird. It was a complete success: no stroller, no backpack with a baby stuck in it, no screaming. He feels close to us this way, sleeping near our hearts, and we feel close to him.

Today, Emeline got her turn, walking along the windy beach at Aramoana, in front of a wall of surf, wearing Max like a piece of baggage. Not a peep for half an hour.

Decision: It's good to be a babywearer.

Kung Fu

2009-01-10T21:00:00.005+13:00

This afternoon, a rather agitated Max practiced his king fu moves on the changing table. This move is called Loaded-Diaper-Time-To-Eat. It's scary. Have you ever tried to put a diaper on a cat. Well, then.

"You see these moves?" he asked us.

"You see this?"

We did see it. Normally we wouldn't be scared of a three-week-old baby, but each of his fingers is tipped with a deadly, razor-sharp fingernail. So when he flails around like that, there's a chance someone's going to lose an eye unless they pay very close attention. This guy has attitude. He calls himself The Cobra.

"You see this?" he asked us again.

Yes, Maxwell. We see it.

And we don't want any trouble.

Bath Time

2009-01-09T22:07:00.004+13:00

Well, hello there friends. I just had a bath. How you doin'? Mom and dad gave me a bath because my diaper was so full there was really no other option. Bath time is my favorite. It's so good ... it's worth explosive bowel movements.

In the last 24-hours I screamed and turned red for approximately 12-hours, breastfed for about 9-hours, hung out and looked at things for 2-hours, and slept for about an hour. It's been a pretty busy day.

So I'm off to bed.

Later.

Kindness

2009-01-09T06:02:00.000+13:00

The first time was saw our neighbor, we were both scared. She's an older lady, and I think that she suffered a stroke at some point. She's hunched over, and one of her hands is a useless bent claw that she hangs a walking stick from. There's a white plastic brace on her ankle. Her face is slack and looks old and young at the same time. She listens to the television so loud that sometimes, early in the morning when everything else is quiet, I can hear it from my bed. Her front door is always ajar. She's unsettling. Sometimes we see her standing in front of other houses on the street, looking into bushes.

We saw her for the first time after we'd been living here for a month or so. We drove up our driveway, and she was standing in it, hunched over, holding little containers of unfinished food in her good hand. She told us she was walking through our garden to her compost heap.

"Well, if you ever need anything," I said, and she turned around and walked off before I was finished.

And then maybe a month ago, she walked down the driveway again as we were standing by our car and asked us if her cats had been bothering us. In the next couple of minutes, as it started to rain on us, we managed to work out that she was profoundly deaf, a little weak, and very lonely. I talked steadily louder and louder until I was shouting in her face. She still answered every statement with, "What?"

We saw her again a week later and she waved. And then we saw her again as we walked Max down the street in his stroller and she stopped to admire him, stroke his cheek and say how lovely he is. A couple of days after that, she stopped me and told me she'd been ill the following day and wanted to make sure Max was okay. I shouted that I hoped she felt better and she shouted back, "What?" The next day, she brought us our recycling container and a package from the end of our driveway.

And then tonight, answering a muffled banging on the door, there she was, holding a bag she wanted to give us: chocolates, tissues, baby lotion, wipes, baby powder, and shampoo. "For the baby," she shouted. Kindness. Simple. Unexpected. Little Max has an admirer.

He isn't scared by her at all, so I suppose we shouldn't be either.

6:30am

2009-01-08T18:01:00.004+13:00

This morning, after a feed, Emeline went back to bed and I stayed up bouncing a little monster. This was the view out the window, as the sun burned the mist from the valley.

Oh Dear!

2009-01-06T12:06:00.002+13:00

Mom and Max

2009-01-06T06:05:00.001+13:00

Zen

2009-01-04T19:26:00.018+13:00

We all know that Emeline has plenty of Zen-like qualities, and that she's a calm and gentle spirit.

I am not. I'm catching up now.

I believe, after just 13-days, that this is why we have children: to help us attain Zen. Last night -- or rather early this morning, at about 3am -- Max had his wet diaper changed by Emeline after a feed. About 15-minutes later, as I was soothing him, burping, coaxing, patting, rocking, cooing and singing to him in the dark, he filled his second diaper with something satisfyingly solid. It was like holding a plastic bag while someone dropped apples into it. It's a not entirely pleasant sensation, but I was pleased for him. There aren't many things he's mastered yet, so it's nice to see him excel at something. And, to my credit, I laughed quickly at the prospect of a second diaper change. I changed Max's diaper. This is no small event: every time we change his diaper, he screams. Loudly. Like we're torturing him. He screams great, windy, steadily escalating, bloodcurdling, earsplitting wails of molten grief as we take his clothes off. Afterward, I calm him. And then 10-minutes later, patting his back, whispering in his ear, another hot load -- like catching a well-pitched fastball in a perfectly positioned catcher's mitt. He turns red. He strains. He grunts with the effort. His whole body clenches, like a little pink comma.

Back into the bedroom for a third fresh diaper in 30-minutes, I imagine gaping landfills quickly filling with Max's diapers. In a hundred years, Max's dirty diapers will still be around. I won't. I ask him not to do it again. For a human who weighs less than 8-pounds he has quite a carbon footprint.

But we have no control. We are living under a dictatorship now. It's a cult of personality in our house. It's like North Korea. We have our own little Kim Jong-Il, right here under our roof. He's a despot. It's a banana republic. Max staged a coup. It was a bloody takeover of our lives. He's sleeping right now, quietly sighing to himself. But when he's awake he is unforgiving. He is arbitrary. And his control is total, unyielding.

Fortunately, he's relentlessly and unremittingly lovely. And slowly, one heavy, warm diaper at a time, our little despot is helping me attain Zen.

Happy

2009-01-02T19:42:00.003+13:00

You've just had a feed, you've pooped, it's 2pm and it's nice and warm inside, and raining outside: what more do you need?

5am

2009-01-02T11:42:00.003+13:00

The only good thing about 5am feeds: the sun rising over the sea on the other side of the hills, and filtering through the clouds in thick syrupy layers of orange and red.

Fooooood

2009-01-01T11:59:00.007+13:00

I'm quite proud of the fact that, despite our house being in complete disarray, and even though we're living through the long night of the soul that is baby rearing (which is sometimes dark and starry and sometimes bright and sunny, but still always feels like 3am) we have managed to eat well.

We haven't given in to the temptation of noodle bowls or takeout. Fresh ingredients and home cooked meals are a good antidote to fatigue and frustration -- although Max knows the precise moment we sit down in front of food, and his face crumples and turns red.

Last night, Emeline had some fresh salmon and I pan fried a locally-caught flounder in butter, fennel, lemon and herbs du Provence. It was delicious. At midnight a few hours later, when 2008 became 2009, Max was screaming and we were staring mindlessly at music videos on Channel 4 (dancefloor fillers: Michael Jackson, followed by The Village People, and The Pointer Sisters). A bottle of champagne sat in the refrigerator, unopened and forgotten.

I was glad I had a nice dinner.

Proof

2008-12-30T10:52:00.002+13:00

I'm posting these photos of the little man so that I can look at them when he's crying and convince myself that it will pass. Yesterday, between approximately noon and 1am this morning, I would have been looking at them most of the time, because the monster was screaming, shuddering, wailing, burping, thrashing, squealing, kicking, and screeching for about 45-minutes of every hour during that time period. At these times, it's like trying to calm an angry cat.

Don't say colic. Let's just call it the post-womb individuation period ... or something.

I'm sure the neighbors watch me walking around and around the balcony that wraps around our house, clutching a screaming baby, and are completely reminded of Michael Jackson. Maybe I should show them these photos too.

Goodbye

2008-12-29T12:25:00.007+13:00

Saying goodbye is never easy. And not being given a chance to do so is even harder. Emeline and I lost a good friend this week, suddenly, unexpectedly, like a hole in the world opening up, swallowing a person, and clamping firmly closed again. Paul shared an office with Emeline and he and his girlfriend -- two English doctors, working here in Dunedin -- supported us throughout E's pregnancy in a quiet, caring and decent way.

We'd had dinner and drinks with them one night six-months or so ago. We chatted at work functions. Later we went to a barbecue at their house, perched on the cliffs above St Clair beach. Paul and I stood on a little patch of grass behind the house and watched big slow waves pounding the coast. And we'd see Paul and Leanne in the crowds at every film festival at the Regent Theatre downtown -- Paul's curly hair was easily visible from half a theatre away. I told Paul once that I didn't know what I'd do if Max had curly hair like he did.

Paul was my surrogate sometimes, denying access to his and Emeline's office to anyone with a cold or a cough; or telling Emeline to leave the office and go somewhere else when workmen were drilling above it, or when the smell of fresh paint in the corridors was too strong.

Max was born just after midnight 10-days ago, on the Saturday before Christmas, and he came home the following Monday. As we carried him across the road to our car, we bumped into Paul. He was our first friend to meet Max. Hugs and handshakes. And Paul was moved and expansive, visibly touched to be seeing the little man who had steadily inflated Emeline's belly until she was almost perfectly round.

And then yesterday, on Sunday, just 5-days later, we switch on the TV and see Paul's photo on the news: Died in a jet boat accident in Wanaka on Boxing Day. It's his departmental work photo, which I see every day: earnest look on his young face, blue jacket that looks like it was obtained quickly for the photo, and a headful of only slightly tamed curly brown hair.

Gone. Here for a while, and then gone. He was 29-years-old -- a young and energetic doctor, far from home. We wish now that we'd spent more time with him, but we seemed to have plenty of time: émigrés far from home in a strange city will always have something to talk about. The world was a better place for Paul having been in it; but I think it would have been better still if he had been given a chance to be in it a little longer. Not so long ago I wrote that our son Max had gone from being an idea to a person overnight. Now our friend Paul has gone from being a person to an idea. He was a wonderful, decent, intelligent, careful, enthusiastic and funny person. The idea of him is just as wonderful and rich and complicated. And that hasn't gone anywhere.

We'll miss you Paul, but we're so glad to have the idea of you.

The First Week: Mission Possible

2008-12-28T02:53:00.008+13:00

Our little man changes every day, growing into his baggy pink skin like a puppy. We need to be patient. I feel sometimes like I'm nursing someone through a long sickness that makes him useless.

And he is absolutely useless! A beautiful little useless boy, whose arms and legs shoot out like a string puppet's and scare him awake, and who scratches his own face. We've carefully studied every inch of his body and pronounce him the most wonderful single word you can give to a newborn baby. He's normal.

Seven days in: three hourly feeds; nearly a hundred diapers; not enough naps; and a lot of miles walked around this house, bouncing, burping, coaxing, and whispering in every room, making deals with him for two hours of silence. I already owe him a lot of money. And when he finally sleeps, we perch over him and study his face vigilantly. We are always on high alert. I was just brewing a pot of coffee in the kitchen, while Emeline fed Max in the bedroom, and I panicked when the coffeemaker started to splutter water through the grounds. It sounded just like Max struggling with wind.

I nearly swaddled the coffeemaker. That would not have been good.

At 12:15am yesterday we celebrated his first week with us. He didn't join in. He was feeding. We've realized that most things on earth, small and large, happen while Max is feeding or hiccuping. The sun comes up over the peninsula, burning off the clouds in the valley. He hiccups. The sky behind the house gets dark again, as the clouds over the sea turn purple and violet. He hiccups. It rains. The wind blows. A car backfires. He's still hiccuping.

Our lives are brightly filled with wonder now, and the source of it lies swaddled, frowning and oblivious.

And hiccuping.

Eating

2008-12-25T14:02:00.006+13:00

For a little while today, we saw some light at the end of our tunnel. Our little baby Max, who has been stubborn and impatient when it comes to feeding, is starting to get the hang of the things. The change is huge. It feels like taking a boulder off your chest where you've been carrying it for the last six days.

When a baby doesn't want to feed and it's 4am, and he's bright red, hot and angry and wriggling like a cat, what do you do?

You keep trying. And Max has his own rules. For instance: sleep is completely overrated.

So the days become a list of feeding times, by which we start to measure our success. Feeding every 3-hours is the goal. Any less is failure. The writing on the list starts to look a little ragged at 11pm, worse at 1am, almost unreadable by 3am, and by 5am the scrawl on the paper is unfamiliar symbols. The missed feeds. The walking up and down the hallway, bouncing. The bouncing. Bouncing. I'm bouncing as I type.

And then a new day begins.

As our midwife says, Max suddenly has to learn to breathe, swallow and suck all at the same time. That doesn't sound so easy. And then once he's got the hang of it, he's full of wind and doesn't know what to do. It must be very traumatic to have to learn all this by yourself after 10-months of laziness in a nice, warm, cozy spot.

And as I've said to Emeline on an hourly basis since Max arrived in our lives: millions of years of evolution and human development, and this is what we get? I can understand if a baby doesn't get the hang of long division, or punctuation ... but eating?

Let's try harder, folks. As a species. Can we do that?

A little finger

2008-12-24T06:21:00.005+13:00

Max and Emeline are home. Our house looks like a disaster area. You'd think a battalion of soldiers stayed here for a few days while we were at the hospital: dirty mugs, pillows, shoes, clothes, used Kleenex, towels, books, newspapers, chaos, disorder. The lights are on in every room, all the time. It's hard to believe that the person most responsible for this mess weighs only 7-pounds, and measures nearly 21-inches.

There are things no one prepares you for. Everyone talks about the beautiful smell of a baby. Come and smell ours then. Phew! He's losing the little bit of umbilical cord left behind by the clamps and it smells like the end of a pier. Truthfully, just like the end of a pier. Hopefully, this doesn't last too long.

I've already learned a useful trick, though. If he's screaming, just stick your finger in the hole. No one can scream with a finger in his mouth. Try it with your own mouth and your own finger. It's not possible. I'm reminded of the story about the little boy who stuck his finger in a hole in a dam, and stopped the water from coming through. I mean, once I've stopped the screaming with my little finger, what do I do then?

A Long Day

2008-12-20T21:43:00.006+13:00

This morning, I left the hospital at about 8am after a long night watching and helping my baby being born. It was rainy and wet and gray outside. Sleep deprivation seemed to flatten everything and made me feel like I was walking through two dimensions. On the other side of the road, in the exact parking spot where I'd parked our temperamental Subaru 12-hours earlier, was a car that looked identical to it. But it wasn't the same car. It couldn't be. Because everything has changed.

When I parked our car there on Friday night, Emeline was puffing inside it and reciting the alphabet to try to stay calm through her contractions. That afternoon, I had been keeping track of the contractions by writing the time they arrived on the back of my hand. Outside the hospital, I fussed over our bags and asked Emeline, whose eyes were tightly closed and hidden beneath a frown, whether I should get back in the car and move it forward a foot or two so that it was better placed in its parking spot. Surprisingly, she was non-committal.

We now live in a vastly different parallel universe. Overnight, it became an alternate world. In this new world a boy with hairy shoulders called Maxwell Ezra Kemp, who has an English mouth and a Filipino nose, controls everything we do.

He wasn't here, and now he is. Between Friday and Saturday, an idea became a person. Life was simple, and now it is beautiful.

Maxwell Kemp: Whatever he wants, he shouts for it.

Does that make any sense?

Maxwell Ezra Kemp: December 20th, 2008.

2008-12-20T10:19:00.002+13:00

Supposedly, a picture is worth a thousand words. And I have no words. So, pictures should do just fine for now. Perhaps later the words will come.

Pink Lady Cake

2008-12-17T21:02:00.009+13:00

All the nesting has been done. We have a mountain of stockpiled diapers/nappies in a spare room, next to a tower of stockpiled baby wipes. If nuclear war breaks out, our baby will have a clean bottom. Emeline has too much time on her hands now. When no position is comfortable any more, you tend to move around a lot, so she's keeping herself busy cooking. We've had delicious soups, wonderful lasagne, chocolate chip cookies, and green tea cupcakes, with green tea-flavored icing.

To the non-pregnant come the spoils.

I've probably gained twenty pounds or so in the last few months. Hopefully, sleep deprivation is a good weight loss tool. Only time will tell.

Most recently, a good friend of ours celebrated a birthday. Even though she won't tell me which birthday she's celebrating, Emeline baked her an extravagant, gargantuan Pink Lady cake. Pounds of sugar, and butter, cupfuls of egg whites. Once made, it probably weighed about the same amount as my total weight gain so far. It was not an inconsequential cake: one piece would feed a family for three or four days. I had a piece all to myself, like a giant pink wedge. I felt like a mouse, gorging on pink cheese.

And I had the simple sensual pleasure of watching it being made, by a delicious pregnant lady who can't sit still on the couch long enough to be lazy. And so, even though I've gained weight, I won't turn down something that I might not get to see for a long long time once our new human arrives.

Stubborn.

2008-12-15T08:45:00.009+13:00

I've been telling myself that I'll get used to it all. Somehow and someday just "get it". But the frustrated scientist in me says that I should stop being so damn stubborn and start to learn it instead. I'm talking about putting a stop to walking around aimlessly at the grocery store wondering just how many kilos of peppers I need to buy. Or taking a step outside and thinking "yes, this is what 18 degrees Celsius feels like." I've just been deferring to Chris to do my converting for me or saying to people "that means nothing to me." I'm so obnoxious.

I just need to learn my conversions.

So, this blog entry is more for me than for any of you standard measurement readers. But if you ever visit us and need to answer or decipher the following questions:

Doctor: "How tall are you? How much do you weigh?"
Police: "Do you know how fast you were driving?"
Baker: "This cake is delicious! How much butter did you use?"
Midwife: "Congratulations! You're baby weighs --kilos!" Whaaaa??

you're good as gold, mate. (ETK)

MASS and VOLUME
1 gram(g) = .035 ounce (oz)
100 grams = 3.5 ounces
500 grams = 1.10 pounds (lbs)
1 kilogram (kg) = 2.205 pounds
1 kilogram = 35 oz
1 gallon (gal) = ~3.8 liters (L)
1 ounce (oz) = ~30 grams (g)

TEMPERATURE
degree Celsius (C) = 1.8C + 32 degrees Fahrenheit (F)

LENGTH
1 meter (m) = 3 feet (ft) = 1 yard (yd)
1 kilometer (km) = 0.621 miles (mi)
1 hectare (ha) = 2.47 acres (ac)

COOKING
1 teaspoon = 5 ml
1 tablespoon = 15 ml
3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon
1 fluid oz. = 30 ml
1/5 cup = 50 ml
1 cup = 240 ml
2 cups (1 pint) = 470 ml
4 cups (1 quart) = .95 liter
4 quarts (1 gal.) = 3.8 liters

Just in case ...
ILLUMINATION
1 foot-candle (fc) = 10.76 lux (lx)

More Dunedin Graffiti

2008-12-12T07:04:00.008+13:00

Heathers

2008-12-08T17:23:00.009+13:00

Last weekend, the city of Dunedin proudly observed its heritage with its annual Scottish Festival. Och aye, wee laddies and lassies. One thing we've really noticed here in New Zealand is that festivals and parades are very poorly organized, not well advertised, and subject to sudden and unexpected changes. You might walk out of a shop on George Street and find yourself in the middle of a parade no one has told you about, swept up by marchers and drummers and parade floats. At other times, you might go somewhere to attend an event advertised in the newspaper only to find that the times were changed and it already happened. Or it will happen three hours later. Or that it happened last week.

We're not sure why this is.

New Zealand?

The griping is only relevant because I turned up a full week late for the unveiling of the Queen o' the Heather contestants at the local mall. Queen o' the Heather: an annual beauty contest that takes place during the Scottish Festival. I found the idea of unveiling beauty contestants in a mall on a Saturday afternoon quite an intriguing mixture of the shiny and the tawdry -- sort of lowbrow and, well, lower brow. So, I was disappointed when I found out that when the newspaper (which comes out on Thursday) stated the unveiling was on Saturday, it meant the previous Saturday, as in, before the newspaper was printed.

Useful.

Fortunately, a week later, on the final day of the Scottish Festival, which was poorly advertized, and therefore poorly attended, Emeline and I watched the more important half of the beauty contest equation: the crowning of Queen o' the Heather.

There the contestants stood, expectant on the dais, under a gray Scottish sky, with the mayor of Dunedin -- Peter Chin, a Chinese man wearing a traditional Scottish tartan kilt -- waiting to find out who was the prettiest of them all. In the distance, Scottish games were being played. Piper bands were competing noisily in the arena. (Emeline might even write a post about my caber tossing adventures later.) Back on the dais. The tension. The girls. White knuckles. To one side, Queen o' the Heather 2007 waiting graciously. Trophies. The skirl of the pipes. The crown. The cabers. The mayor.

And the announcement: Yes, one of them won! We couldn't hear anything, but, indeed, one of them won.

And gracious was she, Queen o' the Heather.

The Weigh-In

2008-12-06T18:10:00.004+13:00

When you're nearly 38-weeks pregnant, there's an urge to weigh yourself even though your belly is now too large to see the bathroom scales. The other night, Emeline decided to answer her urges. But I'm not going to tell her how much she weighs, because she doesn't need to know. With about 2-weeks or so left though, Kemp 2.0 still has time to gain another pound.

Happy Thanksgiving - Revisited!

2008-12-02T13:15:00.008+13:00

Ah, half a week has passed since Thanksgiving and we're probably still digesting our dinner. Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. There are no gifts, or obligations, or expectations. It is simply a time to spend within the warm fold of family, whose members are willing to travel astonishing distances and weather systems (to an Englishman) to be together for just a few days. Even so, asking family to travel to New Zealand for Thanksgiving would have been asking a little too much and, at 35-weeks and change pregnant, Emeline and Kemp 2.0 weren't going anywhere farther than from the kitchen to the bathroom and back again.

And so we had to rely on ourselves. We are officially a family now, even though one of us is in utero and doesn't get to vote on what we have for dinner.

So we took the day off work, and we cooked for hours, preparing roasted potatoes and asparagus, gravy, and sage and onion stuffing with sausagemeat. Emeline made wonderful fresh cranberry sauce, and I oversaw slowly roasted pork shoulder, rubbed with a sage, olive oil and citrus zest concoction of my own making. For hours, our kitchen steadily grew steamier, and warmer, and better smelling. Emeline made a maple syrup pudding, which was ultra-delicious and should be made weekly from now on: imagine egg nog in a crust, unfortunately without the rum (this time anyway) and you'll have an idea of the sweet eggy taste of it. Even the weather complied and, despite it being early summer here, wet blustery winds shook all the TV aerials, and great dark thunderheads marched across the valley, coming in from the sea, hiding the hill behind our house, and drenching the city in cold wintry rain.

It was no substitute for time spent with family, and loud voices in the kitchen, but the three of us enjoyed our warm food-filled day together very very much. This is how traditions are begun. (ck)

Below: Chris making his lemon, orange, thyme, and sage marinade for the roast pork; roast pork being dressed by Chris; cranberry sauce on the boil; nutmeg and maple cream pie in the making; a pre-prandial Chris with our Thanksgiving lot (hasselback potatoes, sage and sausage stuffing, gravy, asparagus also shown).

Where Did I Put My Beachball?

2008-11-30T09:07:00.004+13:00

Great Lines From Great Books #3

2008-11-27T09:19:00.004+13:00

Reading Brighton Rock by Graham Greene on the beach seems more than a little appropriate. Many of Greene's novels had moral, political and religious themes to them; and Brighton Rock was one of what the literary critics call his Catholic novels.

This is Ida on religion, or maybe on beer. The interpretation is open: "At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing beside a glass of Guinness on a sunny day."

Amen.

Sea Lion Baiting

2008-11-24T08:12:00.015+13:00

I now have so many photos of people being stupid around seals and seal lions that I've created a separate folder on my computer for them. Living in Dunedin, we're surrounded by wild land and coastline. Just a couple of miles from here, the Otago Peninsula sticks out into the Pacific Ocean like a long green finger of land. And this is where the wild things are.

The first time we saw a sea lion, we were completely shocked. "Look," we said to each other, "a sea lion!" The naivete: we thought it was a mistake. Or an escapee from the zoo. It's sad really but seals, sea lions, penguins and dolphins are something that city folk like us see in a zoo, not on a nice Sunday morning drive to the beach.

But seals and sea lions are not cuddly and cute. Some of them are the size of a car: huge-shouldered, solidly encased in blubber, and covered in scars, like ugly red raised welts. These beasts look like they could easily swallow a child. They are, simply, disgusting. Despite this, Emeline and I have seen, on numerous occasions, people trying to get as close as possible to these aggressive car-sized beasts with flippers that sit, alert and ready to attack, on the beach. Here are some photos of some recent idiots. Just click on them for a closer look. And so now I photograph these people, safe in the knowledge that one day, maybe in a year, or a month, or maybe even this weekend, I'll see an old person get just a little too close, push the envelope just a little too far, and get within lunging distance of a huge bull sea lion that weighs more than a thousand pounds and feels very strongly about its personal space.

I know that time will come. It really will happen.

And I'm waiting.

Playing With my New Camera

2008-11-24T07:25:00.006+13:00

This guy was learning Esperanto in the cafe where we had lunch. So I took a photo of him,. I thought it looked cool. Is he alone because he's learning Esperanto, or is he learning Esperanto because he's alone? Existentialism.

A pregnant woman yesterday.

Exploding Ginger Beer

2008-11-23T19:16:00.006+13:00

Here's some video of me opening one of my bottles of ginger beer a couple of days ago. For anyone who has ever accused me of lacking foresight, please note that I chose to open it standing next to the sink, leaning over the draining board.

And I carried the bottle up from the basement very carefully. At arm's length. Because it felt charged. Or armed. Like a bomb. The metal lid was buckled outward with the force of the gases that had built up inside. I'm guessing we were a day or two from a messy, gingery explosion down in the basement.

Even more surprising than the fizziness was the taste. It's actually drinkable! In fact, it's a delicious, sharp gingery brew, full of citrus from the lemon zest, with a yeasty, beery flavor to it. Very good! My next task is to make myself a dark and stormy: Dark rum, homemade ginger beer, twist of lemon, and plenty of ice.

It sounds like a good pirate drink to me. Arrrrrrr, shipmates.

Anyway: To the video!

Showered With Love

2008-11-20T20:01:00.007+13:00

Chris and I have found that moving thousands of miles away from friends and family is difficult. I guess it's one of the things that stops people from making big leaps in life - like moving to the other side of the world.

Although the sky may be cloudy at times, the sun still manages to shine upon us and continues to show us how wonderful this world and the people in it can be.

We've been living in Dunedin for 9 months now and in such a short time, we've built up a rather nice support system of trusted friends and people. Both of our bosses have been amazing, supporting us at work as well as in our personal lives. Our co-workers have become good friends that make us laugh, think about science and the world, and wish us all the best in the world.

On Thursday, those friends threw us a baby shower to celebrate the impending arrival of our first child. Even more surprising to us was that people whom we hardly knew, other than a nod and smile in the halls or the occasional interaction, attended the shower and gave us gifts. Other friends have invited us over to share meals with their families and have gifted us generously with hand-me-downs.

And as usual, our family and friends from afar have continued to support us, especially throughout this pregnancy. Our parents and siblings have sent us the essentials - a cot for our baby to rest his head; a pram for our baby to explore the world with us; books and clothing for our baby to have an enriched and warm life. Our friends have sent us diaper bags, books, and blankets ... all to welcome our baby and make our lives easier.

Our hearts are full of thanks. We have been showered with love. (ETK)

My Meibomian Cyst

2008-11-16T09:49:00.009+13:00

I'd like to introduce you all to my meibomian cyst. Click on the picture at the bottom for a nice close up. It's harmless and benign, but unpleasant. There's a chance it will grow, become swollen, red and painful (and grotesque looking). Or it might even pop! So I went to the doctor. She took a look and said, "I've seen one of those before!" She got a very old book from her shelf and showed it to me. She never actually said the words: meibomian cyst. I don't think she knew how to pronounce it and she didn't want to take a chance. And then we logged onto the computer in her cluttered office and Googled meibomian cyst. Seriously. On Google.

Doctor: Google's really good for that.

Me (In my head): That's funny. I thought doctors were good for that.

She told me that I should try home remedies (hot compress) because I'll never receive treatment in New Zealand for something that is asymptomatic and relatively painless. But it can take 4-months to resolve. Or it can get worse. Prevention versus treatment, etc. The doctor said she could lie and say that it's painful and send me to an eye registrar, but that the eye registrars aren't stupid, they know what a meibomian cyst is, and they will send me home. I could pay privately for treatment, but there's probably a long queue for treatment anyway.

The doctor sat and waited for me to leave -- after printing off the remedies we found on Google! She gave me approximately the same information that my grandmother might have given me, if she was still alive. A hot compress fixes almost anything, after all -- or at least does no harm. In fact, my grandmother would have given me a cup of milky tea with too much sugar in it and a plate of cookies with her diagnosis too. And I'd have been happy.

Yesterday, a bill arrived for $30. This is the co-pay. I'm paying $30 to Google meibomian cyst with a doctor who doesn't want to pronounce it and can't treat it. I could have bought a lot of tea and cookies with that.

I've thought about it for a week or so.

And it's still dumb.

Seaweed!

2008-11-14T17:36:00.010+13:00

So, this week I wrote an article for a really nice New Zealand-based food magazine called Dish. It's one of those thick glossy magazines with recipes and fancy food-related articles. I pitched them an idea on eating locally-harvested seaweed after receiving an email about a seaweed cooking class from the local aquarium. I won't tell you too much about it ... I'm not sure if I'm allowed to plagiarize myself. Isn't that weird? It comes out in January. Anyway, Emeline and I attended the class, along with a photographer (which got us plenty of stares). And so it's become a photo assay, with the essay by one Mr Christopher Kemp.

Then, last weekend, we headed out to the coast with our boots on, and with pocketfuls of plastic bags, and I hauled in pounds and pounds of fresh bright green gelatinous seaweed for us to cook with.

Our house stinks. Our fridge should just be thrown away. I feel like we live under a pier.

And Emeline very quickly went off seaweed. Really quickly. I can't really imagine her ever eating it again.

Great Lines From Great Books #2

2008-11-12T14:03:00.009+13:00

To continue the series of "Great lines from great books", I couldn't resist blogging about this great line that I found in one of my weekly pregnancy blogs. Lately, it's been difficult to read a book for a long period of time. I can't get comfortable sitting, lying down, etc. If someone developed a contraption where I don't have to hold the book that I'm actually reading, it might work. Otherwise, I've been limited to reading my pregnancy books, blogs, and mags. They work on a weekly basis, most of them, so I don't have to use a lot of energy holding a book. (Slacker.) I figure I'll have all the time in the world to read in the 6 months that I'm on maternity leave.

For now, I have to highly recommend and praise Amalah and her blog "Alpha Mom" (one of her many columns - all of which are just as great.) Alpha Mom has many useful sections for pregnant women and moms out there. One in particular, Pregnancy Calendar, is a witty, humor-filled section that chronicles Amalah's pregnancy with Baby #2 (including past experiences during pregnancy #1). She has given birth to Baby #2, I think, since she was just writing new posts a month ahead of the week that I would refer to. I would recommend this blog to any woman out there planning to get pregnant or already pregnant.

And to add to "Great Lines", here's the most perfectest line from her blog that helps me describe pregnancy:

I think it's pretty self-explanatory. (ETK)

Things we Don't Miss

2008-11-12T11:14:00.004+13:00

In case you missed it, our good friend Brian commented on our last post, asking:

Do you also miss:
Traffic
Neocons
Smog
Skyline
Bill O'Reilly
The NFL
Wal*Mart
Junk Mail
Robo Calls
Country Music
American Idol
NPR
The Ohio River
Fireworks/Gunshots
SUVs
Christmas Ads (in October)
Veteran's Day
Co-Pays
Stuffing yourself at every meal?

In most cases, Brian, the answer is an enthusiastic no, but, strangely, I find myself missing some of the things on your list. I miss NPR hugely, although Emeline listens to it at work on her computer (slacker). I miss Bill O'Reilly. How weird is that? He reminds me why I feel the way I feel. I miss co-pays in exchange for good health care ... I'll post more about that in the next few days, but let's just say that I visited a doctor last week and we Googled "meibomian cyst" together. That just seems wrong. Just because it's free, doesn't mean it can be bad.

We get some of the things on your list: Fireworks (in honor of Guy Fawkes last week); and Veteran's Day (Armistice Day here).

Otherwise, we both feel incredibly happy to be uncoupled from the other things on the list, like smog, junk mail (more about that later too), robo calls, SUVs, and the endless cycle of over consumption, followed by indigestion (transport-related/food-related).

Things we Miss

2008-11-11T20:31:00.003+13:00

General Tso's chicken
Black people
Dunkin' Donuts
Places that stay open late
Graeter's ice cream
Ambar India
Used CD stores
Bottomless cups of coffee
Cheap books
The Gap
Talkative people
Skyscrapers
Proper sushi ... what is this stuff?
Believe it or not, 24-hour news

It's A New Day

2008-11-09T08:40:00.010+13:00

As the last of the election parties die down and the smell of fireworks dissipates, a new day unfolds here in New Zealand. It is the start of what has promised to be CHANGE. "New Zealanders", says Mr. John Key, the newly elected Prime Minister of New Zealand, "have voted for prosperity, for a brighter, more ambitious future."

Sound like anybody you know?

It seems as if people around the world are looking for change. Or at least a way out of the old and into the new. For the last 9 years, Miss Helen Clark has been the Prime Minister of New Zealand. (I bet some of you didn't know that the leader of this country was a woman.) As you may have read in a previous blog post written by Chris, Miss Helen Clark has a reputation of being a strong and tough political leader. Even Senator Hillary Clinton has her opinions about how tough Miss Helen Clark is, having been quoted saying, "Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand: her opponents have observed that in the event of a nuclear war, the two things that will emerge from the rubble are the cockroaches and Helen Clark."

Yikes. (By the way, this was a statement made by Clinton in April 2008. Clark was still PM then. Oops.) Clark and the Labour Party did not win this time around and Key and the National Party will take over.

So while Chris and I wake up to a new day for many Kiwis, we still revel in the new day that has just begun for Americans. Even Americans living in New Zealand.

Chris and I actually took the day off to watch news coverage of the election results as they were being counted. It was surprising to us that New Zealand television actually had an organized television program to cover the U.S. election! And although our election party was small in size (just the 3 of us), it was filled with feelings of anxiety and HOPE. It IS one of those important where-were-you-what-were-you-doing events in our lives ...

The state of Ohio going BLUE. The election of President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. The first African-American President of the United States of America. Seeing the new first family walk out onto the stage at Grant Park in Chicago, IL. People crying. Hugging. Cheering. Sighing with relief. Listening to the inspirational and unifying words of Obama's acceptance speech. Looking at my belly and my husband and feeling as if there is HOPE for my country that I now feel proud to be a citizen of ... because of my voice, my vote, my independence, my actions.

We've decided that we'll move back to the U.S. afterall.

It's a New Day. (ETK)

Check it out for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHWByjoQrR8

Exploding Ginger Beer

2008-11-08T10:14:00.004+13:00

I think I might have just averted disaster. I went down to the basement last night to check on my homemade ginger beer. It's supposed to be ready tomorrow. I'd been keeping it in a box, hoping to muffle any yeast-powered explosions.

So, I took a look and all the metal lids were buckled outward with the building pressure inside. I loosened Bottle #1: Fizzzz, but everything was fine. The same thing with Bottle #3. Then I tried to open Bottle #2: First, the sound of gas escaping under extremely high pressure, then lots of ginger beer spurting out of the bottle in a column, like a geyser. I don't know if that means it's going to be good or bad. Or maybe I ruined it by opening it before tomorrow.

I suppose we'll see tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-06T12:09:00.007+13:00

Sorry this blog post is so late ... we were sidetracked by the election. Can you blame us?

Anyway, Happy belated Halloween! It's one of our favorite holidays. However, it's not celebrated here in Dunedin like it is in the States. So, sadly we didn't get to hand out candy to cute, costumed little kids. And I know that if I showed up to work wearing a costume, my co-workers would have thought that I was strange.

Nevertheless, Chris and I decided to continue the tradition and dress up this year. We can't let our costume-making abilities suffer because we'll have a 10-month old to be trick-or-treating with next year! (Yes, free candy for us!)

So, with Chris's willingness to help, I had a well-timed Halloween costume. I might not really get the opportunity to do it next year - unless we time things right?! Anyway, who knew Chris was such an artiste extraordinaire?! (Well, I did. But did you?) As for Chris, he chose his own costume. I'm not really sure what he was. I don't think he knew what he was, other than temporarily green-faced for the evening. And morning after. (ETK)

A Mandate

2008-11-06T09:05:00.006+13:00

The Popular Vote:
The GOP: 56,088,419
The Democrats: 63,432,250

It is finished. And it has begun. I think it's time for us to remember now that we all want the same things. We might disagree with each other on how to reach our goals, but we can only reach them together. We have to respect our differences if we are going to find a way past them. Race is not a blunt weapon; neither is religion; nor is abortion.

We should all want all of us to do well. If, individually, we are doing well, but people on the streets of our cities are homeless, or working two jobs to try to raise children alone, or denied access to adequate healthcare or education, then we are not doing as well as we think. We need to acknowledge this, and then make changes.

When some of us suffer, we all suffer.

This is not Socialism.

This is kindness.

Bottling my Ginger Beer

2008-11-02T21:14:00.005+13:00

For the last week, I've been feeding my ginger beer every day. First you start off with what's called the plant, which I made last week. Every day, you add one teaspoon of sugar and one teaspoon of finely-cut ginger. I've been liberal with the ginger, though, because I want to make sure it really tastes gingery.

Then, today, I zested a couple of lemons, and cut up another big chunk of ginger, strained my plant and added the lemon zest, the ginger, and the juice of three lemons to the strained plant. I boiled about 1-pound of sugar in 1-liter of water. Added it all together and added another 3-liters of water.

I've bottled these 4-liters. They're supposed to sit for a week.

They might explode.

They're in the basement.

In a box.

Great Lines From Great Books #1

2008-11-01T11:13:00.008+13:00

Taken from Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago, an account of the violent and turbulent 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions, I thought this line was great and wanted to share it.

Mailer was writing about himself in the third person (only Mailer could do that) when he wrote: "Just as he had known for one instant at the Republican Gala in Miami Beach that Nelson Rockefeller had no chance of getting the nomination, so he knew now on this cool gray Sunday afternoon in August, chill in the air like the chill of the pale and the bird of fear beginning to nest in the throat, that trouble was coming, serious trouble."

Violence followed at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The bird of fear beginning to nest in the throat. Martin Luther King had been killed the previous April. Robert Kennedy had been killed in June. On the other side of the world, in Vietnam, we were killing people who didn't look like us. In Chicago: Tear gas. Cops clubbing demonstrators and journalists. Riots in the streets. Violence in the cities. In other words: trouble, serious trouble. This book should be read in a locked room with the curtains closed, to minimize the effects of the thick fear and paranoia that drip from the page.

Get somewhere dark, warm and safe. Stay there.

Until it's over.

Labor Day

2008-10-29T22:24:00.006+13:00

Monday was Labor Day or, as they call it here in New Zealand, Labour Day. We got up late, went to the beach, ate excessively large breakfasts, and watched all the surfers bobbing up and down on the rolling breakers, among the kelp, trying to catch a good wave.

Mmmm. Kelp. Next weekend we're attending a class on how to use local seaweed as food. We're looking forward to it. Yeah. Eating kelp.

Ginger Beer

2008-10-27T11:20:00.007+13:00

Today, and for the next couple of weeks, I'll be attempting to make my own homemade ginger beer. This is my second attempt. The first attempt didn't taste quite right. It didn't even taste good, actually. Or gingery. But it didn't kill me, either. There's definitely room for improvement though. My long-term goal, in the distant future, is to make my own rum and to make my own ginger beer and then mix the two together. Rum is much more difficult to make than ginger beer, so I thought I'd start with the ginger beer and work my way up.

Day One:
400ml of warm water
2 teaspoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of freshly cut ginger (I used a LOT more ... I mean, why else call it ginger beer, right?)
10 grams of yeast (our scales aren't very sensitive, so I had to guess. If I've used too much yeast there's a chance my potion will explode next week).

Tips for Expectant Fathers

2008-10-21T19:57:00.006+13:00

Don't excitedly tell your pregnant wife in the morning that she looks just like the letter 'D' in profile.

And don't try to make things better by saying that you've changed your mind and she looks more like the letter 'P' instead.

And definitely don't remind her that at least she doesn't look like the letter 'B.'

Do, immediately, what I did, eventually, and tell her that, from behind, she looks exactly like the letter 'I.'

Bungyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

2008-10-20T19:44:00.011+13:00

We were fortunate enough to enjoy a visit from friends last week. Mary and Julie got on a plane in Cincinnati, bounced over to San Francisco, then to Auckland, and then finally to our new home: Dunedin, gloomy and gray, sitting solidly at the edge of the rainy green plains of Otago. Dunners! And there they were at the airport, fresh-faced, eager and ready to go at 9am on a bright and sunny Sunday morning, like visitors from another planet, or a past life.

We've been here nearly 8-months and we've adapted to our new lives here.

But it was very nice to see familiar faces. Friends, standing here in the fields of Dunedin, among the sheep and cows. Not mispronouncing all their vowels. Wearing shoes. It's like an optical illusion.

And you know what? They said it wasn't even really all that painful. All that was really expected of them was that they sit quite still for several hours in a big metal tube. And they arrived. We showed them all around Dunedin, all our favorite places, all our new haunts. That took care of the first afternoon. Kidding. Sort of.

We had lots of fun while they were here and even managed to fit in a weekend driving through the vineyards and orchards of central Otago to the mountains and the deep glacial lakes of Queenstown. And so to the meat of this blog entry: Mary's bungy jump. On Saturday afternoon, we pulled over and parked near the Kawarua gorge to watch crazy tourists jumping off a bridge, falling like rocks, 43-meters, to the churning glacier-fed Kawarua River, cold and aerated after its steep journey down from the mountains of the southern Alps.

Skinny ones.

Young ones.

Asian Ones.

Fat ones.

Falling.

F
a
l
l
i
n
g.

And then the next day, Mary announced, quite matter-of-factly, that she wanted to throw herself -- her own body -- off a bridge. Were we supposed to facilitate this? What are the legal ramifications? Falling through all that air. Was she angry about something? Did she not like New Zealand? Or perhaps she just really liked falling? Who knows? She signed some paperwork. She got weighed. She walked onto the bridge and got strapped up. She stood on the edge of a platform, looking out over the river and the canyon walls that form the gorge. She looked a little pale. She fake-jumped a couple of times -- an indication that her knees were more sensible than her brain. And then she jumped. And fell. And bounced. And fell again. And bounced again. And survived.

It was a good day.

(Click on the images if you want a close-up view of what batpoop crazy looks like).

Seagulls at the Beach

2008-10-20T19:30:00.002+13:00

Happy Spring!!!

2008-10-17T11:12:00.004+13:00

Now I know why they call it SPRING!

I love springtime. The air has a bit of a nip to it in the early mornings and a constant flowery smell. Everything is in bloom, including an odd Green Blossom tree in our yard. It's exactly what you think it is: a tree with green blossoms. Beautiful. But the thing that makes springtime precious here isn't the blossoms, the fresh smelling air, more sunshine ... it's the lambs!

It's Lambing season in New Zealand and not only has it put a spring in my step, but there's a definite spring to the teeny tiny steps of the little lambs that have just entered their wonderful green world! Lambing season, August to September, marks the beginning of spring in New Zealand. I never noticed the lack of lambs in the fields in the other months. But when it's Lambing season, you notice the abundance of tiny, cute, fluffy, stark-white lambs scattered throughout the fields. They come in pairs. Triplets. They huddle close to their moms. They run (or rather spring!) in groups to find the best patch of green grass. Sometimes you can see them headbutting their moms to engage milk production. All lambs need to eat to become big and strong sheep! When the sun is high and hot, the lambs search for shade or they splay out in the open fields, laying on their sides, soaking in the gorgeous day.

And unlike their wise elders, the lambs are curious when it comes to humans. They respond to your voice if you shout out to them. Or they become shy and hide in their mother/father's thickening wool. That's what happened when us humans decided to invade these lamb's new world. They couldn't help but stare at Chris and his strange contraption, the camera. (See the photo below of the lamb staring at Chris via the camera lens. Take a look at it's knees - they're dirty!)

(P.S. Not only is it Lambing season, but it's the season for ALL babies - e.g. seal pups and cow calves. It's the cutest time of the year.)(ETK)

30-weeks and counting ...

2008-10-14T19:32:00.002+13:00

We've got about 10-weeks left, folks. Emeline really really really really can't wait. She says she's going to paint her belly orange and be a pumpkin for Halloween. Maybe I'll do that too. We can be a hairy (me) and a non-hairy (Emeline) pumpkin.

Send what out?

2008-10-09T17:41:00.003+13:00

COURIC: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right next to, they are right next to our state.

Seriously, it's been a couple of weeks ... but send what out? When Sarah Palin says, "It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia," what is she talking about? Send what out? This hasn't been taken out of context. I'm asking a simple question. Send what out? What is she going to send out?

If you take the time to read this, please at least leave a guess. What is she sending out? What is it?

The Kiwi Files

A New Country!

In Search of Ambergris

My true calling.

Port is home.

Happy Birthday, Max!

Father's Day

Resemblance?

Perfect Day

I Can See A Rainbow

Maori Week Continued: Fish and Fishing

Maori Language Week (July 27-31)

New Sunday Routine

Funny Faces

Ferberization

A Poetic Weekend

The Story of New Zealand

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Central

Our Littlest World Traveler

Some Recent Photos

A New Friend

Drool: Action Shot

Max Laughing

The View From Our Back Yard

The View From Our Living Room

Great Lines From Great Books #4

We *heart* Maria (our midwife).

Port Chalmers

Filthy Feral University of Otago Students

New Houses

Fried Jam Donuts

Bathtime

Being spoiled.

More Dunedin Graffiti

Just Like His Dad

DISH

Yaaaaaawn

Port

Cutest Picture of the Week

Belly Laughs

At the Beach

All Smiles

Good Hair Days

Tea Time

44th

Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit

Max

Four-Weeks-Old!

Deal or no Deal

Having a Bath

A Dream

The Babywearers

Kung Fu

Bath Time

Kindness

6:30am

Oh Dear!

Mom and Max

Zen

Happy

5am

Fooooood

Proof

Goodbye

The First Week: Mission Possible

Eating

A little finger

A Long Day

Maxwell Ezra Kemp: December 20th, 2008.

Pink Lady Cake

Stubborn.

More Dunedin Graffiti

Heathers

The Weigh-In

Happy Thanksgiving - Revisited!

Where Did I Put My Beachball?

Great Lines From Great Books #3

Sea Lion Baiting

Playing With my New Camera

We heart Maria (our midwife).