Panoramatastic!!

Is this a tiny, miniaturized version of Emeline, or is she standing on a huge cliff? (ck)

Will the insane of Dunedin please stand up?

Dunedin has more than its fair share of insane people. It's a small city, but if you spend just a little bit of time in public spaces you'll notice them everywhere. They loiter in the center of town, talking to the seagulls and the statues. They sit in the library stacks, laughing gleefully to themselves. They seem to love buses very much.

Stony, gloomy, and Gothic, Dunedin is perfectly suited for them. Returning the favor, the insane really add something to the city.

There's an alley near the medical school that seems to be a favorite spot for the clinically insane. They sing songs there and play instruments to the passing shoppers. One of the regular characters plays a guitar very badly, sings blues songs and looks just like Slash from Guns N' Roses. Another guy bops around on the balls of his feet and improvises a high-pitched song that sort of goes, "Mi mi mi mimi mimi mi," and sounds more like a little dog barking than a person singing.

That's the sound of dysfunctional brain chemistry, folks.

Someone told me about a man who walks around wearing a top hat with a seagull on top, and that, as the man eats, he stretches his arm up to feed the seagull little pieces of food. I haven't seen him yet. I've seen Speedy though. He has a long bushy beard and walks like a broken wind-up toy, with his arms flapping and his elbows sticking out. He waved at me once, from behind a tree in the park, standing among the ducks.

I'm not sure why so many of them are on the streets. On one level, it's terribly sad to see these lost people, hobbling around in rags and chattering to themselves. What happened to them? How did they get here? Some of them are genuinely disturbing. They sit on benches and argue furiously with themselves. On another level, when you walk down the street and see a neatly-dressed young man having a conversation with a lamppost, you just have to laugh. It's great.

So, hopefully this will be a regular feature of the blog, as I collect images of the insane people of Dunedin (surreptitiously).

*

Today, we have Insane Dunedinite #1, who was sitting on a bench outside the movie theater in the middle of town and having a very heated argument with himself yesterday. And then, every now and again, he'd burst out laughing for no reason. I think he's insane, but he might just have paid money to see Drillbit Taylor.

Arguing with himself on a bench + unexpected laughter = Insane

*

Next, we have Insane Dunedinite #2. She was standing in front of the onions at the grocery store, completely mesmerized. Catatonic. It's as if her body was right there in the grocery store, standing in front of the onions, but her brain was hundreds of feet underwater, at the bottom of the harbor, lost in a kelp forest. She was still standing there when I left with a couple of onions. Onions just aren't that interesting. Then we shared a bus home, which means she lives by us.

Very big glasses + obsessed with onions = Insane

(ck)

Oh happy day!

This is my husband. He is happy here in New Zealand. He makes me laugh every day. He is whom I get to spend most of my days with while we live here in New Zealand.

Oh happy day, mate! (ETK)

Getting to know my camera

I'm just trying out a nifty option on my camera that allows me to stitch several photos together to create a panoramic effect. More than anywhere I've ever been, New Zealand seems constructed almost entirely out of breathtaking panoramas. So I've decided it's time I learned how to use this setting. Here's a photo of Emeline fishing on the peninsula, taken last weekend, early in the morning, in a pristine little sandy bay we just sort of stumbled onto by mistake.

Incidentally, Emeline didn't catch anything either.

Salmon running? Pshumph.

Us: Nil.

Salmon: Two. (ck)

Oh no!!

This is what happens when you take your eyes off the ball! Emeline and I have been busy at work all week. And so we completely missed a calf sale on Thursday morning. And then we missed the Balclutha calf sale yesterday, too, even though it was clearly posted in the newspaper.

I really had my heart set on 20 steer calves and a couple of heifers. At least there's some 2-tooth Cheviot rams still for sale. Phew. Click on the photo to take a closer look. Do you see the little rhyme?

"If you're thinking about lambing
your hogget flock
with a Cheviot ram
You'll be surprised what you dock."

Now, what the hell does that mean?

Do I even want to know? (ck)

I'm an NPR geek.

When you leave a place that you once called home, you start to realize all of the things you miss. I may be a geek, but I will shout from the rooftops to let everyone know that I no longer miss and can now listen to NPR in New Zealand!!!

I love NPR.

NPR (National Public Radio, for those of you who don't know) had been an integral part of each day. My morning drive was made less frantic when I was lulled into a comforting trance listening to the voices of Renee Montagne and Steve Innskeep on Morning Edition. Morning coffee wasn't the same without local reports by Chris DeSimio and Mark Hayne. Chris and I would often call each other while on our drives to work and say, "Did you hear that story? Can you believe it?" Most likely we were both crying after listening to the same story from StoryCorps. (You would have been crying, too, if you heard some of these stories.)

Diane Rehm, Robert Siegel, Michele Norris (said Mee-shell), Melissa Block, Neal Conan, Terry Gross, Kai Risdall ... they were friends. Very informative and clever friends that informed me about the news of the day. They were people that I felt I knew even though I couldn't place a face to each voice. And I didn't want to. It might ruin my idea of what each of these friends looked like when they were talking to me from the radio. (These were very ordered friendships with obvious boundaries.) Hearing Ira Flatow on Science Friday signaled the end of the work week. The contagious laughter of Click and Clack on the weekends would accompany me on my drive to my Saturday morning yoga class. Wait wait ... don't tell me. Whad'Ya Know? Which one did we "like" the most, Jenny?

Ah, NPR.

Today I wrote to Jim at Cincinnati's local NPR station, WVXU, to help a desperate me try to connect to the station's broadband connection. I was having technical difficulties trying to set it up. Low and behold, Jim's suggestion helped. He is seeking round-trip tickets to New Zealand as compensation.

Anyone have the money to help me thank Jim? (I promise to continue to donate to WVXU while in NZ!)

Thanks, Jim. Hello again, NPR. (ETK)

Catching salmon!

The salmon are running right now, completing an arduous journey from the ocean, into the harbor and the rivers, before swimming miles and miles upstream into the mountains to spawn at the spot they were born. And then they die. Uplifting, right? But I've seen photos of people holding these huge silver slabs of salmon -- 20-pounders, 30-pounders -- with their arms straining under the weight. They're catching them in the harbor! So, last weekend, I bought a fishing rod, and a couple of exciting-looking lures. On Sunday, Emeline and I got up at 7am and drove out to the peninsula to catch dinner. But this is the only thing I caught.