Playing With my New Camera

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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).