It's not often that Emeline and I get to feel like giants. We've been meaning to visit a bar called Mou Very for a while now and yesterday we finally did. It's a tiny tiny bar. It's a makes-us-feel-like-giants bar. In fact, it might be the smallest bar in the world. It measures 1.5-meters by 8-meters. It's long and thin, with roughly-painted brick walls. It's like drinking a beer in a subway car.
The French proprietor will talk to you about coffee, politics, or the state of the world in general until another person comes in and completely upsets the balance of things. He'll take forever to make a coffee and pour a beer and he'll tell you that people rush too much and work too hard. He studied political science at UCLA and now he owns the smallest bar I've ever been in.
Last Fall (in the northern hemisphere), I took a graduate class called "Global Health" as part of my quest to get a Masters in Political Science. In that class, I did a presentation on the current state of health in New Zealand. (We had the chance to pick the country that we wanted to research and I thought it would be helpful to know how healthy - or sick - Kiwis were before we actually stepped foot in the country.)
Not surprising, as a developed country, New Zealand is plagued with your typical "developed" country health problems: high incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, as well as problems associated with smoking and alcohol. What is surprising, however, is that New Zealand also has its share of scary viruses ... which brings me to the point of this blog post:
Dunedin is currently being attacked by norovirus. AGAIN.
What is the norovirus?
According to the CDC, "noroviruses (genus Norovirus, family Caliciviridae) are a group of related, single-stranded RNA, nonenveloped viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis in humans." In other words, it's a yucky virus that anybody is susceptible to if some dirty person doesn't wash their hands and they happen to have the virus.
Gross gross gross gross gross.
The CDC also says that norovirus clinically presents in humans as "acute-onset vomiting, watery non-bloody diarrhea with abdominal cramps, and nausea" and it can last from 24-48 hours.
Double and triple and quadruple gross!!!
So, this is my desperate PSA to everyone out there (most of all to the people of Dunedin):
When you go to the bathroom, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS!!!! It doesn't take more than 1 minute. Maybe even 2 if you're thorough. (What's wrong with you!!!) If you aren't sure how to properly wash your hands, I've included a link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pkjv96MYss
Now you don't have any excuses because it's a youtube video - NOBODY is excluded from this PSA! Yes, everyone can wash their hands!!! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!
I know, you might think that I sound condescending or a little angry. I'll be honest. This is a major pet peeve of mine. If you ask any of my friends how I feel about this, they can tell you all about it ... I think that some of them might be more adamant about this issue than me! And friends, I won't even begin to tell you how many times I've been to the bathroom here and heard the person next to me leave the bathroom WITHOUT even turning on the water to feign handwashing. Dirty!!!!
So, I hope this a lesson to all of us. Wash your hands. If you do, you won't spread dirty, viral poo around and people won't get sick. End of story. Sorry, I had to do it. And not just norovirus, either ... many other scary, disgusting kind of viruses can be stopped from spreading just by washing your hands! Imagine that?!
If you're wondering why I said that Dunedin is being attacked again, read this story from the Otago Daily Times: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/19838/new-wave-norovirus-hits-hospital. Just last week the Dunedin Hospital was closed because of an outbreak. It's closed again. And we work just across the street from it. And today I have to pick up some paperwork from my midwife at the front desk. Please pray for me. (ETK)
As you can probably guess, most musicians/bands don't make their way to New Zealand. If we're lucky, someone might make a stop in Auckland, but it's still an expensive 2-hour flight away. Chris and I love listening to our favorite musicians live, but alas, it's not something we do much of these days.
So, we make do. Since we've been here, we've been to the symphony a couple of times to see the Southern Sinfonia. It's a small, humble group of musicians that play quite beautiful music. At the University of Otago, there is a bi-monthly Lunchtime Concert - where students in the Music department perform their final performance for their degrees. That means that in the middle of my work day, I take a leisurely walk to the Uni campus and listen to some great Classical music while I eat lunch! In October, we plan to see David Helfgott ("Shine") play the piano on the opening night of the Otago Festival. We're quite excited to see him.
But when I've had my fill of Classical music, I can always rely on my favorite musician to sing almost anything for me. Who is that you say? Why, it's none other than Chris! One of his projects since we've arrived in New Zealand has been to learn how to play the ukulele. I'm surprised he hasn't blogged about it yet. He bought a middle-range ukulele off of ebay (not one of those souvenir ukuleles that you can buy at the local convenience store in Hawaii) where it went on a journey from California, to Arkansas, and finally to Dunedin, NZ.
Here in our home, I can hear ukulele renditions of "The Guns of Brixton" by The Clash, anything by Bob Dylan to a lovesong like "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" by The Magnetic Fields and "Picture In a Frame" by Tom Waits (a favorite). I won't be surprised if Chris tries to play one of Julian Cope's newest songs on the ukulele. But what I like the most, as of late, is that our baby in utero is able to hear his dad sing and play the ukulele now. My favorite song that Chris likes to sing to our baby boy: "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" by John Lennon.
This is music in our home. You can't beat it. (ETK)
Yesterday was Dunedin's first sunny Saturday in living memory, or at least in a few months, so we took full advantage of it. At the farmer's market, the poppies were enjoying the sun too, all bobbing brightly on their stems. We bought some fruit and some hot dogs and made fun of the tourists. There are so many of them, and now we've been in Dunedin for nearly six months we've earned our stripes. You can spot them a mile off. Normally they're wearing a backpack larger than Emeline and, if the wind is just right, you can smell their dreadlocks. They're all living the movie of their lives. But they're all boring movies.
Then we headed south in our car, along the scenic southern highway that follows the winding coast. The sea is almost close enough to touch from the car window. Then to the beach at Brighton where we saw dead things; farther south to Kawa Point and Roaring Bay, where we went penguin spotting; and then to the lighthouse at Nugget Point, dome-roofed, white and pretty in the sun.
We now believe:
1. There are only two penguins in New Zealand. 2. We've seen them both before. 3. They were somewhere else today.
For about a month, I've quite envied Emeline. As the baby squirms and wriggles around, she's been able to feel every movement and flutter, like a message from deep space. To me, this little guy (our unnamed baby) is still a fairly abstract notion. I know he's coming soon ... but I can't see him, hear him, or feel him. Even so, I already have so much planned for the little guy (President of the United States of America).
I talk to Emeline's stomach every night, and tell him who's the boss (me). But there was still something missing until yesterday. Those little movements -- the squirming, and fidgeting, and wriggling: today I can feel them.
I laid my hand on Emeline's belly and waited: a little bump (was that gas?), then nothing, then maybe Emeline's pulse, faint through her stomach, and then my baby punched me in the hand! Punch! It's a magical moment really. Beautiful. Something becomes real and tangible to the simple-minded like me when it can be felt, even through skin and muscle and tiny spaces and cells and amniotic fluid. It was like a twang in my reality. He's not abstract anymore. He punches me. He's punched and kicked me several times today.
I'm willing to excuse the aggression (at the moment).
Emeline, Pancake and I went to St. Clair beach after work today. It was sunny, cold and windy. And it didn't take too long to get blown back to our car. It had been raining before we arrived and you could see the marks the raindrops made in the sand. The waves were doing their best to erase the rain's work but, at low tide, there's only so much the sea can do.
In a display cabinet of contraband in Brisbane airport, we saw this treasure. Alongside boxes of strange Chinese herbs and crocodile foot backscratchers was a dried cane toad proudly claiming ownership of a dented can of Castlemaine 4X beer. What a wonderful totem.
I nearly went to the information desk to ask for 5 of them, along with two of the backscratchers, and a bag of those bits of Chinese tiger. I didn't realize it was a display of bad things. I thought it was an Asian grocery store. It was early.
What's the problem? Is it because he's not wearing pants? You can see Emeline in the distance, patiently watching me admire it. I think I liked it more than she did.
When it's as pretty as this, we don't even mind the weather being so cold and miserable. That's a complete lie. We're fed up of it. If another co-worker tells me this winter has been unusually wet, I'll kick them. It snowed today. And then it was sunny. Then it rained. Then it hailed. Then it was sunny again. And then it rained. I took this photo from Mount Cargill Road yesterday afternoon. Mt. Cargill sits to the north of the city, like a big green cone. We took a Sunday drive up it yesterday because we're old and boring. On the way back we even complained that the other drivers were driving too fast. (They were driving too fast.)
We were only in northern Queensland for five days, but we saw so many unusual birds while we were there. Fortunately, we're not birdwatchers. We have lives. But it was interesting all the same. Under a hot tropical sun, as we lay in the pool, chattering cockatoos flew overhead in pairs, white against the blue bowl. Brightly-colored rainbow lorikeets fed on the seed heads of the strange plants outside our room. It was almost, almost, enough to make us into birdwatchers. But, like I said, we have lives. Whenever possible though, I took a photo of some of these strange birds, and here are a few of them.
A kookaburra: it's sort of the national bird of Australia. They live in groups and generate a lot of noise, sounding more like hyenas or monkeys than birds. Apparently, they can live for twenty years or more, but if there were a group of them near my house, making all that noise, they 'd live for about twenty minutes. Sorry, kookaburras, but it's true.
A hummingbird? Who knows?
We think this bird is some kind of an ibis, but after only a day or two, we decided to call it the Trashbird instead. These things are like rats. Dirty. Furtive. Smelly. One day, we sat on the beach, looking for crocodiles and sharks and jellyfish and snakes, and a Trashbird sat right next to us, waiting for us to finish our lunch. We could smell it from five-feet away. Hot dirty smelly Trashbird. Everywhere we went, we saw Trashbirds digging through trash, disappearing into dumpsters, carrying ripped plastic bags around in their curved beaks. I think this Trashbird even has trash stuck in its beak. Smelly Trashbird.
Here's a cassowary: a large, rare flightless bird that lives in rain forests and eats purple figs and poops out the seeds, helping the rain forest to regenerate, et cetera ad infinitum. They're a bit like emus. They can be aggressive, which might explain why the photo is a bit shaky and out of focus: we were getting prepared to run, or hit it with a camera. Survival of the best armed.
A rainbow lorikeet. This bird is pretty and brightly-colored and it's quiet and doesn't eat trash and isn't dangerous. So we like it. Good job, rainbow lorikeet!
In Palm Cove, it was difficult not to worship the sun. Everyone was at it. So, here's a few photos of my favorite two sun worshippers. The first one should be familiar to you all, with the sun shining right down on her tight belly and on our baby. She looks perfect, doesn't she? The second worshipper is a guy who walked down an almost empty beach one day, and then stopped about four feet in front of us and just stood there, sunbathing vertically, eyes closed, blocking our view for about twenty minutes. As suddenly as he'd arrived, he put his glasses back on and walked off again, along an otherwise unpopulated beach.
After our fun babymoon in tropical northern Queensland, we're back in Dunedin. We had a great time and I'll be posting some photos here all this week.
The most important question we have after our trip: Why does Australia have so many of the world's most dangerous animals? I have no idea. The signs are posted everywhere though. Doing anything is terrifying. Sharks. Snakes. Jellyfish. Crocodiles. Spiders. Signs. Terror. Danger.
On our first morning in Palm Cove, we swam and floated blissfully in the calm of the sea, enjoying the sun on our faces. Later on, I noticed a lifeguard's hut and flags set up a couple of hundred yards farther up the beach. The first couple of photos below were posted on the lifeguard's hut. In front of the lifeguard's hut, a stinger-resistant net was set up in the sea, and we slowly realized we had risked our lives earlier by swimming in the open sea.
The nets aren't crocodile and shark proof though. I spoke with a guy fishing on the beach and he told me that one of the largest saltwater crocodiles ever caught was captured under the Palm Cove jetty at the end of the beach. I could see the jetty. Maybe he was playing with the pale and friendly tourist. Male salties can exceed 20-feet in length and weigh 2200-pounds, making them a lot like my car but with more teeth. Imagine a Subaru Legacy with teeth.
I like that, according to the poster below, 5-40 minutes after an irukandji sting, a "feeling of impending doom may arise." That's great. I've never read anything before that has made me feel more like sitting on dry land, drinking rum.
This sign below was posted near the beach at Cape Tribulation, a couple of hours north of Palm Cove. We rented a car and drove through the rain forest, and around headlands, and along pristine beaches to the cape, which was named by Captain James Cook in 1770 after his ship ran aground here. Very poetic. He should have named it Cape Jellyfish, or Cape Really Scary, or Cape Impending Doom. Or maybe Cape Vinegar, for the bottle of vinegar provided so that poor swimmers suffering a feeling of impending doom can treat their stings.
Where's that rum?
This sign below was posted by the side of Cooper Creek, near a place called Wonga Beach, on the road to Cape Tribulation. I saw it while we waited to drive onto the deck of a ferry that would take us, locked in our car, across the creek. In a few moments we'd be locked in our car, slowly chugging across a muddy brown slack creek, filled with car-sized toothy dinosaurs. Snapping jaws. Ridiculous. Rum.
Then, we stopped for a self-directed bush walk in the Daintree rain forest and saw the last amazing sign posted below. Somewhere in the thick green screen of trees in front of us, cassowaries were prowling, waiting to attack unsuspecting tourists. I didn't really know too much about cassowaries. From the sign we couldn't really learn too much more, except that cassowaries look like very large turkeys and that they might attack us. They live on plump purple cassowary figs that fall onto the forest floor and lie there like shiny eggs. Cassowaries are very rare, skittish, and we shouldn't disturb them. They're big aggressive fig-eating turkeys.
Killer turkeys.
And so we got our cameras out, sadly said goodbye to each other and walked right in ... with a feeling of impending doom.
It has rained constantly for almost two weeks. I'm not kidding. Rain. For two weeks. The entire city is saturated like a sponge. The gutters are filled with rain all the time. Everything is damp. Nothing will dry. Every night the news is full of fallen trees, roads eroded by the sea, flooded streets. It's like living on another planet. A drowned world. We're thinking of calling the baby Noah now, instead of Pancake.
More importantly: we don't care. Tomorrow we're off to Christchurch, and then on Monday we fly to Brisbane, and then to Cairns, and then to Palm Cove in tropical north Queensland, where the temperature is currently in the high-70s. The sea is one degree Celsius colder than the air.
Ha.
Also, we know the sex of our baby now ... who wants to know? (ck)
As many of you know, I am a yogi. However, this pregnancy has led me to find alternative ways to practice my yoga. In fact, it has become about 10% asana (physical practice) and 90% meditation and pranayama (breathing). So, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite mantras that I like to meditate with and feel is appropriate for this miracle that is constantly growing and evolving inside of me. I don't get to teach yoga anymore these days, so this is sort of a way that I can still pass on my love of yoga to you.
The following mantra is a mantra for new beginnings - traditionally chanted to start new endeavors with positive energy and to remove obstacles. New beginnings give us the opportunity to discover and possibly fulfill our deepest desires in life. But in order to do so, it is essential to remove or steer through obstacles that might hinder a clear path. Although these obstacles may manifest themselves as external problems, they may be as simple as our emotions or thought patterns. If your internal state is unified with your desires you can achieve anything. The mantra acknowledges Ganesha (or Ganapati), a Hindu deity known primarily as "The Remover of Obstacles".
Mantras can be repeated while meditating. It helps the mind concentrate on the breath and hence the present moment. The Sanskrit is written below (with pronunciation) and a rough translation is included.
Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha Om Guhm Guh-nuh-puh-tuh-yea Nah-mah-hah
Om and salutations to Ganesha (Ganapati)
(I got this mantra from yogajournal.com - an article by T. Ashley-Farrand. Search the site for more mantras that suit you at different times of your life.)(ETK)
