Kicks For Exactly The Cost of One Pie

We woke up on Saturday morning to white roofs from our window and trees bending in the wind. In the distance, on the other side of the city, the hills of the peninsula were white against the dark green hedgerows. After drinking plenty of coffee, we wrapped up in our winter clothes and drove to the beach through quiet streets. Dark windows. Slate gray sea. Cold sand. Wet rocks.

On previous visits to the beach, we've discovered (okay, I've discovered) how easy it is to torture seagulls by just staying in the car and waving food at them. It drives them crazy. Cheap kicks. Actually: kicks for exactly the cost of one pie. Three dollar kicks. They hover above the hood of the car in the sea wind, dropping low, fighting sudden gusts of wind, dipping, correcting, rising again, wings flapping, to take a closer look at your pie/chips/cake. And then they return to their railing, humbled and a little sheepish in the wind.

But on Saturday morning, they were grounded. Perched grimly on the railing, backs to the sea, staring impassively at my lamb and potato pie. Earthbound. Stoic. It was far too cold to be airborne.

Wait a minute ... seagull. Seagull. Now, that's a good name for a boy. (ck)

Baby Names

To be added to the list immediately:

Banana
The Emperor
Amadeus
Shaquille
Delilah
Fleetwood Mac
Obama
Troilus
Rand McNally
Luigi

(ck)

Big News

How many people are standing here in this photograph, on the prow of a boat in Milford Sound?

If you answered, "One," you'd be forgiven for choosing the most obvious answer. And you'd be wrong. There are two people there. Or, more accurately: there's one person and one fetus.

To quote our midwife, Maria: Emeline has a, "perfect little parasite growing inside her tummy."

Obviously, Emeline and I both hope the baby isn't really growing inside her tummy. Although, it might explain why she feels sick all the time. So, we're having a baby. We've made another human being. And the rest of our lives will never be the same again. Not even remotely. We have lots of reading to do. And lots of things to buy. It's surreal, and a little bewitching, to think of this human being we've made, slowly taking shape as we go about our daily lives, forming its bones, and its fingers and toes, and becoming the person we'll get to know. It's like making gold from lead, isn't it? It's alchemy. It's witchcraft. Something from nothing. Mysterious. And it makes us happy that he or she will be made of this special place.

We have some names picked out, but would like for people to weigh in with suggestions. Here are the current favorites:

Frodo
Desdemona
Batman
Che
Grommit
Cleopatra
Ringo
Hillary
Genghis
Cher
Robert (pronounced à la française: Roberrrrrrrr)
Marcus Aurelius
Barbarella
Pow!
John

(ck)

Milford Sound: A Magical Land

This blog entry about Milford Sound need not require more than a simple photo to capture its essence, but I'll write a few words anyway to tell you of our journey to this magical land.

Picture #1:

See, I told you. This place is AMAZING. Even Chris thinks so.

It's not like any place that you've seen before, unless you've been here. But we seemed to arrive at a perfect time - rainy, misty, and cold. The ominous clouds signaled our entry into a magical part of the south island.

Imagine the movie The Lord of the Rings but actually being there. Don't imagine Hobbiton, though. Instead, imagine the parts with the Ringwraiths and their black horses or any of the Gollum parts. The scary parts. As we drove along the Milford Road, our views turned from cheerful farms filled with sheep, deer, and cattle to vast empty fields with a backdrop of gloomy, extravagant mountains. The further we drove into the mountains, the more we felt engulfed by them, slowly becoming them. The mist was so thick you could spoon it up. The rain was intense that the mountains looked as if they were weeping, numerous waterfalls slowly spilling over their rocky sides. At the highest points, you could see snow-capped peaks and the occasional glacier.

Speaking of glaciers, the name "Milford Sound" is in fact a misnomer. It's not a sound.

Sound, n. 1 a: a long broad inlet of the ocean generally parallel to the coast b: a long passage of water connecting two larger bodies (as a sea with the ocean) or separating a mainland and an island.

Rather, it is a fjord.

Fjord, n. a narrow inlet of the sea between cliffs or steep slopes

Hmmm. Merriam-Webster has failed me. I was looking for the definition of a fjord that tells you that a giant glacier, in fact, is responsible for the valleys and mountains that provide the eerie atmosphere of Milford Sound. You can tell by looking at the "U" shaped valleys in between these monumental mountains. Shifting tectonic plates can create mountains, too, but the valleys in between them are "V" shaped. Enough of the science lesson. Just look at the pictures.
And if you stick around long enough, you will see that Milford Sound can change. One day it can be a rainy, wet and extremely beautiful place. The next day it could be completely sunny, not a sign of mist hanging low to the ground, nor weeping mountains. It's like it was all a dream. (ETK)

A Different World

This story was in the newspaper yesterday. Imagine for a second if this had happened in the US. Let's all say it together: Taser. (ck)

A Global Election

Proof, once again, that the 2008 US elections in November are on the mind of every single person living in the free world. Talk about clashing cultures: this billboard was in Invercargill, about 20-km north of a place I like to call the end of the world, a.k.a. the Devil's armpit or, more accurately, Bluff (see previous post).

Tui is the brand name of a New Zealand-made beer. It has a ubiquitous advertising campaign, with billboards that present an unlikely proposition on one side, and the words, "Yeah, right," on the other. There's one near work, by the medical school, which seems particularly apropos to me, and reads, "I'm going to give up pies this semester," to which I can respond emphatically: "Yeah, right."

A tui is also a species of bird indigenous to New Zealand. More on that later ...

Anyway, in case you can't see it clearly, this particular billboard, in the implausible location of Invercargill, Southland, reads: If Hillary wins, Monica gets her job back.

Yeah, right. (ck)

The Bluff Oyster Festival

Last weekend, we drove about 250-km south-west to Bluff, on the southernmost tip of the south island. Every year around this time, Bluff holds its annual oyster festival. We drove for about three hours in steady rain. It was like driving through a white tunnel, under a gray blanket. South. Farther south. To the end. The next stop, as this Google Earth image shows, is Antarctica. Bluff is marked with a little gray box in this image. In this hemisphere, only Tierra del Fuego is closer to the south pole.

Every autumn and winter the fishing fleets head out from Bluff to dredge oysters from the impossibly deep and cold sea floor of the Foveaux Strait. The oysters: they grow slowly down there, and come up looking like sharp-edged, barnacle-encrusted little rocks. Something about the conditions makes them taste very good, and the meat is hard and flavorful. One of these guys told me that they'd shucked 500,000 oysters in three hours. They were selling them for $2 each, so they'd managed to shift a million dollars of oysters in a morning.



In a crowded waterproof marquee, there's an oyster shucking contest, with several different categories: Men, women, blindfolded, relay, etc. There are trophies. It's sponsored by The Southland Times.

Bluff is one of the coldest, most windswept, remote, desolate, depressing outposts of humanity in the southern hemisphere. It's the saddest-looking place I've ever been. The people here -- Bluffies -- haven't managed to shape or tame the environment at all. It's shaped them instead. It's brutal: the gray sea quickly disappears in a sheet of fog; dirty little fishing boats tethered to rotten jetties; a cluster of dirty, one-floor buildings crowded around the harbor; the trees bent toward the buildings by the wind; the hills on the other side of town also lost in fog; wet wind; rain; fat teenagers with wild hair roaming the streets; old frayed rope; empty shipping containers; oyster shells by the side of the road.

Inside an 18-wheeler, a band is playing 1950s standards: Three Steps to Heaven; La Bamba; Twist and Shout. And in the background, just more fog. Whiteout. But, the Bluffies are all dancing in the stinging rain, holding their beers aloft, eating their oysters, clutching each other, laughing, drunk, celebrating. Right there, at the end of things, in the last town in New Zealand before Antarctica. In this challenging place I'm sure there's a lesson to learn from the Bluffies.

It's either:

A. Don't live in Bluff; or,
B. Celebrate, wherever you are.

Right now, I'm going with A. (ck)