crazyscot

We watched When A City Falls last night. If ever there was a documentary that explained the Kiwi and Christchurch spirit and stoicism, possibly what cemented our decision to come and live here - this is it. There is loss; there is heartache; there is incredible human spirit, kindness and generosity. I don't imagine many folks in Blighty will be interested enough to buy the DVD, but if you get a chance to see it, I do recommend it. Trailer.

I had been contemplating writing something up to mark the anniversary (this Wednesday) of the big quake that took out half the CBD. The other day the Press (our regional newspaper, Christchurch and South Island) solicited people's memories of that day. To my pleasant surprise, they found mine interesting enough to publish!

• Special feature section (mine's under The Future - scroll down)
  
• My article itself

( This is what I submitted, for posterity. They very lightly copy-edited it for publication. )

The removers were fast, efficient and successful. Very happy with them. Not happy with the carpet fitters, who have caused no small amount of logistical interest and excitement ... they led me to believe on the phone that it would take half a day, the chap's job card said 0830-1600, and he was still going at 5pm and had to call it a night - so I'm going to have to be late in to work tomorrow :(. This also means we can't put anything into the bedroom yet, so we've set the bed up in the living room tonight. It's a blessing that this place has lots of storage, even if we're planning on pulling it down at some point (it doesn't have building consent).

Inside the house is "Suddenly - Boxes!" all over again. (No, really.) In amidst the boxes, there is a moderately ghastly lash-up to prove that the ADSL works, and a glorious 12 Mbits at that - even better than in the previous place. (Before you ask, the net was priority three, after setting up the bed and getting food...)

I've updated my contact details post with the new physical address and landline number, but the postal address isn't changing.

We were cycling round the University of Canterbury campus this weekend, when we came across this marvelous piece of what I presume must be academic eccentricity.



That's a coal pit behind the fence; it's adjacent to what I presume is the (a?) main campus boiler. Won't someone please think of the ducklings?

The tea that I abandoned on my desk on the 23rd had been half-shaken out of the mug by the main (more violent) quake which struck later. The old Subway serviette that it was sticking on was a mass of tea-stained dried-out mush. There was a trail of tea stain running along the desk.

Most horrid of all was how what was left in the mug looked, and the smell. Yes, it had started to evolve. No, I'm not going to describe it further - well, not in plain, anyway. If you must un-rot13 this, don't say I didn't warn you! Gur fhesnpr unq tbar orlbaq sbezvat n fxva naq ybbxrq yvxr n onq cynfgrevat wbo. Gurer jnf n oybo bs zbhyq. Gur fzryy jnf cnegvphyneyl sehvgl. (Url, V xarj fbzrobql jbhyq jnag gb xabj.)

Nights spent away: 4
Sandfly bites: 8 (at last count)
Lakes circumnavigated: 1
Glaciers walked on: 1
Waterfalls collected: 1
Things bought: jade pendant
Things made: knife

An action packed five day holiday, and no mistake. Where to begin? ( At the beginning, of course. There be pictures. )

Wow. What a year.

Lots of people have had a bad year, and I do not wish to denigrate them, but for me it has been pretty awesome.

The whole ongoing NZ adventure is of course my number 1 on the list. I mean, emigrating on my birthday, and the day of my hobbity coming-of-age at that. NZ has been hard at times, but we survived the winter and are now focussed on properly establishing our new house.

Another highlight of the year was running the tech for Eastercon. This is not something I think I'll be doing again for the foreseeable due to the small matter of living on the other side of the world, but it was a blast - despite the occasional frustrations.

A low light of the year has been time. I have been acutely aware of not having as much time as I'd like to do the things I want to do - but it's more complicated than that. Thinking back there is a fair amount of time, but I am often too tired, and perhaps insufficiently motivated, to take advantage of it. Perhaps I've been trying to juggle too many balls; new job, recreational coding project, secret smithereens project, converting my PPL, not to mention all the general life and house things, and fighting off the continual stream of colds that I have no immunity to (not helped by the rental house being Cold and Mouldy, but this is at least in hand).

What's in store for 2012? Well, setting up the new house seems likely to consume most of January and beyond, and I need to finish off my PPL conversion before April if I want to avoid having to send another cheque to the UK CAA. We should hear back about our residence visas before too long. We have no particular travel plans at present.

Speaking of travel, a curious statistic: I counted up the journeys I made in the year (work, NZ, various other things from my calendar - not counting unscheduled stuff like shopping as I have no handy records) and it turns out that my average speed across the whole year was within a whisker of 5mph.

Merry Christmas! Thinking of all our friends and family in distant places.

On the first day of Christmas, my faultline gave to me...
A magnitude six point three[*].
...
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my faultline gave to me...
12 student helpers
11 silted gardens
10 crashing rockfalls
9 stinking dust clouds
8 broken glasses
7 munted sewers
6 fallen chimneys
Li-que-fac-tion!
Four deep sinkholes
Three scared kids
Two big aftershocks
and
A magnitude six point three[*].

[*] - poetic license, it was only 6.0 this time around but I needed to make it rhyme !

Thanks to pellegrina for the germ of the idea :-)

Dark humour perhaps, but if one doesn't laugh at these events one would surely cry...( Read more... )