life in Waikikamukau trundles on…

Three takes on how life in Waikikamukau trundles on…

1) looking on the bright side: Willem came home from school with a form to fill out for selecting his dentist/dental practice. His dental attention at school (including an exam today and a small filling next week) is free. Next year (something to do with turning 13) he will go to our family dentist, also for free. Dental care for children in New Zealand is gratis (I assume the government pays) until the age of 18. [This balances out the rise in our ‘rates’ (think real-estate taxes plus water charges…)]

[did we make mention of how one pays for ‘trash’ (garbage) removal? Official DCC (Dunedin City Council) plastic rubbish bags are on sale in the supermarkets. A portion of the sale price goes towards costs of collection. We put out bottles, plastics and cans in a small, sturdy blue bin (available from the DCC downtown at $9 a throw—fortunately these withstand quite a bit of throwing. Cardboard must be flattened and tied into a tidy bundle. Plastic grocery bags are collected into one plastic grocery bag. Paper for recycling is also put into a grocery type plastic bag that is also then tied up…]

2) looking at another side: when is wash day? Weather predictions are occasionally couched in suggestions about how to dress, such as: wear at least 3 layers of clothes today or two layers should be sufficient but it’s best to bring along a ‘jumper’ (sweater) just in case. Actually, the best way to prepare for a day away from the hearth is to have a knapsack. That way, one can bring along another layer or two—one for warmth, perhaps one for wind or rain protection—and also be equipped for stowing any discards caused by the sun’s benevolence…but I digress. All these clothes (well, at least the first two or three layers) make for a rapid filling of clothes hampers or what have you. If you look out the window first thing in the morning and find yourself squinting, an alarm goes off in the cleanliness part of the frontal lobe: WASHDAY! WASHDAY! Get those duds in the suds!!! The sun has yelled (yellowed?) “It’s a wash day”. The clothes-line ethos is calling out loud and clear. [Addendum--Scottish thrift, present in so many Kiwi genes, calls for hanging out the wash. If you miss out on the morning sun, you may have skipped a drying opportunity that will not be seen again for several days. Changeable weather during the day may find the homemaker or house-husband hanging out the wash, then bringing it inside for a rain shower, then going back outside to repeat step one. We are certainly not the only home owners to have the indoor drier option, but the preference is for the real Kiwi way: getting those clothes into the sweet open air.]

3) the passage of time brings yet another side to mind--living the life of an immigrant. We recently celebrated our second Guy Fawkes Day, hunted and snared a seasonal mouse and are rapidly approaching our second Thanksgiving. [For that special occasion, we have been invited to a gathering of several families--mixed families, American and Kiwi, like ours. We did miss this type of gathering last year and felt the distance from close family quite keenly.]
Not to be overly dramatic but—along with reading about the literary creation and evolution of the ‘sense of self’—I find myself in daydreams about how this new place we are living impacts the quotidian…is my own sense of self in transition? I remember being struck several years ago by Eva Hoffman’s book Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (a best seller at the time?) Here in NZ, I have found myself increasingly drawn towards books rooted in eastern cultures: Haruki Murakami’s Kafka On the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood; Kanzeburo Oe’s: A Personal Matter, A Healing Family, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, The Music of Light (Lindsley Cameron); Shan Sa: The Girl Who Played Go. In the admixture of social upheaval caused by war and modern alienation, how is it that the ‘sense of self’ survives? Are these reading choices related to my own changing sense of self?

???

ODT headlines

“South Island passes 1 million mark” (ODT headline) Population for the country stands at about 4.2 million. (The relatively low density of people explains why when driving in some of the remote western areas of the South Island, the driver of an approaching vehicle might give you a wave, much like what used to happen in the rural America of, say, the 1952. This is an expression of humanity on the flip side of road rage.)

Wind gusts reached 159kmh at Taiaroa Head at the entrance to Otago Harbour last Tuesday (also front page news) as Dunedin and the South Island were buffeted by high winds for three days in a row. These winds paralleled those that drove the fires in Southern California.

Spring is a fitful, inconsistent presence still. The rhododendrons in the Botanical Gardens are in full panoply. (The Rhodo festival occurred during the last week of October.) We had snow last week.

Big news for the Kiwikirks in Waikikamukau is a new self-feeding coal boiler supplying the energy for our central heating. It requires very little humanoid attention and has changed our life very much for the better. The house is now snug and drying out. [The boiler ran for three weeks before we had a day when it was not needed at all. (This tells you a bit more about ‘Spring’…) My nearest and dearest wants to name it ‘The Little Engine That Could’. I lean towards Big Bertha for a monicker.)]

Your blogger, having had a trip overseas during September, is a bit out of shape writing wise--feeling anew the great distance from the rest of the world, it seems had to restart. I have lost my ability for instance to decide which is the bigger news item, the opening of a major rainforest/butterfly addition to the Museum or the loss of the All Blacks. Their unceremonious ouster from the Rugby World Cup will be fodder for the next four years, a wound festering until the next cup tests in New Zealand. (A ‘test’ is a match, or what we would term a game…) It was a sad day for a proud, over-achieving (small) nation when the All Blacks bowed to France (or was their demise the result of terrible officiating by an raw English ref?).

“Billed as the tallest, live butterfly experience in New Zealand and the only multi-level butterfly house in Australia or New Zealand, the tropical house features a 6m waterfall, plus fish and turtle ponds। The butterfies are imported from breeders and suppliers in the Philippines (for the most part), Costa Rica and other Asian and South American destinations.” We Kiwikirks were the first of the public to enter the new facility yesterday morning. It is amazing...1000 butterflies, waterfall and swing bridge transport you to a new clime, a dream paradise well worth the price of entry. We approve!

One of today’s tasks was to buy a few fireworks for the Guy Fawkes’ celebrations tomorrow. Fireworks are not sold legally during the rest of the year but now is a feast-time for holiday noisemakers. We are almost old hands now, our second time around…Tomorrow we will go to a park of friends, taking our “Boom Box” collection (NZ$30! of which Wim kicked in 10).

Tessa had a huge concert last week, playing in 2 piano quartets (Mahler and Strauss) and 1 piano trio (Korngold) at the University. I adjudicated a competition for three scholarships awarded by the Dunedin chapter of the Independent Registered Music Teachers of NZ. This weekend Lily did three performances in the ‘Nutcracker’.

Last item: “Cans film festival tickets snapped up”“For 10 days each year, thousands of people swap a can of food for the year’s cheapest movie ticket। All cans received go to the Salvation Army Christmas food-bank appeal। Watties (an omnipresent brand, like Heinz) matches all donations can for can।”…” In Dunedin, the Salvation Army receives 1600 cans a year through the film festival।”