How yeah goin’?

This is the Kiwi version of ‘How’s it going?’ People walk a lot here in Waikikamukau, both to get from place to place and to keep fit. Whether or not a greeting is offered when one is out for a constitutional and meets another soul face-to-face seems to be pretty random, not necessary determined by age or gender. Salutations run a narrow gamut from Hullo to G’day. Yesterday’s utterance, an exception, came from the mouth of a healthy male specimen—a small mesomorph in Southern-man style—he was tough verging on menacing but a straight shooter, judging from the delivery of the friendly words. A warm gesture of acknowledgement from a passerby is a boon, giving a welcomed lift to one’s communing with the great outdoors.

Sometimes it’s a small thing that makes aware of living in a new culture or connections to the distant past. Our most recent mayonnaise need was met by eschewing ‘Best Foods’ (Hellmann’s in disguise) and opting to go for “SW Whole Egg Mayonnaise’, thus incurring a savings of $1.50. The taste of the new product is not bad but the appearance is off-putting. A quality of translucence put me in mind of the paper paste we used in kindergarten back in the pre-mucilage age. (The ancient Miss Scott of that era claimed to have also had my father in her class before me.) The taste of mayo is a bit more food-like than the paste but not by a large margin.

It is just over four hours until the New Year arrives in New Zealand. The International Dateline falling where it does means that I have four plus twenty-four hours to compose a last blog entry for 2007.

Looking back at our first complete year here in Waikikamukau (excepting a couple of jaunts over the big pond) the high points of the year would be success in school for Wim and Lily, the wedding and the wedding trip to the US, a visit to the UK par moi, and employment at the Uni for Tessa.

My own New Year’s Day was celebrated with a bike ride to roller-blading along the harbor then a family New Year barbie.

Okay, next day…Happy New Year! It is now 2008 in New Zealand. Best wishes to all for what lies ahead. Drop us a line and tell us how you’re goin’

क्स्मस इन waikikamukau

Owen Duffy and his wife own ‘Rosemount’. This rambling wreck of a house next door has a good sized lawn. Today was first our quiet Sunday for many a moon with no scheduled work or other activities. It was such a beautiful day that it moved Owen to summon his trusty lawn mower to life. On what turned into a ‘mowing day’, what is most likely a 2-stroke engine putted away for roughly six hours, including tea breaks, the (probably) original muffler allowing a pretty accurate count of each ignition stroke. The character of this engine is well-suited to the gait of a genial, tough, retired tea-bag-paper buyer with a recent hip replacement. (We find it interesting that he wears sound-dampening ‘ear-muffs’ (head-phones) since in conversation it is clear that Owen is on the borderline between hard-of-hearing and stone deaf.)

This huge past week encompassed the end of school and the beginning of the Christmas season. On Monday we attended the Carol Service of Columba College (this is Lily’s school). Wednesday was the final concert of Lily’s choir (Southern Children’s Choir) and dinner but we missed it because she was too tired to go out. Thursday morning was the prize-giving at John McGlashan College, Wim’s school. [I accompanied one of Tessa’s students at the awards programme who played a fancy piece by Rachmaninoff (purchased par moi at the publishers in St. Petersburg!).] Willem won ‘Merit’ in six subjects (meaning that he was in the top three in his class in those subjects), a book prize (meaning he was in the top three overall in his class) and a cup in art (meaning that he was first in art in his year and the next year—four classes). On Friday, Lily won a commendation at the Columba prize giving, meaning that she was outstanding in her class. Saturday was the Gala programme of the string academy for which Tessa is the senior tutor and I am a casual accompanist. These students did beautifully in their performances, having made great strides with their new instructor.

[From The Star (a free weekly): …A 17-year-old boy at John McGlashon College is practicing his digit dexterity before his Saturday attempt at beating the Guinness World Records’ fastest text time blindfolded. The current record for testing a prescribed 160-character phrase is 1min23sec “but I can do it comfortably in 55 seconds,” said Elliot. He has mastered a 45sec effort but keying in tricky sections, like “razor-toothed piranhas of the genera serrasalmus”, with eyes covered makes it “really easy to make mistakes.”…Elliot has had a solid training schedule, sending about 2000 texts a month. Building up to the record attempt he has been practicing the set sentences every few hours, In between studying for his six exams, of course. …To abide by the stringent rules, Elliot’s attempt must be filmed in the presence of two independent witnesses….” A couple of days later, the ODT confirmed that Elliot indeed set this record…]

The weather, as always, has been fickle. We had about six days of amazing weather before Thursday, days that felt like January or February—the height of summer. Thursday, we had to fire up the boiler. Then, surprise…summer returned on Saturday…the day that Tessa and Wim purchased our Christmas tree. Reading messages from New England, with news of snowstorms, makes us hyper-aware of the cognitive dissonance involved in subtracting ‘White’ from Christmas.

[more random NZ notes: “Shrek, the famous Tarras sheep, will be trotting into the limelight again this weekend at the launch of his second book (The Further Adventures of Shrek—New Zealand’s Celebrity Sheep) and a party to acknowledge what is believed to be his 12th birthday.” Various news outlets discussed whether he was the oldest pet sheep around. (More talk of the Guinness Book of Records…) Woops, a day later there was a letter in the ODT saying that an eighteen-yr-old girl had a pet sheep that was born the same year that she was…

At the time of WW I, the population of NZ stood at circa one million. This explains the number of monuments and the losses still felt by the deaths of 68,000 in the Great War and the attention paid to the hopeless slaughter at Gallipoli.

Nearly 3% of New Zealanders live in Australia where, simply put, wages are higher. I believe I read that 50% of Dunedin…which is very similar to Waikikamukau…lives on NZ$22,000 per annum]

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!