jaywalking kiwis

I think I figured out why kiwis don't make a huge effort to use the cross walk when crossing the street. I think they think that by using a crosswalk, that is inconveniencing traffic by making them stop, and that just isn't polite. So they'll wait until one lane is clear, walk to the center line, and then stand there in the middle of the road, (sometimes holding their child's hand or pushing a stroller), and wait until the next lane is clear to run across.

I'm in their miiiiinds.

___________________

This whole issue of jaywalking is a big one for me. Wellington is dealing with many pedestrian injuries/deaths lately and are grasping at straws trying to figure out what to do about it. They've lowered the speed limit to 30 kms (That is 18mph people!) They have started a small advertizing campaign about safe crossing. They considered erecting barriers along the footpath, but data from Europe show that pedestrians jump over those barriers, making crossing in front of cars even more dangerous. Next, the city is hiring a psychologist to help relate to the pedestrians.

Police in Wellington do not ticket jaywalkers.

I've mentioned to acquaintances that giving out jaywalking tickets would solve the problem. I've received various responses:

• Guffaw!! (askance smile to neighboring non American)
• Seems a little Big Brother doesn't it?
• Wellington can't make a city law for the police to enforce, as the police are national (well okay that makes sense then).
• The police have better things to do than to hand out tickets to pedestrians!
• The police department and city do not have the money to employ officers to hand out tickets. (The local newspaper, the Dominion Post, reported in July 2011: "The Dominion Post counted 336 people crossing against the traffic signals at the intersection of Willis St, Willeston St and Lambton Quay between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday." ) (dude, they generate revenue k?)
  

There is something seriously wacky going on with the Wellington pedestrian for sure. I've made it my personal mission to honk some sense into any idiot who strays across my path when I have a green light. Yeah I see your snotty look you brat. But now you're deaf. ha ha!

Routeburn Track and Milford Sound

American Birthday

Some things never change, like me celebrating my birthday for almost a week. I feel pretty spoiled. Today heaps of Happy Birthday messages came in, reminding me that today was my true birthday because that's the time zone I was born in.

Mom wrote me yesterday, saying that she's been reading my notes here and that I write like Harlan Coben. I've never read him before. I googled him and there was actually a video clip of his upcoming book: http://www.harlancoben.com/

Jacquelyn, my only American colleague, arrived to work with the best lemon bars ever. They're pretty much my favorite dessert, although I think I say that about several desserts. I might have strongly hinted to her that they were my fav. The sorority I was in for all of 11 weeks sometimes served them and I would sneak as many as possible.

E-mails have been going back and forth between my friends and me, figuring out the details for lawn bowling. Summer is here! We're going to do the Island Bay lawn bowls again. Pretty excited for handles of beers in the sun! Hoping the weather is as good this year as least year.

Tomorrow night we're off to the bird sanctuary again to see Sirocco the head-mating kakapo. It's a rare bird that bonded with humans too much while being treated for a respiratory infection, and is now helpful in fund raising. And it mates with human's heads.

Bird Sanctuary (Zealandia)

Today we visited the bird sanctuary in Karori. We were here for the first time when we first moved here, in August 2009. We really enjoyed our visit today. There's a new cafe and visitor's centre now which are pretty nice.

We saw a bunch of cute geckos hanging out together in a terrarium. Not sure if they're native.

They have these amazing birds there, called the takahe. There's only a little over 100 left in New Zealand. They were once thought to be extinct, but around the 1940's this guy, sure that the takahe were still around because of sporadic reports of sightings, would spend this weekends and holidays tramping around the fjordland in the South Island looking for the bird. I can just imagine how excited he was to find the bird, they are really cool. This one is pretty old (18 or so, they're expected to live until around age 21).
They just walk around part of the park like pheasants. They look quite a bit like my other favourite NZ blue bird, the pukeko.


I can almost imagine how that "discoverer" of the Takahe felt. There is a bird called the "fan tail" that I thought was extinct, but I was confusing it with another bird, the huia, which is extinct. I was in a bathroom at a campground almost two years ago with my friend Erin when a fantail flew in. I got so excited, thinking, "I must tell everyone! They're alive!" But happily the the flitty pretty birds are alive and well all over, although still not too terribly common to see.

Our whole goal today was to hike from the bottom of the park, in Karori, to the wind turbine, in Brooklyn. Goal met!

The trail back to the entrance of the park was along a high, wire bird sanctuary fence. (The fence is built to keep rodents and possums out) It was over grown and difficult to avoid the sticker bushes. Apparently it is unusual to see people on the trail we were on, because people on the trail on the other side of the fence, in Brooklyn, kept giving us funny looks. Finally an older woman stopped us and asked if we were lost. :-)

On the way back to the carpark we got a sighting of a kaka.

We even got to see a tuatara.

And a baby tuatara. (It's hypothesized that tuataras were around at the same time as the dinosaurs, and stayed with New Zealand when it broke away from Australia).

Tinsel- advanced vocabulary education

Learning some advanced vocabulary, working on my PhD in Kiwi.

My friend Anna and I are organizing the "Christmas-do" for our office (the holiday party, which is completely and totally okay to call a "Christmas" party, even though we work for a government agency for a country of heaps of atheists and agnostics.) But I digress.

Anna was discussing decorating the function room of the Indian restaurant we'll be having the party in, and saying she "might put some tinsel on the back of everyone's chair." At this point I felt the familiar-- hey, that doesn't add up. hmm. Might "tinsel" be used differently here? I had to make my Julie Confused face, say, "um, i don't know if that's the best idea, maybe we think tinsel is something different?" "why?" "Oh, you know, my idea of tinsel--- that would sorta stick to people's backs." "Huh. Well tinsel is silvery and kinda thready." "Huh, that's my 'tinsel' too. Okay, maybe we do think it is the same thing. ha ha never mind."

Anna sent me an e-mail later with a picture labelled "tinsel" which helped really clarify everything:

Ohhhhh.
I showed her a picture of "American" tinsel (which was surprisingly difficult to google image btw)-- she said she had never really used that before.

Pumpkin Pie

Today I made pumpkin pie, with no crust. Bryce was aghast.

It turned out great, I always thought crust was a waste of calories anyway. Real whip cream helps too. (I will trade crust calories for whipped cream calories any day).




Freeeeeezing and raining today! Just last week we were having drinks in the sun. What happened, agh!

Blogs are tricky

I would love to update this blog more often, but I feel funny about putting people's names or pictures on here. I'm getting long past the point on my New Zealand adventure where this feels like a little vacation, like I should after over 2 years. I do feel like this is home and the things that occupy my mind are slightly deeper than the cool blue pukeko I saw on the way home. Not like I didn't have deep thoughts before of course, but I don't have much to share in regards to what has charmed me lately.

I'm proud of putting blog entries in as much as I have though--I have a journal too though that's been sorely neglected for months. Such a pain to hand write things out. Dear Prudence advises against private journals because someone will read it after you're gone-- so where's the release?? Maybe time to ignore Ms. Prudie.

Well here's my assessment of NZ-related situation, suitable for reading by wider internet viewing audience.

I am grateful for opportunity to move here, and get residency. I had no idea I'd meet so many wonderful people. I had hoped I would grow into a better person as a result of this experience and I know for sure that I'm more thoughtful. I hope to live here later, but for now I find the idea of living in the States a little exotic. As opposed to a post I made this time last year, now I'm ready to settle down in a permanent place. With a garden, dog, and puppies. Bonus points for a lemon tree. Who knows what kind of crazy ideas I'll have this time next year.

I will take this time to document that at approximately 2:30 PM 2/10/11, Bryce promised me that one day we can have a home with a lemon tree that will be so full that lemons will be on the ground. (We passed a lemon tree on someone's front yard, on the way to a party at Josien's, that made me jealous. Who could take a lemon tree for granted so much that they would just let the lemons rot on the ground???)