Howdy. Kia ora. Gidday.

LAST BLOG

2011-02-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

This is going to be my last blog post as I am really short on time. But, do not worry, you can't shut me up that easily - I will still be sending group emails and posting pictures on facebook (it's just the combination of doing that with the blog that is too time consuming). This means that you will no longer be able to get my news by stealth, if you want it you'll have to be on the email list - so email me at jess.f.harding@gmail.com if you want on... I don't send them often (every two months or so). Sorry about the lack of pics on this blog but they are on facebook if you are interested....

It's been a long time since I've written. Things seem less exciting now I guess - as NY becomes home rather than a new experience.

That being said, it's a pretty amazing home. There's so many things to love about the city and it was so incredible having Beth, Mikey, Stacey, Phoebe, Alice and Max to explore them with.

My new favourite part of the city is Chelsea. It makes me wish that I could be a millionaire and afford to live there. There is this amazing public park called the Highline built on an old elevated railroad track - a triumph of community organizing and urban design. (See the pics on facebook - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=270145&id=623451051&l=fc7a5a4fa8). Beth and Mikey were here for New Years Eve which we spent watching the NY skyline from Brooklyn Bridge. We did lots of other fun things while they were all here, it was amazing, except that it was sad seeing them all leave.

I adore all the museums, which is lucky, as while most of you are enjoying the beach, I am still wading through snow and negative temperatures. I console myself by thinking I'd rather go to a museum than the beach anyway but your pictures on facebook are making it difficult to keep that preference! Two of my favourite museums are MOMA and the Tenement Museum (all about NYC immigration), and we also went to Ellis Island museum as part of our Statue of Liberty trip, as well as the Brooklyn museum party, which I've written about before but seriously... a party in a museum, what could be better?! I am going to the Tenement museum again this weekend, they do these awesome tours, and anyone who knows me knows that I love museum tours...

Alongside the intellectual exploration of NYC's immigrant past I've been enjoying the more tangible aspects - food. Chinatown, Koreatown, Curry Hill. Not to mention restaurant week where all the best, most expensive, NYC restaurants offer cheap prix fixe menus - so far I've been to three - it's so nice to experience a bit of luxury given my usual student lifestyle of lugging 100s of pounds of groceries home on the subway (and don't even get me started on the annoyance of the lack of a metric system, not to mention the difficulty of writing the date).

Mum arrives in three weeks and I am unbelievably excited about that. I'm hoping she loves NYC despite the fact that she doesn't like big cities.... It might be a bit of a challenge but I've identified all the greenest parts of the city. We are also going to Washington to meet Max for a week too and we are planning days at all the Smithsonians (free museums - this whole blog is really just about museums, I'm sorry) as well as a tour of congress. Fingers crossed we spot Obama!

Aside from that, I have flights booked back to New Zealand and a job in Wellington so I'm super excited about that. I'll be working at the Centre for Social Research and Evaluation at the Ministry of Social Development and will be back in NZ from May 24th until August 31st. I am really looking forward to being back and catching up with everyone as well as a trip to Samoa with mum to escape from what will be four consecutive winters!

Anyway, university is already crazily busy so this is just a short update. Let me know your news!

The holiday season

2010-12-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. I hope you are all well.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Life got a little crazy with ‘finals’ (end of semester assignments and exams) so this is going to be a long catch up blog. Basically the highlight was Max arriving mid November but there have been lots of others....

Thanksgiving

The ultimate American holiday. While the politics of what is being celebrated are questionable, the food was amazing. Laura cooked for 12 in our tiny apartment, which was an amazing feat, especially given she made everything from scratch – and I mean everything – including bread to make into stuffing. YUM.

Aside from the food we also made a committed 5.45am trek to the Macy’s parade – an impressive spectacle of American consumerism.

Max found the balloons creepy.

Philadelphia

Max and I then headed to Philadelphia for the long weekend. We got a lot of American history. We enjoyed learning about ‘we the people’ at the Constitution centre and loved the Philadelphia food market and the Museum of Modern Art.

Max in Manhattan

As I said, this was a crazy time for me, and Max was working hard too – he’s got an internship at the American Civil Liberties Union in the human rights program and is working on a big international mooting competition (where one pretends to be a lawyer – although it’s more important than that makes it sound). We did manage to do some fun exploring though. Probably the highlight was a free party at the Brooklyn museum which they hold every month. It’s amazing. They open up the museum for free and have all kinds of activities and have a dance party in the gallery. It’s walking distance from my house and the event represents the diversity of my neighbourhood so well – there were Caribbean mothers dancing with their children next to wealthy looking 60 year old couples who were dancing next to fashionable hipsters of all ethnicities. It’s so unusual to have such a cross-section of society enjoying events together and I loved it. We’ve done lots of other New Yorky things including Central Park, the Met, shopping in Soho and watching ice-skaters at the Rockefeller Centre.

Christmas

Next was our WHITE Christmas. In fact, I was regretting wishing for a white Christmas after we got stuck in the snow for 9 hours on our trip back from Boston. Anyway we went to Boston to some of Max’s family who were ‘fab to the Max’ (one of their phrases). We loved Boston. We caught up with a friend who’s at Harvard and gave us the tour – it was particularly picturesque in the snow, the whole city is very picturesque in fact. Christmas was great. We had a Christmas Eve party with Max’s aunt and her friends, then went out to another of her friends’ families for Christmas. Everyone was very welcoming and I got fab presents – lots of cookbooks and candy.

Now I’m back in New York and enjoying being on holiday especially as Phoebe, Alice, Stacey, Beth and Mikey are all here from NZ. It’s fun being a tourist with them. That’s all for now as I’m off to meet Phoebe and Alice to go to MOMA. Sending you lots of love from the blizzard in New York – seriously cars are buried under snow drifts!

xxx

Fall, football, halloween

2010-11-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

New York is not America.

Or at least that's how it feels, which is lucky, in my opinion, given the political climate evident in the recent elections.

However, I did experience the real America! I went to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, for a football game. A Navy football game.

It was everything I imagined and more: fried food, the national anthem, chants ("Go Navy, Beat Army" – although they weren’t actually playing the army …), planes flying overhead, the navy school boys in uniforms doing pushups when their team scored (there was a real incentive for their team to win as it meant that the navy school all got a night off), and tailgating (which does not mean follow too closely, but describes how people have bbqs in the carpark of the stadium before the game). My only complaint is that games take four or so hours – I don’t know how anyone can care after that long.

The rest of the trip was great too - we stayed in a historic bed and breakfast where we had high tea, there was the best fudge shop ever, I had American style sushi (ridiculous), and we went on a tour of the state capital with a hilarious feminist guide.

Another totally American experience (even in New York) was Halloween.

My friend Leslie had a super extreme Halloween party.

The menu was as follows:

Mummies in a blanket (which are the spooky cousins to pigs in a blanket)

Baked Jack-o-lantern nacho dip and chips (vegetarian)
Pumpkin and Ghost Sandwiches

Homemade Iced Halloween sugar cookies

Vanilla Halloween cupcakes

Chocolate spider cupcakes

Spider web cotton candy and chocolate eyeballs

Green Ghoul cocktails with worms

Orange and black Happy Halloween cocktails with spiders.

We carved pumpkins which was super fun too and got goody bags to take home.

Then on Sunday night I went out in the Village for the Halloween parade. Basically it’s a participatory event where any who’s dressed up can march – some of the costumes were amazing – but it’s really the general atmosphere that everyone goes for. Everyone dresses up and the streets are madness. Next year I want to go to DC as apparently you can go Trick or Treating on Embassy Row and get candy from all around the world.

Thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes all. I had a great time with a few of my friends here. We had a fall themed dessert party with pecan pie, spiced apples and spiced apple cider and pumpkin muffins.

This blog is all about food, which I guess shows you some of the real America. Although one great paradox to me is how many amazing bakeries there are in NYC but how skinny the people are. They have a self control that I do not.

Things I’ve been thinking lately – ways to communicate.

2010-11-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

I’m reading a lot at the moment. In fact I’ve been reading pretty much all the time and it’s making all too obvious how similar journal articles are to each other, and how scientific writing is all the same. So I’ve been thinking about ways to communicate academic concepts more appropriately for both the general population and policy makers.

Pedro Noguera, a sociologist who works with urban schools, came to our colloquium this week and he talked about how one of the threads of his research is ‘making the familiar strange’. For instance, we know that socioeconomic status (SES) strongly predicts student grade point average (GPA), which is seriously unfair but also widely ignored and forgotten. In a project that Noguera et al. did, they created a map of San Francisco where they mapped GPA onto suburbs to show that elevation of a neighbourhood is strongly related to GPA. The wealthy like to live on hills. The map was so powerful that is was on the front of the San Francisco Chronicle and suddenly something everyone knew was compelling again.

It’s difficult to break out of the mold though, even writing the above I initially wrote SES and GPA without any explanation of what the acronyms mean, which is not helpful for clear communication.

Then I went to a Zadie Smith reading. Dream. She read from her book of essays and they were so witty, articulate and insightful. I don't see why more academic writing can't be creative - it's so effective. Unfortunately in psych we’re still trying to convince everyone we’re a science.

So one day I will write a novel or super creative journal articles. For now I’ll write my blog. I’ll work on making it more interesting.

Daily living

2010-10-18T20:41:00.001-07:00

A lot of people have told me I should update my blog more regularly. I feel like I do it often. I think I’ve posted very two weeks or so and I’m sure no one wants more of my news than that – aside from mum that is, who I email every day.

Speaking of every day, here is what my life is like here.

I wake up and talk to Max, while eating Granola. I really miss toasted muesli and weetbix. So far I’ve found it impossible to buy cereal that’s not full of sugar. I get ready and head in to uni (or “school” if I’m being American) just after 7am. Commuting has made me a meaner person. I started off very cognizant of who should get first priority on seats, now I fight to sit down so I can do my reading; although I’ve mastered the art of standing, reading, highlighting, and making notes. I have seen ridiculous things on the Subway: a homeless lady going toilet into a cup in the entrance (I almost cried) and an unbelievable breakdancing, acrobatics show – people literally doing back flips in the middle of the subway car. My commute is about 40mins.

When I arrive in the city I have my favorite street to walk down from the subway station, which has my favorite fruit seller, my 45cent bagel shop, and my favorite pastry shop (there are so many amazing ones everywhere, thank you early Italian immigrants).

I do my work all day and I’ve already blogged about my classes. I also have to work 20hours a week on a research project and I’ve decided to work on the Early Adolescent Cohort Study, which is a longitudinal study of diverse youth. I should get to conduct interviews with some of the youth so I’m excited about that and there’s so many different things in the study so there’s lots that I’m interested in. The general university environment is so intellectually stimulating too. I’ve been to public lectures by Nick Clegg (the UK deputy Prime Minister), by a congressman and by numerous big deal psychology professors (the academic celebrity is a curious US phenomenon). There’s always free food at these events too.

After school I either go to the gym, yoga, or Wholefoods, and then cook and do more work.

Aside from general life, there is always something exciting to look forward to. Recently, I’ve been to the Lion King on Broadway and then to Magnolia’s bakery (very famous).

I’ve walked Brooklyn bridge and then spent the day in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right on the water - it’s so nice that Manhattan is an island. I went to the Cloisters, which is the medieval collection of the Met museum and such a beautiful area, again, right on the water.

I went to a great movie about America’s failing school system, which inspired me. I love to just wander the city and feel that it won’t be long until I become one of the New York City snobs who think this is the only real city in the world and won’t live anywhere else but here. That being said, I am very excited to come back to Wellington for summer break next year and see you all in NZ (and eat kumara).

So that’s my life – tell me about yours please?

P.s. Here are some pics of my furnished apartment, more are on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=204174&id=623451051&l=b9aab20194)

2010-09-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

There is always something happening here.

I love that there are events/ people/ food everywhere, all the time. To start with just one of these, every kind of food one could ever want is available. Probably my favorite food-related thing about NY are the Greencarts. These are carts all over the city that sell fresh fruit at really cheap prices.

(photo from: http://newyorkstreetfood.com/1208/fruit-and-vegetable-carts-booming-in-harlem/)

The other thing that’s amazing is that pretty much every corner store (dairy) has a buffet salad bar. Most of these stores also sell homemade soup. To be honest I’ve been doing a lot of cooking so haven’t utilized any of this that much. My roommate is an amazingly good cook. We (really she) made ravioli by hand and then ate it with homemade pesto (that part I did – the eating, not the pesto).

Most of the food that I have taken advantage of is from street festivals. These happen pretty much every weekend somewhere in the city and I love the descriptions of them: they all state “around a million people attend the … festival every year” – 1 million people at some kind of event, every weekend! One of the first ones I attended was right in my neighborhood – the West Indian Carnival. Then there was the San Gennaro Feast (Italian). This weekend there is the Atlantic Antic – again in my neighborhood. When there wasn’t a street fair of interest on I went to the permanent Brooklyn flea market, where there was delicious food, vintage goods and these adorable children selling homemade lemonade. We worked out that the children must make around $150 a week and decided we needed to get some as a business opportunity. Someone else’s of course, otherwise the costs would outweigh the benefits.

Anyway, the other thing I love is that everything is open so late. One day I asked someone what time shops shut and she looked at me blankly. I clarified – “do shops close at 5 or 6 o’clock?” That’s how I found out shops close at 10pm. It’s so great because my days here are really long. I leave the house at 7am and get home after 7pm everyday (usually more like 9pm) but I never feel like I’m missing out on anything cause no matter what time I finish, things are always open and happening.

Aside from exploring the city, we’ve still been setting up the apartment. After two 8hour days at IKEA + waiting on delivery + building time + countless trips to Target + way too much money we have finally got it pretty much done. Photos to come.

Now for the real reason why I’m here: University. It’s amazing. The courses are so challenging and stimulating. There is a huge amount of reading for every class but it’s all so interesting and I love it. This is a quote from one of the readings that I think describes the objective of the program (in an extremely over-the-top American way): “We can, through the application of our science to serve our world’s citizens, actualize the idea that nothing is of greater value to society than a science that devotes its scholarship to improving the life chances of all people. By understanding and celebrating the strengths of all individuals, and the assets that exist in their families, communities, and cultures to promote these strengths, we can have a developmental science that may, in these challenging times, help us, as a scientific body and as citizens of democratic nations, to finally ensure that there is truly liberty and justice for all.”

I really like the idea but I think that it’s hilarious that the quote implies that only those in democratic nations can be a part of this, and also the use of “liberty” which is, I think, a different concept to what would be used in New Zealand. I think in New Zealand this quote would end “ensure that there is truly equality and justice for all”. Maybe that’s just my NZ.

I don’t think that anyone else is going to be interested by the other things I’m learning that I’m really excited about – multiple regression, statistical conclusion validity, counterfactuals, external validity – so I’ll leave it there for now. But here are some pics of the ‘campus’.

Ghetto living.

2010-09-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

So, I live in the ghetto (and I know I sometimes said that Grey Lynn was the hood - but now I am serious).

Our apartment was marketed as Prospect Heights but is really Crown Heights and the neighborhood demographic is 90% Caribbean, 9% Hasidic Jew, and our building is probably the 1% other. It is very dirty and our neighbors have some kind of illicit gambling/ dog fighting/ fight club situation going on so it’s very loud at night. All the shops near us have serious bullet proof glass. The people are very friendly and nice though, some of the boys too much so – yesterday my roommate got told something so rude I could never write it down! Her response was “thank you” – said with genuine Minnesotan enthusiasm and politeness.

It’s incredible how different neighborhoods are here. On the day I came to move into the apartment I first went to pick up the key from a very traditional Hasidic Jewish neighborhood and I turned up in a tiny dress as it's hot here and I had no idea. Afterwards I was waiting for a bus and realized that all the girls had no skin exposed and all the boys were in full suits and top hats; a lady on the street then told me that I wouldn’t see anyone else dressed like me around here as it’s a very traditional religious community and filled me in on some of the regulations – girls fully covered from age 3, stockings have to be darker than skin color – it was really interesting. I tried to take photos kind of secretly but felt rude so here’s a pic from http://ericleetroyer.com/?paged=2

That night I also went on an Immigrant Walking Tour about the different early US cultural groups. The difference between my Caribbean neighborhood, the Hasidic Jewish community, Chinatown, the old Jewish quarter and the NYU area is so great I felt I’d been in 10 different countries in a day.

To show you how different things are here are some pics from around where I live: one taken in Crown Heights and the other a few streets from here in the gentrified Prospect Heights.

So, we are just a few blocks from a really lovely area and our area is really colorful – tomorrow there is a Caribbean Labor day festival which my roommate Laura and I are really looking forward to.

Speaking of Laura – she is great! Which is lucky as we only met via email before Wednesday. Moving into our apartment has been an ordeal thanks to IKEA – I am still sleeping on a yoga mattress, though we did have four trolleys of stuff so losing one had to be expected.

Our apartment is really, really lovely and is starting to look great (we have a nice fall themed living room going on) and shop people are very helpful to us – I think we seem helpless, which I am a bit, luckily Laura is less so... I will upload pictures if IKEA ever brings the rest of our furniture.

Laura’s brother and some of his friends who are in the Marine Corps have been staying here and providing me with a military education, as well as teaching me American culture and lingo, so that’s been fun.

School starts on Tuesday, and I’ve been so busy settling in and exploring I do not feel at all like I’m here to study. I have met my program director and the one other incoming student and both of them made me really excited about starting, as do my courses: two statistics courses as well as seminars in Psychology and Social Intervention and Theories of Change in Applied Psychology.

Well, despite the party going on outside my window, I think it’s bedtime – night friends.

x

Beginning the American Dream

2010-08-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

I love this city.

I’ve been here two days so far.

The population of NYC is 8.3mil so nearly twice the population of NZ, but it doesn’t feel too much. I do like big cities and seem to manage to ignore traffic sounds so I may have an unrepresentative view of this but so far it’s felt really great. I think it’s because most roads are one way so you can pretty much always cross the road.

So, after over 24 hours of travelling and meeting a lecturer I know in LA airport – I thought NZ was small, turns out it’s the whole world; seven degrees I suppose – I arrived in New York, minus one bag. I am staying with friends near Columbia who arrived the same day I did and we share our new city exploits. They are amazing.

The first day I headed to NYU for various orientations and attempts to organize my new life here. The campus is, well not really a campus for starters; it’s spread out all over the East village, quite similar to Auckland Uni really. Although I imagine that when uni starts the 70,000 students (!) will make it seem pretty different. I won’t bore you with the details but let it suffice to say it took an hour and a half of lining up to get my ID card so you can imagine what the day was like.

The highlight was definitely seeing Andy De frietas; we had a coffee in this deserted tree line street at this great café really close to the water. There are height restrictions in the village so there’s no skyscrapers and it feels relaxed.

My next day Imet up with Dave Sanford, so I’m definitely feeling glad to be in New York rather than Minnesota where I would have had one visitor or so a year… We met at Times Square and went to a hilarious diner where they sing Broadway when they bring your meals, then we wandered Central Park.

In the afternoon I wandered the Upper East Side and lived out my Gossip Girl dreams. It’s unbelievably flash up there: I saw town houses for rent for $21,000 month (over 2/3s of what I’ll earn in a year here!) and there are so many beautiful cake shops and bakeries – although none were as packed as Starbucks.

That’s all for now. I promise not to bore you with daily updates but am waiting for the shops to open this morning and am so excited to be here and want to share it all with you

2010-04-09T03:55:00.000-07:00

Alice Springs and Uluru was an unreal experience.

We woke up at 4.30am every morning, after sleeping in our swags under the stars, to walk around terrain unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

The politics of it is so interesting but it’s late so I’ll have to leave it for another time. But I love how our awesomely rough guide put it: “So many tourists come here to ‘enjoy’ the culture and are then like ‘f*ck you’ [to the wishes of the Anangu people]”

Max and I had a dream time travelling together: share reading, avoiding flies and lots of talking and laughing <3. We then headed back to Max’s home town Wellington for pure relaxation - books, good food, great coffee, scrabble, art, family and friends – before hitting the craziness of Auckland, which explains why it has taken me so long to update this. Funnily I’m just back from spending Easter in Welly – maybe I’ll blog about that in a few months time.

January in Brisbane

2010-04-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

Well I’ve been home almost two months so I thought it was about time I finished my Australia blog. The first little bit I wrote while still there, but the rest is very late reflection.

January 2010 has been my best January yet. Being in Australia has meant I’ve had the longest holiday since I’ve started uni. Even though I’ve been working I’ve had a lot less obligations than usual. Jenny Holtzer is an awesome artist we saw in Melbourne. For a while she posted random “truisms” around New York. One that resonated with me on this note was: “a strong sense of duty imprisons”. In Australia I was very free.

In early January I finally manage to do some exploring of Brisbane. South Bank is one of the best public spaces I’ve ever been to. Beautifully designed with a free “beach,” it’s really nice to swim (even though the water’s kind of dirty) and relax after a hot day in the city. It’s also a chance to hang out with the whole demographic of Brisbane.

I spent a day exploring the Tamborine Mountains – a slightly tacky alternative town just out of Brisbane with my aunt and cousin which was an absolutely wonderful and action packed day.

One highlight was definitely visiting IKEA on the way home; home decoration bliss. It made me hope that I got into US grad school just so I could decorate an apartment from scratch in cheap IKEA goodness.

The next weekend Max came to Brisbane. We had such a good time. The Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art is the best I’ve been to, we went three times! (This is us in the installations).

We also went to the Gold Coast and had an amazing time exploring the city together.

I popped back to NZ for a day which made me feel super important, although unfortunately not important enough as I didn’t get the scholarship! I had a great dinner with some of my nearest and dearest though

There was lots of fun with hostel friends. A pancake palace farewell and a dinner party: butter chicken and pasta carbonara – not the most usual combination – but both were delicious. Massages, bollywood dancing and complaining about food were common pastimes.

My next visit was my dearest mama and she brought with her a little luxury. We went to Tangalooma Island, Moreton Island to feed wild dolphins. All of it was incredible as mum is incredible and my best friend and favourite (equal) holiday companion.

Finally I spent a week on Stradbroke Island for the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists Summer School. It was an academic dream: great people, amazing lecturers, and fun learning. I got a lot of great advice as by this stage I was stressed about my University of Minnesota acceptance which I didn’t know whether to accept or not. Hardest life decision ever. I was so inspired by the grad students and professors and the conference helped me decide that I love academia. Check out our difficult academic life:

To avoid making this the longest (and possibly the most boring) blog ever I will blog about Alice Springs separately.

Happy New Year

2010-01-13T00:50:00.001-08:00

Since I last blogged I had an amazing time in Melbourne with my amazing boyfriend (Max is dictating this blog). The airport was crazy on Christmas Eve – reminding me of Love Actually (the movie) – and I arrived at literally 11.55pm.

We had Christmas with Max’s friends from Indonesia and their family. How’s this for a tenuous link – we were their sister’s husband’s nephew’s best friend from five years ago and his girlfriend. They were really nice to us, even buying us chocolate for Christmas, and we relaxed at the botanical gardens, then played table tennis and card tricks, ending up in a awesome political conversation (a must for every Christmas). It was different from my previous Christmases but nice having Christmas with Max (he’s still dictating).

Boxing Day was great, we weren’t there at 5am (unlike the rest of Melbourne) but got some great bargains. Max was very helpful (he’s still dictating this – but it’s true).

Over the next week we explored lots of cool parts of Melbourne – Brunswick: fun and bohemian; Chapel St: great opshops, Daniel and pizza; St Kilda: good reading time at the beach and a great bar where we played scrabble (that’s the closet we got to going out at night);

Federation Square: to watch cricket and street performers.

We also went to art galleries;

ate nice, cheap food (mmmm Dumplings);

drank nice coffee; hung out with GREAT people;

watched a lot of West Wing; played a lot of scrabble - and for the record I (Jess) won 4/5 games (not that I’m competitive or anything…);

explored lanes and shops and China town.

One of the other exciting things that happened is that a nectarine squidged in my bag and broke my phone. However on some great advice from Dave (great to see you!!) I washed my phone, let it completely dry, and it works again!!

This New Year’s was my first not at Getaway since 2002 (that’s seven new year’ses – this is Max’s grammar instructions, I think it’s wrong). This year I was old and boring. It was fun. We were very civilized. Our friend we met in Scotland had a dinner party – a delicious four course meal (which we ate at about 10pm) - we had lots brill conversations, and then we sang by a grand piano (Max says I sang well – unfortunately this is untrue).

Was a lovely, fun, interesting and relaxing time.

When I arrived back in Brisbane – JJ was here! Treat. We went to Dreamworld and the newly-opened White Water World. I love themeparks.

I finally explored Brisbane (a little) hitting the fake beach – man Auckland needs one of them, I wish they’d hurry up and develop the docklands already – and shopping (yes more!) in the markets. I also finally went out here – in the red light Valley district. Trust JJ to be the one to get me out!!! – Although to be fair this was my first full weekend in Brisbane. The highlight of that night was definitely the whole (gay) club going crazy to Miley Cyrus – good times. Was very sad to see JJ go.

I have been working like crazy on seven different projects, hence the lack of blog update – this one’s for you Susan :) I’m being so productive which is making it really fun. Enjoying the gym here too – although it’s so hot I go purple (not an exaggeration) when I exercise.

Have to work now, but looking forward to coming back to NZ on the 26^th, will see some of you then I hope!

Christmas comes to Cromwell.

2009-12-22T22:53:00.000-08:00

Things haven’t been so exciting here lately, probably because I’ve been really cranking my work, which is good!

The work is fun, I’ve almost got two online surveys ready to run, am working on writing a publication for Chris (my supervisor in New Zealand) and am going to be a confederate (pretend that I’m another participant but really be in on the whole thing) in a study for a post-doc in January. It’s on ostracism, so basically I’m introduced to a stranger, we talk for a while and then are separated and then they are told that they can’t talk to me, and I have to try and talk to them for 3mins and pretend to be confused/ upset when they don’t talk back. Good times!

This weekend I went and visited my mum’s cousin, Linda and her son Daniel on the Sunshine Coast for the weekend which was amazing. I’ve seen a lot of them throughout my life and get on really well with them so it was a great weekend. We went up to the Eumundi markets which I definitely recommend. Such a treat and I got some good presents stocked up for upcoming birthdays etc. Then we went to Noosa where I had a swim and we drove a scenic route home.We also watched the Pursuit of Happiness which I enjoyed. Linda gave me a million Christmas presents and a little Christmas tree to have in my room to get into the Christmas spirit – so lovely.

Then on Sunday I went to church with a lecturer I met in Scotland and then back to her house for coffee. She is really interesting; she is a law professor and has horrific stories about sexism. Then I slept, actually all day.

Aside from that it’s been an amazing week uni-wise, that’s why I’m writing this now: I’m too excited and can’t focus on my reading. My first paper is officially in press, I got into Honours, with my first choice supervisor, I am probably going to be working on Dunedin Longitudinal Study data looking at how children’s age of walking and talking is related to later outcomes. FUN. I got the University of Auckland Honours Scholarship which pays fees and a stipend. And today I found out I am shortlisted for this large scholarship for studying overseas and they are flying me back to NZ for an interview in January. So please cross your fingers for me (or pray for me if you’re so inclined). And if you want to see me book in a coffee date for Jan 26^th – one day only! Haha.

It will be strange not being in NZ for Christmas and missing Phoebe’s annual Christmas Eve party and C3 carols and not being with my family on Christmas and missing Getaway (it would have been my 8^th), but I am off to Melbourne tomorrow night and cannot wait for that!

So, Merry Christmas everyone. I hope and pray you are blessed in the year to come.

LOVE! PEACE! HOPE!

Visiting ACT...

2009-12-17T06:13:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe I’ve only been away 18 days. It feels much longer. Brisbane and UQ feels very much like home and my flatties like long term friends. I always find it strange how when you’re travelling you almost forget about home, and when you’re home you almost forget about your travels. Well I do. Humans tend to adjust quickly I guess.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Canberra – “the Nation’s capital”. An accurate slogan, unlike Hamilton’s attempts –

Hamilton: Where it’s happening.

Hamilton: City of the future.

Until they finally got it right with this one – Hamilton: More than you’d expect (aka. better than you fear).

Yes I am a JAFA. But anyway, Canberra and not Hamilton is where I’ve been, and Canberra is really is just the Nation’s capital - parliament and a uni (which is like a city in itself). However, those two things sum up my interests pretty well so it was a good time, especially as Max was there – which, of course, was the main reason for going.

So we did the tourist thing which I love:

The photo of us dressed up is in the “Hands On” section at the Museum of Democracy. I love this. Civics Education is so important and so neglected. Someone told me (this is non-confirmed but interesting) that at Epsom Girls Grammar they did a civics education module where they presented party policies without the party names and got the girls to vote. “Party A” aka “Labour” won. Remember, Epsom currently elects Rodney (= ACT = very far from Labour). So many of the people here have told me they don’t know Left from Right (politically) or that they don’t know why they voted the way they did. In first year labs when I was collecting data someone asked me who John Key was (this is a University student, after he’d just been elected!!). I think we are clearly failing on having a (even vaguely) politically educated population, and obviously I think this is crucial.

Anyway, moving on, sorry about the rant, some other highlights of Canberra were this vegetarian restaurant that serves fake duck, fish, chicken, pork – bizarre I know. Unfortunately I failed on the tourist front and didn’t get any photos, but it was amazing what one can do with soy beans! Also, this unbelievable chocolate restaurant and delicious markets – although we had to walk two hours to get there. The walk was nice too though as everything there is political (Max - not just everything generally) so along the lake they have an exhibition of “Australian of the Year”, and more importantly we were with good people :)

Aside from Canberra, this week has been awesome. I read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is the second book I have read by him and in both I have sobbed uncontrollably. Not just cried, but bawled. His latest book is called “Eating Animals” and I’m afraid to read it as I’m sure he will be able to convince me to be vegetarian (unlike Caitlyn and Max who I don’t listen to).

I also had dinner with an amazing lecturer who works in Social Psychology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. She did a really interesting evaluation of changing racist views through a cross-cultural psychology course. I am really interested in the idea of having a compulsory Māori culture, history and language paper at uni. I honestly think learning Māori history in depth is life-changing. People have a total aversion to it because all through school and uni it’s taught in small segments that are arbitrary, and I think that it’s only doing it in depth that really changes you – that was my experience anyway. I’m ashamed to admit that I avoided Year 13 history because it was purely focused on New Zealand history, and it was only when I had to do Christianity in Aotearoa (which I complained about) that I got passionate about New Zealand/ Māori history. But there would obviously be a lot of backlash over anything like that being made compulsory, which might add to, rather than alleviate the problem. Anyone have any thoughts on this? - Bebe? (Mini/Maxi political blog coming soon).

Ok, sorry this blog is way too much about what I think and not what I’ve been doing. Um, I run and swim and eat gross food and study all day (a little more productively this week) and have coffee and do applications and spend too much time on facebook and skype and curse the heat and miss you guys.

xxx

Buses: A documentary

2009-12-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

On the weekend I went shopping with the college girls at the West End markets (the Grey Lynn-type suburb of Brisbane) which was amazing, lots of good purchases, and I was introduced to iced-tea = best thing ever.

I then bused to visit my family who live in Redlands. I discovered that an hour and a half on a bus can give you a lot of insight into a place. I concluded that Australians are ruder than New Zealanders (this I already had suspicions about given the majority of the staff at Cromwell College).

Incident One: Two teenage girls jump on and don’t have their student ID cards or enough money to pay adult fares. The bus driver won’t let them on. Fair enough. The girls roll their eyes and make up lame excuses. A man behind them ends up giving them money. Nice guy. They give the money to the bus driver, who gives them change, they then walk off without thanking the stranger who gave them the money - with his change!! They yell obscenities at the bus driver on getting off.

Incident Two: A lady with a pram jumps on the bus. Some twelve year old girls are sitting on the seats that fold up. They clearly don’t understand they should move (and there is no sign to say they are the pram seats – in fact the only sign says, “those with prams should take care not to inconvenience other passengers” = terrible – sorry if my having a baby inconveniences other passengers grrrrr). Anyway the lady starts yelling at the girls who still don’t get it, until a lady near them finally explains that those are the pram seats – they immediately move. What I don’t understand is how people can be so rude to strangers. If she had just explained she needed them to move, they would have, instead she immediately started making a scene. I think it’s the heat.

After my eventful bus trip – there were lesser events on there too! - I hung out with the family. They have a pool, we played guitar hero and had a picnic. Good times. My cousins are cool.

This week Daniel was here from Melbourne and it has been such a treat. Caught up with him and Dave and swam and sauna’d in his flash hotel. Good times!

Have been meeting heaps of nice people in the Psych department but am finding it way too hard to get any work done as it’s too hot in my room and there’s too much fun stuff to do. Really need to get cranking as I realized with all my travel I’m not actually here very long.

Off to Canberra on Friday and unfortunately my flight is at 5.30am and the latest time I can bus to the airport to get my flight is 7pm tomorrow (Thursday) night. So it’s going to be a nice long sleep in the airport. Lucky I’m amazing at sleeping. Very excited to see Max.

2009-12-04T02:13:00.001-08:00

Well my first week is almost over. My days pass in reasonable isolation – I don’t have an office at this stage so I sit and read in my bed all day. I can’t get through the day without a nap though, I really am a grandma.

The other international students on the scholarship are really nice and we hang out, and I do have other friends in Brisbane, so I’m not really isolated. It was one of the girls' 21^st so we all went out for a Turkish banquet. It was probably the best food I’ve ever eaten. Check it out!!!

Aside from that amazing meal out, the food here is standard fare. It’s not as bad as I expected, but is definitely lacking in imagination. Everything is fried or battered, there’s a full cooked breakfasts every morning, and dessert every night – I’m doing a lot of running to try to burn it off!

Aside from that the campus continues to amaze me with how beautiful it is – it has all these lakes and the wildlife is like a zoo – turtles, eels, beautiful parrots, lizards, geckos, turkeys, cockatoos, ibises.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading; my favourite thing I’ve read so far is probably an article about changing the norms of prejudice. In experiments, just one person expressing anti-racist views dramatically reduced tolerance for racist acts among the other participants. Conversely, when the person expressed benign acceptance of racist acts, the other participants also recommended acceptance. I like this, because I’m making it a goal to actually speak out when I see or hear prejudice, and it’s encouraging to hear that this can actually make a difference. I was inspired/ disgusted after watching this video that Luke Sizer (who is extremely awesome) recommended me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqbQWxHIn4U

I’d like to think I’d be one of the people that would speak out, but I wasn’t so sure – now I’m making a conscious effort to.

I’ve also re-read Michael Cullen’s valedictory speech. He is so hilarious. Here are some of my favourite parts:

... In the 1980s the urgent and necessary process of modernisation and reform lurched off into ideological excesses underpinned by the belief that there was no gain without pain. That came to mean that pain must inevitably lead to gain and then to a kind of political sado-masochism in which pain almost seemed to become an end in itself.

It certainly caused me some small financial pain. The biggest speeding fine I ever got was driving back from Whakatane to Wellington in January 1990 when I heard on the news that Geoffrey Palmer was supposedly moving to reinstate Roger Douglas as Minister of Finance. I hit 134kmph before a firm but polite traffic cop restored me to my senses...

...But today I want to emphasise the many good things that I have been part of. Apart from the issues already mentioned, the end of the right to rape one's wife, the end of the attempt to prevent gay people being themselves, the end of corporal punishment in schools, the greater openness about domestic violence and mental health issues, the increasing diversity, richness, and tolerance of our society are all to be celebrated.

New Zealand is, in fact, far less of a nanny state than it was in 1981 in terms of both social and economic freedoms. It takes a peculiarly warped sense of values to equate using an obsolete, inefficient light bulb to the right to be who you are...

The full speech is available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxdCu3VlOfo

Hmmmmm, so that’s me at the moment. Busy finishing U.S. applications, chatting on skype, and getting ready to shop and explore Brisbane this weekend!

Arrival

2009-11-30T01:32:00.000-08:00

Well I arrived in Brisbane today and it is way too hot, I have no air-con, I really should shower now – but if you're my friend you'll probably already know about my lazy reluctance to shower. Somehow I managed to score the only large room, with a double bed and a fan, so I should be grateful for that. The rooms are nowhere near as nice as in their advertising though. Here are two photos to prove it…

UQ campus is really campus-like – profound I know, but unlike Auckland there are university grounds and grass areas and a gift shop(?) and hairdresser and vet and food is good and cheap.

Today I had morning tea with the other external students who are all really nice – there are only ten of us and the others are sciency, as opposed to my pseudo-science; then I met my supervisor; and got set up. Nothing that won’t bore you to read so I’ll leave it there on the news front I think.

On the research front (let’s be honest this will probably bore you more, but it excites me), the project I am doing is cool. I’m going to run a study investigating whether the advantaged and disadvantaged concur on the legitimacy of discrimination of immigration policies. Basically it’s looking at how people see discrimination against immigrants who can’t speak the country’s official language, when this discrimination is framed as legitimate and illegitimate, and when they are talking about themselves and others.