Boot Camp (hoo-rah)

Flying

I spent my weekend visiting my delightful sister in Palmerston North. I have never been to Palmerston North before. I quickly came to understand what a wise decision this had been. It was going to be a long weekend, not least because the clock tower in the town square no longer worked and persistently informed us that the time was in fact 5.15. The clock tower was also covered in lichen and mould, complimenting nicely the slightly backward feel of the town. I say this, acknowledging that I come from the only marginally larger, Dunedin, which is not the most ‘forward’ town either. Back to Palmy, Mama Bear managed to rent a manual vehicle. She was well out of practice, stalling ten times in the first fifteen minutes (not to mention the numerous other times over the course of the weekend).

And it's still 5.15

Probably the only advantage of having a blog, even on the very small scale of mine, is the intriguing hold you have over other people. Especially when those people have important public personas to uphold. Suffice it to say that I have been banned from mentioning a number of the weekends events and there were a number of slightly anxious, ‘you’d better not blog about this…’ comments (I'm such a well-behaved sister).

Genetically incapable of keeping anything tidy

I am still deciding if the events that took place in the weekend were the result of the location or my strange family. I feel like when one arrives in a new place, the first port of call is, most commonly, exploration, discovery, adventure, wilderness, losing yourself, finding yourself, seeing, doing, experiencing and so the list continues (in a rather obnoxious manner). Not me and my family, though. No, we went to the nearest book shop we could find and invested in some adult colouring books (not ‘adult’ colouring books but adult colouring books, if you get me – entirely innocent I assure you). Our next port of call was our accommodation, where we sat down for the next few hours and were zen and chill and mellow and present. We spent those hours adventuring and exploring in the wilderness of our minds. Mindfulness is totally ‘in’ right now. And I like being totally ‘in.’ So yeah…

Adult colouring books = the best

Our next call for entertainment while in this small town was the movies. Ordinarily, I would feel, as a tourist in a new place, going to the movies would be a total cop out because it is one of those experiences that is universal (unless you go to an independent cinema and this was not an independent cinema). In this situation, however, I was all for it… There was little else to do, if anything. The movie choice (my own) was fantastic. The benefit of this being that something great had happened before we’d even rested on the first evening of our mini-break. I felt a very real sense of accomplishment when the movie ended. Even if the rest of the weekend was a complete flop at least I had watched a good movie (it’s the simple things).

The movies <3

But come Saturday, boot camp started. I don’t know what ‘normal’ families do when a small sub-section of the family gets together, but mine trains. And not like a chug-chug train, but like a ‘hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hoo-rah’ kind of train. You see my sister is training to go to China for the Miss World competition. You might laugh, snigger or even snort at this, but I personally know, second-hand, that this is a very real thing. Beauty pageants are a real sport and choosing  to be a beauty queen requires a lot of cold, hard training. HOO-RAH. So, being the very supportive (and mildly amused) family that we are, the assembled company partook in the training scheme for the weekend. On Saturday, this consisted of a super-intense ab work-out with Davey Wavey (youtube sensation) and an endurance event. Like all normal families on holiday together, we all lay down in front of the computer and worked on developing that all important power-house of a core, that we all have. I don’t know though, Davey Wavey isn’t really working for me – it might have something to do with that name…

Lambie Family Boot Camp

HOO-RAH

The endurance event was also super intense. It involved running through mud, and dogs and people and cyclists and mud and whatever, yeah, that was about it. But I did nearly die. But such is the nature of family get-togethers in my humble existence. Love comes at a cost. Sometimes that cost is a near-miss with a sprained ankle or a near-miss with a mad bath. Whatever your cost or struggle may be, remember that is just as valid as other people’s problems, no matter how insignificant it may seem in comparison, like the first world struggles of an upper-middle class white girl. Still valid. But I have digressed...

Lambie Family Boot Camp (part II)

HOO-RAH

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder what a normal family looks like.

Palmerston North - nice sometimes

Mid Winter

I was having a really nice week. Like, really nice. In fact, I even thought seriously about writing a really happy and positive blog this week – ‘Everything I love about being on holiday with my dog and my dad.’ A number of people (i.e. more than one) have told me that I am perhaps a little too cynical sometimes. I thought that the holidays would be a happy time to work on showing people that I’m not as cynical as they might think… But, this happy and positive blog, obviously wasn’t a goer… Firstly, I feel like happy and positive blogs are deep. And that’s a window to my soul. And I’ve already talked about my music taste on this blog, and that is window to my soul enough for one year, thank you very much. So, without further ado, I had a horrible realisation this week.

As many of you will be well aware, it is mid-summer in the Northern Hemisphere. I am well aware of this fact because National Geographic posted an article titled, ‘First Day of Summer: 4 Things to Know About the Summer Solstice.’ I also know it’s Mid-Summer there because it is mid winter here. My horrible realisation was that my whole life has been dictated by Northern Hemispherers (because my life revolves around holidays).

The World

(And no, there are no polar bears in Antarctica)

I happened upon this thought while I was freezing my arse off at the local mid-winter festival, Matariki. Matariki is cool (that’s my enthusiasm coming through there, in case you didn’t notice – seriously, ‘cool’ is about as good as it gets) because it is a festival about the rising of a constellation in the sky. And stars are about my favourite thing. 

Artistic representation of Matariki

But enough of the personal stuff… I realised that us Southern Hemispherers have no public holidays to get us through the winter season. Like none. Zilch. Zero. The Northern Hemispherers have organised the calendar year in such a way that there are no  universal holidays in their summer season, just their own summer holiday. But here, down under, we suffer. We have to go the long dark nights with nothing to look forward to; no light at the end of the tunnel, no holiday to get us through. We are really tough. Especially because we don’t have central heating and our houses aren’t insulated. Luckily though, I live at home so I can turn on two heaters and sit in front of the fire. That’s just what it takes to keep warm around here. Oh that, and an extra layer of fat… Which I propose as the leading cause of New Zealand’s obesity epidemic. 

So then I got thinking about our public holidays, in general, after crying myself to sleep about the long dark of Moria (Lord of the Rings reference) or winter, or whatever you want to call it. First things first, my Christmas is in summer… Which makes no sense really. Nobody is meant to have Christmas in summer. It’s a fact. It’s unnatural.  I mean it’s all well and good having Christmas at the beach, but you’d only be kidding yourself if you thought that I (and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere population) had not always dreamed of a white Christmas. Actually, people here talk about going in search of  a white Christmas, like it's the Holy Grail or some shit like that. There is something about the comfort and warmth of sitting inside at Christmas that we Southern Hemispherers really miss. And, let’s be honest, it is phenomenally difficult to take a Santa on the beach seriously. And anybody in a Santa suit here just gets hot, sweaty and grumpy. We all know that. 

Everybody's visualisation of Santa

New Zealand Santa

Looks a little intoxicated?

New Year’s is also in the winter holiday zone for those in the North. That’s right… the Northerners planned not one but two large public holidays for their winter season, while we Southerners get zero. Seriously, who is running this show? But, in terms of timing, I do think that New Year’s is better as a summer public holiday than a winter holiday. This is based on the simple fact that New Year’s is a party holiday. And we like to be warm when we party. Not that you actually notice that much, if you are doing the partying right… but that’s a detail I am willing to forgo.   

And then there’s Easter – and Easter makes the least sense of all. Easter is all about resurrection and new life, and happens in the spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which is all very fitting. Everything is coming to life after winter. Such a beautiful metaphor, with chicks (the bird not the other kind…) and foals and bunnies and kittens and puppies and eggs. It’s ridiculous, because the ‘reason for the season’ is exactly the same in the Southern Hemisphere, like the whole nine yards with the kittens and the bunnies and the eggs… Except it falls in autumn (see what I did there?), the season of death. Ok, maybe a little extreme, but you get what I am saying… We have blindly followed the other 90% of the world’s population that live on the other side of the equator. As a result, we below the equator, have ended up with some horribly juxtaposing public holidays.

Easter: Not natural in autumn

The cat agrees.

She's just having an all around bad time having Easter at an unnatural time of year

Here’s what I propose… Instead of having a small dotted line on the globe that is the equator, we build a wall. So this would need to be shown with a full black permanent marker line right around the fat part of the globe on all maps (maps that didn’t have this would be retracted, corrected and then returned to their owners). And then, the Northern Hemisphere could keep it’s traditions and it’s holidays. And we Southern Hemispherers could have our Christmas in June, just after the winter solstice, to give us something to look forward to and distract us from the fact that our days are getting colder and shorter. And Easter could be in September, right around the time of my birthday, so that I could have time off to get in the last of the skiing for the season. And New Year’s could stay right where it is on January 1^st, in the hope that one day, it won’t rain on that day, as it has done for the past 2 years at least. And it a great day it shall be.

New Year's Rain: Super fun for a solid 5 minutes

New Year's Rain: Then this happens

Somebody from the Northern Hemisphere created this map

Behold, the new calendar that we adhere to in the Southern Hemisphere. Oh, but in this new calendar, the end of the world was December 21, 2012. Because that’s fun.

Winter might be coming, but it's not all bad. 

But perhaps I know nothing. 

The Lab

I’ve been in the lab this week, learning how to do science. As a general rule, I find that the lab and I don’t get on super well. It’s one of those places that makes me all disorientated, at times dizzy, and is just generally an unpleasant experience. I can never find anything. I have an uncanny knack of getting in the way. Or tripping over. Or adding the wrong amount. Or dropping something. It just makes me feel uneasy...

It was a pretty small lab as well… Like I would say, 9 m² at a push, but at least one quarter of the room is filled up with a rather large steel box they told me was an 'important and expensive piece of scientific equipment.' A further eighth of the room is filled benches, two large PC computers and a fume hood type thing that filters air. Had there been just me, this set up would have been cosy. Given that there were three of us (because I needed somebody to tell me what to do and another to provide moral support), it was rather cramped.

How the room made me feel

Actually, the first event of the week was getting the fume hood type thing into the lab. This involved taking the door off its hinges, because the fume hood was too fat to fit through the door. They say science is all about problem solving. I believe a truer word was never spoken. Although, maybe if you have a brain that functions a bit more practically than mine, thinking to take the door off it’s hinges wouldn’t be such a big stretch. If it had been my problem my first reaction probably would have been to cry and then resign myself to the realisation that science was going to have to happen in the hallway. A very useful instinctual response to the situation, I think.

The situation to a tee

We were supposed to be measuring trace metals in seawater. These trace metals have concentrations in the realm of parts per billion which, for those who would like a visual representation, is equivalent to one drop in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Which is not  a lot. At all. Measuring such low concentrations, means everything has to be super clean. This was a real issue for me. Cleaning and I are not the most compatible of ideas. Cleaning makes me want to vomit. For some people, ‘clean,’ like ‘unique,’ is an absolute. It is or it isn’t. There is no middle ground. You cannot have something moderately clean. I find this idea to be an intriguing one, however, it is not one that I abide by. It is not one that I uphold myself. ‘Clean’ for me is a scale from ‘horrifically dirty’ to ‘clean enough.’I usually clean something about one quarter of the way to ‘clean,’ and then carry one my humble way. But apparently our bottles in the lab needed to be cleaned not once but five times before they were considered ‘clean.’ Five times. Clean was definitely an absolute in our lab. In case you're wondering, five is a very large number. Like, very large. 

Pretty much me all week

I’m not the most patient person in the world. Actually, I’m nowhere near the most patient person in the world. It’s a vice of mine. I’m not working on it. I’ve accepted it and moved on. But I did have to wait a lot this week. I had many unsolvable issues and questions that required the assistance of those superior to myself. In order to release some of the tension that was caused by my waiting this week, I became an expert in my own hands. What they look like, their composition, their general robustness and durability. There is a lot of waiting around and a girl has got to fill her time somehow. Fingers really are fascinating though, aren’t they? Quite incredible. And they are amazing how just when you thought that you were bored, they become so interesting all over again. Quite astounding. As a small, but amusing aside… my delightful grandmother informs me that I have stubby fingers that have hideous nail polish on them (Shucks! Thanks Gma!).

 

No wonder I found my hands so interesting

I had one job this week. My one job was to make up a whole lot of solutions at a certain concentration. Which is really difficult. And I failed. Admittedly, I was only about by a factor of 100. 4? 400? Pretty much the same thing, right? It’s a hard life, really.

My conclusion

So now, I’m more or less on holiday. Which is great because it means that I can sit in bed all day and do sweet nothing. At all. Ever again. 

Life is good.

Natural Disasters

Lots of natural disasters the past two weeks.

First there was the snow. To be honest, I was embarrassed about how much the whole city shut down when the snow arrived. I was walking down to uni, going to class, trying to organise a time to meet one of my professors who quickly told me, ‘I’m not making into today due to the weather,’ despite the fact that as I strolled down the hill there was not a single snowflake in sight. Admittedly, it  had kind of tried to snow. Or tried to do something. And admittedly we, coming from a temperate region of the world, are not prepared for snow. And granted, we are home to the steepest street in the world, with a gradient of 1 in 2.89 m (Baldwin Street). But nevertheless, we are rather pathetic when it comes to snow. So natural disaster number one was a bit of a flop.

A bit of a flop may be an understatement

The 'snow'

Not a snowflake in sight

After the snow came the earthquake. As a small aside, I don’t really sleep. It’s a fact. Sometimes I think I suffer from some form of mild insomnia. Last night, for example, I slept from 11 pm until 4:30 am and then from 7 am until 8 am, and that was my equivalent of a ‘good night sleep.’ But, as I was saying, the other night, there was an earthquake. Apparently it was quite large. Like a 4.0 or something (which may not mean much if you’re not from an earthquake prone part of the world, but 4.0 is definitely feel-able). And I have it on good authority from a friend of mine (called Jo) that it ‘sounded like a freight train.’ But I wouldn’t know. For once, I was sleeping like a baby. However, I did get ample amounts of amusement out of the page ‘I survived the Dunedin Earthquake,’ which I took to be a take off of ‘I survived a zombie apocalypse.’ The facebook page now has over 1500 likes, which, for a non-event of a facebook page, is pretty bloody good. I also appreciated the profile image that they sport, featured below.

We don't take this too seriously.

At all.

Of all the natural disasters to have happened in the last few days, however, the floods were, without a doubt, the most devastating. Of course, there were the obvious devastating effects like extensive flooding, minor landslides, water, water everywhere and so on. The students, however, in true Dunedin scarfie fashion, made the most of it. All part of the reason New Zealand is awesome (What's health or safety? Who needs that? *yawn* - see below). The devastating thing about the flooding for me, however, was that I had to leave the house. I had an exam (devastating in and of itself, but amplified by the rather wet weather). 

On an average day...

On a not-so-average day

I suppose leaving the house, in and of itself, isn’t overly devastating but I did have to use an umbrella which was, without a doubt, devastating. I don’t really like using umbrellas, but, this one time (and this one time alone) I chose to heed Papa Bear’s advice and use the umbrella (‘Use an umbrella,’ he said. ‘It’ll keep you dry,’ he said – biggest lie of the century). On second thoughts, I hate using umbrellas. Actually, I just hate umbrellas in general. They’re over my head. And I don’t like things that are over my head. I don’t like hats, I don’t like umbrellas and I don’t like ideas that follow this trend either. Hoods are ok, because they’re grounded.

Because I don’t use umbrellas, I don’t know anything about umbrellas. Apparently, umbrellas that are taken on public outings must have muted tones (an unspoken rule, but a rule nonetheless); in particular, black. But my umbrella wasn’t black. It was more like a helicopter hat minus the helicopter part. I didn’t realise this until I arrived in town and saw that everyone else was mourning the weather. Another reason why I hate umbrellas; a whole other etiquette code to learn and adhere to.

My umbrella

A helicopter hat

In addition to this, umbrellas make me feel like Mary Poppins. And Mary Poppins is fine, but she’s not somebody that I feel that I really identify with or that I want to be identified with. So that’s another reason why I try to avoid umbrellas in general and umbrellas in public. So things were not going well for me and my helicopter-hat like umbrella that had me feeling like Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins

The fourth and final disaster of the past few days, was exams. These fall under the natural disaster category, because they are naturally, a disaster.

I hope that your week was less eventful than mine. Although, if you live in Dunedin, I doubt it.