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.