exile. a while

it just keeps getting worse. first of all it was forcing untested & unnecessary "national standards" onto overworked school teachers & coming up with the bright idea of increasing GST to fund a reduction in the top tax rate, to name but 2 of the many stupid things the national government has done; now, they have frozen the funding of our already underfunded (yet still pretty damn good) public broadcaster & decided to open up our national parks to mining; i would rant about it but bomber bradbury has already articulated it all very well (the scariest bit is that everything he says is completely true).

the only positive thing i can think about it all is that as long as john key & his cronies keep on in this fashion, they are sure to lose the next election. then perhaps at last we will have a green government ...

last weekend was waitangi day here in nz, the anniversary of the signing of te tiriti o waitangi; as usual, it was a glorious sunny day - a relief after the coldest january on record. vicki was passing through town so i picked her up from the airport & we cruised out to porirua, to the festival of the elements, to check out empress stilt dance's new aerial stilt work, kahuku - a butterfly romance. i don't know if anyone else in the world has created aerial stilt work - it's pretty amazing! first of all there's the strength and agility required to dance on very tall stilts, then there's even greater strength in supporting all your weight plus the stilts, while suspending, spinning and swinging, high above the floor. it must be so hard! but aerialist pipi ayesha evans made it look easy, and fun, and beautiful ... i found it hard enough just trying to take a photo. that pink blur is pipi ...

the few days of beautiful weather has inspired the strawberries to send out another crop, delicious to eat when they're hot from a day's sunshine. but something is eating the leaves ... don't know what that can be - white butterflies, perhaps ...

i am clearing out the hall in preparation for wallpaper & painting, & this morning had a nice surprise when i discovered a book i thought i'd lost, hiding between a couple of others. it's a day for a daughter by alan brunton & sally rodwell - sally's illustrations are fantastic & i was so happy to find it as i don't know whether it's still in print. but now that the books are nearly all moved, i'm approaching the inevitable task of taking down the photo wall; this has been a living respository of memory since 1995, & most visitors to my house find themselves stopping in front of it, either finding themself, or someone they know, or somewhere they recognise ... since 2003 & the advent of the digital camera, its growth has slowed down a lot, but it's still hard to contemplate taking it down!

this evening i had the pleasure of watching a stunning sunset as backdrop to a concert by the equally stunning jane siberry - or was jane providing the soundtrack for the sunset's performance?



it was one of those rare wellington evenings - not a breath of wind - & we were a small group of people gathered at the truby king house - one of wellington's secret treasurers, a little-known pocket of history with almost 36-degree views. the mountains that the sun is sinking behind are the kaikouras, over on the mainland, a lot further away than they look.

jane siberry has a fabulous voice & is a wonderful storyteller & entertainer - the evening was pure theatre. she was supported tonight by charlotte yates, another great singer-songwriter, & the whole evening was beautifully hosted by robert & delia - thank you : )

the tranquility of holidays ended abruptly last week, with the linux conference and overlapping house guests, amongst all the usual things. all good, but tiring!

i was too poor, too busy, & not really geeky enough to officially attend the australian linux conference, but i was sufficiently well-connected, efficient, and adept at geek impersonations to make it to the miniconfs; i've blogged about the haeksen & multimedia miniconfs on my furtherfield blog so i won't repeat it here (there are 3 entries if you're keen for the full story). i also did an UpStage stall at the open day at the end of the conference, which was good but hard work as i had no-one to relieve me so spent nearly four hours enthusiastically repeating my sales pitch. happily there was a lot of interest - lots of people who'd never heard of the idea of live online performance and were impressed & interested. nancy stayed with me during the conference, & it was great to have a catch-up with her.

then zab arrived, with her swedish entourage, axel & linda. linda admired my house, saying with amazement as she looked at my black-painted kitchen window frames & sills, "no-one would do that in sweden!" the weather was mostly crap, but we did manage to have chips & beer in the garden on the first evening they were here. axel was drawn like a magnet to the piano, the flexible mirror, my neutral mask - that boy is going to be a performer for sure.

i took advantage of zab & linda's muscles to help carry computers for the open day, but apart from that the weekend was one social event after another, some involving elaborate costuming.

now they are gone & the house feels very quiet, but i have heaps to do as usual - the beginning of the year means lots of proposals & applications as well as all my usual projects, & the great list of home maintenance ... one job that wasn't on my list but had to get urgently done just before the conference was replacing the catflap (which i kicked right out one night, trying to give the neighbour's cat a fright). this was more complicated than i expected, as the new catflaps were either bigger or smaller than the one i had, requiring either cutting or bogging. i went for the latter, & i think i did ok - the finished result is pretty good if i say so myself.

during the last year, i travelled extensively around europe & more, & only once had my travel plans disrupted (during the bad floods in turkey in september, the train lines were washed out & i couldn't go as planned by train to belgrade). back in new zealand for 6 weeks, i plan a simple holiday visit to my brother's family in the south island - and both legs of the journey are disrupted by the weather! i suspect westport airport is closed more often than its open, due to the near-continual rain. mind you, that didn't stop us from having a damn good time : )

back in wellington, 2010 is starting with even worse weather - i'm glad i managed to fly in yesterday because today the wind is so bad they even described it as gale force on the radio news (usually the wind in wellington, no matter how blustery, doesn't get much of a mention, it being so constant). so i've spent the day inside, making a happy new year collage of images from my adventures of 2009; click here to see it (it's big, i know, but it's been a big year!).

this afternoon i emptied out the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet, & consigned about a third of the contents to the recycling bin. i decided i could live without numerous rejection letters, payslips for columns i wrote in 2002, copies of my CV from the last century, statements of rates & insurance payments for the house i sold in 1995, & paperwork for my time(s) on the unemployment benefit in the 1980s.

i know what you're thinking - you're aghast that i've kept all this stuff for this long; you're amazed that rusty paperclips, silverfish and rising damp haven't dealt to the accumulation already (actually i only suffer from the first of those blights); & you're laughing because you know that the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet is only the tip of this hoarder's iceberg ... but hey, it's a start! i've been ruthless! (by my standards anyway). & i feel good - lighter - slightly ... & not too daunted by all the other drawers, cupboards, and boxes under the bed ...

i was pretty surprised when i heard that obama had been awarded the nobel peace prize - when he hasn't yet had the chance to do anything significantly noteworthy towards peace - but to hear him use his acceptance speech as a justification of war convinced me that the prize has gone to the wrong person. if obama had any humility, and any real understanding of peace, he would have declined the prize. he would have said, wait until i have achieved something; wait until i prove myself to be of the same calibre as previous recipients of the nobel peace prize. because he most certainly has not yet done that, and he may never.

he - or his speech-writers - are very good with words, & one could almost accept his arguments and justifications. but it's all a bit too convenient. he just happens to have inherited a country already embroiled in two never-ending conflicts, with an economy that is heavily dependent on those conflicts continuing, and such circumstances allow him to justify the ongoing use of violence, the deaths of civilians and human rights abuses (people are still being held without trial in guantanamo bay)

if war is so justifiable, then surely peace must come as a result - so why not wait until he has got there and THEN give him the prize?

yesterday wellington charmed me with her beauty: the harbour sparkling blue, the tararuas fading into the distance and the norfolk pines lining oriental bay completing the picture postcard image. the valiant & i enjoyed a cruise around the bays & later i lay in my back garden staring up at the blue blue sky.

today wellington reminded me just how fickle she can be. the wind whipped in from the north-east & just walking down to the bus left me feeling exhausted. but i still managed to get into town for the reclaim the night march. a small group of women were gathered outside the railway station to listen to some great speeches, & by the time we set off to march through town the numbers had swelled to a noisy crowd. oddly, the march had no police escort; one of the organisers thought this might have been because there'd been a much bigger, related, event two days earlier for white ribbon day. does this mean our local constabulary can only afford to escort one march a week?



several of the speakers spoke about recent changes to ACC which mean that victims of sexual abuse seeking counselling must have a psychiatric referral. this means that victims of abuse must be classified as mentally ill, if they want to access treatment for their trauma. huh??? are you mentally ill if you suffer post-traumatic stress after being caught up in a violent incident such as a bank robbery or a mugging??? this is a really dangerous shift, as it will be a disincentive for people to seek help - being formally declared to have a mental illness could impact on future employment and other things, as well as being an additional barrier to get through before accessing counselling. it also stigmatises the victim, putting some of the blame onto them, rather than the perpetrator (who is the one who's really mentally ill).

the current government are making lots of nasty little changes like this. another thing they're trying to do is make motorcyclists pay a larger ACC levy - something motorcyclists are campaiging against. and rightly so - how about a hike for rugby players?? (do rugby players even pay ACC levies?)

i love coming home. i love it when the plane sinks below the clouds & the familiar coastline appears, the kaikouras glistening white to the south, the choppy waters of cook strait beneath & the steep green hills of wellington ahead, dotted with little wooden houses like a model landscape. i love it when the wellington wind teases the plane as we descend, & the pilot rises to the challenge to achieve a smooth landing. i love it when cathy's there to meet me & my luggage appears on the carousel & we drive thru the familiar streets to my house. i love it when i put my key into the front door & the cat is there to greet me & just for a moment the house smells a little bit different, then i'm seeing all my accumulated life hoardings & everything is just as i left it but a little bit different ...

yes, i'm back! ... for a while ... since my last post from the sky, i've had a whirlwind tour of san fransisco (yes it is like a larger, grander wellington), survived the long flight back, & partially recovered from the sleep-deprivation and jetlag. now my work is to catch up with everyone here, catch up with all my projects, sort out my accumulated hoardings, & make plans for getting back to europe next year ...