From the category archives:

the social round

Like the Spanish City, to me

14 February, 2010

in dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, traveller's fragments, we are family

A word to the wise, said a colleague of mine a fortnight or so ago, the mother of two very lively young boys.  Take as many weekend breaks as you can before the baby’s born, because after that comes a period in which you are more or less housebound.  By this collegial advice was the decision that the señor and I should spend Waitangi weekend in North Otago further strengthened.  As the pregnancy fog, which I understand is said by most researched accounts not to exist, continues to envelope my mind, it felt also like an opportunity to do something involving fine-motor skills — such as driving — before my previous accomplishments of coordination and logical sequences of thought desert me completely.

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Birthday Honours

3 February, 2010

in O internet, in Aotearoa, the social round

By curious coincidence, Miss Megan Wegan and I share not only the same name but also the same birthday, which a quick perusal of the archives here will reveal is soon.  Readers of the other Megan will be aware that she has not been having the best time of late, but also that her zest for life incorporates a keen sense of fashion.

As one who has previously been dressed by proxy at Megan’s blog, I thought it timely that I attempt to return the favour.  

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Memento Memori

31 December, 2009

in commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, we are family

The (contestable) fact of a decade passing has been slow to come to my attention, and it was only really the appearance of the obligatory lists (particularly by writers whom I admire) that alerted me.  I have nothing in particular to rank — and what would you gain, gentle reader, if I told you that 2007 was better than 2002, for example? — but have been trying mentally to compile some chronologies that might sum up my experiences of the last ten years.

Normally I ignore the contention, both reasonable and logical, that a better measure of a decade is one that begins with 1 and continues through to (1)0, but on this occasion, this would be a more meaningful division for me.  I handed in my PhD in mid-2001, a fortnight or so after I started working in tertiary preparatory programmes, and defended it in either November or December of that year (I forget which).  This was the end of a period of continuous study that had various markers of “beginning” in the compulsory and non-compulsory sectors.  Since the ‘01, therefore, it’s been a different game I’ve been playing.

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Both short and steep

1 November, 2009

in at home, the social round, we are family

Regular readers will have inferred that Señor Mojito and I got married a week ago, at Labour Weekend.  I have more to tell about this but must first exercise my obligations at our wedding hub, which may take a little time, as I find the process both of uploading photos, and of looking at myself in the photos, quite challenging.

All signs point to a good time being had by most, and I managed not to ironise the event while it was taking place, a process much helped by having paid some invoices in the days prior to the ceremony and the joyful company of our friends and family.

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Sixty Seconds of Ring-Tailed Lemurs

20 October, 2009

in the social round, we are family

Saturday was the Hen Day and Night.  In between lunch and dinner, we went to Willowbank.  There we saw the ring-tailed lemurs.

I like this video because you can hear my mother laughing.

Flickr Video

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To grow accustomed to this face

10 October, 2009

in commentatrix, the social round, we are family

Originally published at The White Mist.

With a long-sighted father and a short-sighted mother, it was more likely than not that my brother and I would need glasses one day.  For both of us, that day came before childhood was out.  With great determination, I switched to contact lenses at fourteen, rejecting that large-lensed, plastic-framed spectacles that were the style at the time.  I wore contact lenses until I started working full-time, when glasses became more practical in the air-conditioned, eye-drying environment.

Glasses frames remain, however, subject to the vagaries of fashion, and it’s with this in mind that I’ve decided to wear contact lenses again for the wedding.  (Señor Mojito, who, like many sensible people, cannot bear to put a finger against his eyeball, will be chancing future changes of fashion and staying bespectacled.)  For the first time in many years, then, I’ve had cause to see my face from a distance without glasses.  What a strange experience.

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Poneke Tales

30 September, 2009

in in Aotearoa, the social round

My thanks to you all for your kind wishes on the next few months’ change of occupation.  I spent today on sick leave, not discharging my duties.  The pattern of the days when I am on my feet and on the job is not that different from the rhythms of teaching: thinking, preparing, doing, reflecting.  The difference is that I share my work now with a wider variety of people, and have a rather more looming sense of my responsibilities to others, because I am new at them.

Last week I endeavoured to combine a meeting in Wellington with a few days’ break.  It may have been a better idea to schedule the break after, rather than around, the meeting, but I am not necessarily the best decision-maker concerning my leisure.  Nonetheless, it was splendid to see so many people and do so many things.

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The days of ‘92

16 September, 2009

in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round

A recent article on the Fairfax webpages profiled a group of school pupils preparing for the annual ball.  Here they are, dressed up and excited, as featured in the main shot of the article.  There is also a series of four- or five-minute videos, which I confess I haven’t viewed. It would be an exercise in nostalgia, which, as you’ll see, doesn’t sit completely easily with me.

To the Ball

To the Ball

My high-school ball, or formal as we called it at the time (“balls” were for the posh schools) was nearly seventeen years ago, a literal half lifetime.  I wore a dress my mother made for me, from a wedding-gown pattern.  I chose the fabrics: crushed velvet for the bodice and sleeves and a black background with red rose-print for the skirt.  I wore my mother’s jewellery, and possibly her shoes too.  Though my skirt was full-length, I wore patterned black stockings which I saved for years, until they no longer fit.

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Out on the Weekend

30 August, 2009

in commentatrix, the social round, we are family

The señor doesn’t tweet much, but when he does, it amuses me no end.

Towit:

@harvestbird: A covers band in an Irish bar.  It may be time to stop drinking.  #

@knedd: In Mickey Finns Megan wimping out #

(All it has taken for him to join me in Web 2.0 was an iPhone.  When yesterday morning I got up I found him on TradeMe, “buying the phone a present”.  It was a protective carry-case.)

I enjoy the gender confusion the señor creates when we step out late of an evening.  A pink-cheeked, fresh-faced, drunk twenty-year old in an Aertex Shirt bailed us up on the way to the grim venue above, to shout “You look like a girl!” (to which the señor cheerfully exclaimed, “you look like a dickhead”).  Earlier, a curly-haired man in a trilby hat had chatted up our booth of drinkers at our wedding joint, before exclaiming, “oh shit, there’s a guy there!”  Earlier still, at the house-party at which the revelry started, a former student of mine poured me boysenberry wine while expressing a wish to dress the señor’s hair.  She later attempted freehand pigtails.  My beloved’s androgyny casts light on how others feel about gender binaries, and the fears and pleasures therein.

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Adventurous People

1 August, 2009

in O internet, in Aotearoa, teaching & learning, the social round

While the commonplace belief that not much ever happens in this city may at times be true, on other occasions the social whirl picks up.  The latest of these eddies has had a bittersweet quality.  My exchange students completed their internships and yesterday graduated their programme.  Some are staying on for skiing and travel, others are returning home to the last of the humid Kanagawa summer immediately.

These young women are modest and tend, I think, to measure themselves by a deficit rather than a credit model.  One explained in her farewell speech how she had aimed in coming here to overcome her “weak points”, one of which she identified as speaking in public.  I don’t think their teachers see them in the fashion: we notice instead their persistence and resilience, their willingness to take hard knocks and refuse to give up.  I hope in their studies and work to come they have time to reflect more hopefully on what they’ve experienced and accomplished here.

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