so my so called second life

In my bid to expand my cyberhermitage ... as in my cybercave not my cyber Russian palace full of art ... I tried to go on second life so I could have a cool sexy avatar and meet cool sexy .... cyber geeks, but for some reason they wouldn't let me in. So I am stuck here in the real world. Its so not fair.

I have been having RW fun though, with an exciting visit from two more-than-smiling-friends we are talking-walking-drinking-and now-texting-friends. They allowed an escape from Dr L's book launch which was clasutrophobic and scary.... all that unity of purpose in one room (that is the reason I don't like socialising in houses.) We went drinking in the posh bar. There is one, well one and a half, and then we went to the gay bar. A seems to be have a side career as an anthropologist of provincial gay watering holes. This one was somewhat unusual, it appears to be housed in a former funeral home. In any other town that would automatically make it cool. But here, the spirits of the dead seem to linger. The world's friendliest doorman though.

Anyway I am off to eat pasta out of a salad bow. It is not pasta salad, it just appears that I did not push start when the loaded the dishwasher. ( a dishwasher you live on your own L). I was also excited to try out a fish version of my new pasta recipe, but its seems I bought sausages.

my new friends

I am surprised my modem is working at all as I just knocked it to the floor. It was a non-tourettes acident type moment, honest.

Friday, and I don't appear to be going out and drinking, which is a little depressing. I feel like I deserve it, but my friday night Karaoke buddy is supervising her son and his older more mature girl-friend's sleep over.

Been another hell-ish week punctuated by smiling strangers. The two little Brazilians have decided that I must be their smiling buddy. This is the category of friend that you smile and nod to even though you have never spoken to them. (I know they are Brazilian because I have heard them speaking to each other.) Auckland is fast becoming an outer suburb of Rio or Belle Horizonte or Sao Paolo ... well some city in Brazil. All the cafes are stocked with Brazilians making coffee from the Brazilian coffee beans. There are only a few here, Brazilians, that is, and we seem to specialise in the smaller ones.

Often on my way to work I pass man waiting at his gate, a tall burly sort of guy and I assumed he was a builder waiting for his work ride. We were nto smile buddies. But the other day at the supermarket a tall burly, builder looking guy was smiling at me like he knew me. Being tall-ish and not burly I was a little scared and wandered along until it structk me it was that tall burly builder looking guy. So I decided that if I saw him down the aisle somewhere I would smile at him, signalling my penny dropping. I didn't see him, until I got to the counter to pay. He was one counter over, and was smiling hard at every one. Then he saw me and super high beamed me again like might want to marry me. So much so I got a little scared again, and I ended up probably giving him some kind of cry-smile. Then an older gent, took him by the shoulder and led him away, but he got to push the cart with three cases of beer and it dawned on me that he had some kind of disability ... um that doesn't read right, but there were clues, okay!

The next day, he was outside his house again, doing his burly builder act, and he decides to go from smile buddy to chat buddy. We talked about me having to go to work. And him waiting for the car ... I am looking forward to chatting with my burly new chat buddy real soon.

You can't beat Welly on a good day

It's just gone 5, and I've cracked open a bottle of beer. I didn't used to keep alcohol in my house. I ceonceptualise drinking as something that happens in public among people, but boy how wrong was I!

Snuck down to the big city yesterday and gave a talk. Here my biggest group of clients is 13, there the lecture hall seated about 90. And I got a big clap! More than that all ninety wanted to participate. I can't get my group here to answer a question. It is considered an evasion of privacy.

Anyway always good to be back in a real city and here are some nice photos for those of you who also miss it.


Look at that blue sky, marvel at that harbour and look at that Narnia type lamp post. How twee!

The beauty of going to the big city on a Wednesday is that it means I CAN'T go to Ballroom dancing. How I hate it. I how hate the insistence of heteronormativity despite the fact there are a few women there who did not bring dance partners. HOw I hate the teacher's cheesy jokes, her insistence of her own elegance, and her poor teaching skills. Luckily she is afraid of me and my partner so she never comes near us. Only one more week to avoid...

On a shocking note, the brother of a friend has been kidnapped in the middle east. Thinking of you O + S

mm's meme

one book that changed your life
Liliane Haegeman introduction to government binding theory I first read (part of)it in UnL and was intrigued. Who would have thought ... oh wait this is a literature meme. Okay fiction that has changed my life ... um ... Richard Brautigan's revenge of the lawn because it was non-sensical, wayward, and trivial, and if a book can be, so can I.

one book you have read more than once
My friend Ruthie has actually only ever read one book, pride and prejudice. Inf act she is always reading it. If you asked her what she was reading she would say it was PnP. She likes it so much she sees no need to read other books. Another friend of mine, the exceedingly interesting Graham, ex-latin teacher, ex-tory candidate (!?!) nipple pierced Anglican minister asked me this question once. His was one hundred and one dalmatians! He explained he liked reviewing this Christian allegory every five years to see if his faith was still the same or had developed in anyway. I read almost all my books over and over again. In fact, all the books on my bookshelf that I haven't re-read are ones that I didn't finish the first time. I used to feel guilty about not finishing books but now I don't have time to persevere ... if that makes sense.
The choice of books to re-read depends on the mood. If I am feeling schmerzich, then Beth Nugent's city of boys excellent emotionally detached stories about the emotionally distant ... doesn't that sound appealing. Another book I read a lot is Broken April by Kadare, everyone's favourite Albanian author. I also re-read Shakespeare a lot but more about that below.

one book you would want on a desert isle
I have actually done this so I can recommend the collected works of Shazza. You always get something out of him that you haven't noticed before, and if you are shipwrecked on your isle or Johnny Depp has marooned you you can do the Graham test and watch yourself develop over the years. We all start out loving Hamlet in our teens ... the first goth, the first shoegazer, the first emo, the first existentialist whatever.... but then I guess like the actors as we grow older we can't help casting ourselves not as the Dane, but his father, or Claudio or God forbid, Polonius ... or as Eliot would say, an attendant lord, good to swell a scene or two ...
Having said the ones I most reread are Pericles and Love's Labour's lost. Can't stand Lear, can't stand Macbeth.

one book that made you laugh
Anything written by Lucy Ellman. She is hilarious and always reminds me of my favourite question what's so wrong with bitter? Would recommend man or mango to every man woman and goat, and to those who wonder what I think about in hermit like world. Also DOt in the universe though I have learnt to recommend this less widely as I forgot that it opens with a very graphic sex scene and continues in that vain despite the main character's reincarnation as a possum. I am also currently haunting the bookshops waiting for her latest doctors and nurses so will let you know when I get my own little possum paws on it (actually some say my hands are my best feature).

one book that makes you cry
the only bit of the great gatsby I like is the final para. That gets me every time. Any holocaust literature, and the recognition scene in Pericles, as unconvincing as it is. Oh and shamefully, the kids book about the rabbits who have a competition about how much they love each other ... the winner says I love you as far as the moon and back. And the other just says 'that's far' ... okay so I'm paraphrasing.

one book you wished you had written
The day lasts more than a hundred years. Like MM and her aunt cookie, I love russian lit, but the soviet and post-soviet period is more my bag. This novel is ostensibly about life on a railway crossing in the Kazakh steppes on the day Stalin dies but ranges back through central asian ethnogrpahy and forward into space travel .... it is awesome ... oh and constantly makes me cry.

one book you wish had never been written
of course books in themselves are never bad it is what people do with them. So I have to say I wish that Paul had never had written that damn letter to the Corinthians ... or was it the second one, that bit verse thirteen that is always read out at (Christian) weddings blah blah blah ... if we mean whole book, I might have to side with MM here and burn the Da Vinci Code or even Foucault's pendulum for starting the whole thing off ... But the book that probably pisses me off the most ... I mean people who piss me off when they talk about books are people who love perfume by Patrick Suskind ... that book shits me .... and don't get me started on Hardy, Tess of the Gumbyvilles.

one book I am currently reading
I just looked in my bed, I like to sleep with books well I am more used to sleeping with books than people:
Shakespeare's Richard II
Some analysis of the myth of Prometheus
The latest Cunningham novel, but I don't think I will finish it
The Yellow cross, about the last Cathars in the village of Montaillou ... my favourite piece of non-fiction
Christina Stead, The puzzleheaded girl
Victor Pelevin (go the post-soviet lit) the head of horror - a bit disappointing

Okay enough ranting. I don't link to so many people from here in my hermitage, but you readers feel free to post yours in the comments

breaking the silence

Attentive readers will have noted that I have not posted for a while. I was waiting for the emails begging me .... yeah right. No, in all seriousity it has been partly because I have been hella busy as the kids would say, at work, and partly the schmerz, but mainly because i have been under the knife.

You see I have been harbouring an ugly secret from those who have not seen me in a while. Apart from my usual scratchy skin, I had in the past month or so been sporting a wart on my lip. This probably was the unacknowledge source of the schmerz, as you could imagine. My self-esteem more jelly-like than rock solid at the best of times took quite a big hit from this little gift from the kava bowl. I also had to wait quite a while before it could be removed as the residual anti-malarials make you bleed more easily and as my doctor said lips are so vascular.

So Ludo went under the knife without anaesthetic, tougher than I look me, and now the wart is gone. And my mood has lifted somewhat ... My self-esteem also soared briefly last week due to some ( I want to say 'deserve' but I don't think it is something that is a reward) sex that was so good it made me believe in God.) That is all I want to say on that matter. So I guess I shoudl be rethinking field work. Two different strains of malaria and now facial deformities don't make it such an attractive concept, does it? Or am I being shallow?

So moving on to the pictures. Some weeks ago now, I accompanies a colleague over to the Bay. The bay which WW assures me has no the in front of it. Napier is the homeland of my father's clan, and it was nice to remember driving there to my grandfather. I hadn't been in years and the town has really embraced its art deco-ness and is looking great. I think though that i enjoyed the countryside more than the town .... Hell! I am getting rural. Thanks Palmengrad!